The Mill Valley Film Festival enters its first full weekend and there’s a tempting menu worth devouring.
Here are some of my must-see recommendations.
“Little Woods”: This sobering character-driven drama captures the claustrophobic plight of a North Dakota woman (Tessa Thompson) trying to remain legit after getting busted for dealing prescription drugs. A domino chain of no-win circumstances test her and her sister’s resolve in Nia DaCosta’s remarkable feature debut. WINNER of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle Best Indie Narrative Feature in the Mind the Gap initiative. (Screens: Oct. 6 and 11)
“All These Small Moments”: Melissa Miller Costanzo presents Molly Ringwald with one of her juiciest roles in years in a perceptive coming-of-age story about a family grappling with marital issues while a teenaged son crushes hard on an enigmatic woman he meets on a bus. “Small Moments” has a big payoffs. (Oct. 6 and Oct. 7)
“22 July”: The first 30 minutes of this unsettling docudrama are excruciatingly painful to watch, horrifically recreating the 2011 Norway massacre perpetrated by a lone extremist that left scores of teens and adults dead at a summer camp and, in a separate attack, others outside of the Prime Minister’s Office. Paul (“United 93”) Greengrass ventures into the aftermath, showing us the unrepentant killer’s trial along wit one young man’s struggle back from death. .It’s too long, but it is powerful. ( Oct. 6, Oct. 9)
For reviews of “Free Solo” and “Pet Names” visit:
Randy Myers in Motion 