Dolly Wells’ Good Posture will grow on you. What starts as a disaffected-young-artist-in-Brooklyn indie that we’ve seen before becomes a sweet study of what trying to be happy looks like. A lot of the credit goes to the performer behind that disaffected young artist, Grace Van Patten, who carries a movie that relies on subtle signs of charm and caring.
Initials S.G.’s protagonist lives on the periphery. Sergio Garces wants nothing more than to be the main character of his own story, but instead, he finds himself a film extra, a washed-up porn star, and a Serge Gainsbourg cover artist in Buenos Aires. He’s as close to the real thing as you can get.
What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali enters a crowded field. HBO, which will premiere the two-part documentary May 14th, released the legal drama Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight back in 2013, and in the documentary category, Leon Gast gave us When Were Kings, one of the great hero stories ever told, back in 1996. Antoine Fuqua’s latest addition to the Ali canon runs 165 minutes and attempts a comprehensive retelling of the Greatest’s life.
The narrative thrust of Goldie is a music video, and it’s shot like one too. Writer/Director Sam de Jong’s Tribeca entry follows an 18-year-old on the run in the Bronx, determined to keep her younger sisters beyond the grasp of Child Protective Services and make it to set for her first appearance as a backup dancer. The push-and-pull between Goldie’s daily struggles and the joyousness of her dreams gives the movie its structure. At its best, Goldie is a celebration of dreaming, of the future, more glamorous self young artists hold inside of them.
Sebastian Schipper’s latest drama is a road movie that becomes a border movie. Roads opens with two teens, in Morocco, in extraordinarily different predicaments: Gyllen (Fionn Whitehead) has stolen his step-dad’s RV and plans to escape family vacation by making his way to his real father in France; William (Stéphane Bak) has come to Morocco by way of the Congo, hoping to reach Europe, where his brother is in trouble. The two trust each other immediately, sharing a sense of optimism for their near-impossible journey.
The Plagiarist is a script-driven, wordy movie capable of surprise.