John Carroll Lynch Archives | Deep Focus Review

Sorry, Baby

Brian Eggert — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:42:16 +0000

Listen to the audio version of this review. With Sorry, Baby, writer-director-star Eva Victor rethinks how cinema portrays and processes trauma, and it’s not with sensationalism or buzzy terminology, but with restraint, humor, and compassion. Victor stars as Agnes, a literature professor working at the same New England college where she once attended grad school and survived a sexual assault. The film explores what it means to feel stuck and unable to see a path forward. Victor acknowledges that it’s impossible to anticipate or shield against every terrible thing that might happen, and when something does occur, how one responds is often an unconscious reaction. Some people repress the experience, only for the feelings to return with a vengeance, while others try to confront it directly and endure the psychological collision. Regardless, trauma reframes self-image, raising introspective questions: Agnes wonders how she would have been different had this never happened to her. Should she mourn the version of her that might have been? Sorry, Baby doesn’t pretend to offer answers. Instead, it gently observes how healing can emerge out of supportive friendships, empathetic strangers, plenty of time, and perhaps also a kitten. Sorry, Baby is structured into chapters, each covering […]

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Babes

Brian Eggert — Fri, 17 May 2024 13:25:24 +0000

Babes sets out to demystify maternity. Balancing raunchy comedic antics with a dramatic undercurrent about the strong bond of female friendships, the crowd-pleaser stars comedians Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau as Eden and Dawn, two longtime friends in New York. They used to be inseparable. But since Dawn and her husband (Hasan Minhaj) moved to the Upper West Side, had a child, and became pregnant with a second, the Astoria-based Eden doesn’t see her friend as often. They keep in touch with nonstop texts, including pictures of their bowel movements, and also meet on Thanksgiving each year to see a movie. This year’s movie is interrupted when Dawn goes into labor, which arrives less like a bolt of lightning than a “light pussy drizzle.” The new child, along with Eden’s eventual pregnancy, creates additional distance between the two friends, who jointly experience the difficulty of maintaining strong friendships as adults. Modeled after Judd Adaptow productions, Babes may occupy a recognizable structure, but it’s no less funny or insightful. Babes follows in the long tradition of comedies about mothering. But examples such as John Hughes’ She’s Having a Baby (1988), Chris Columbus’ Nine Months (1995), Apatow’s Knocked Up (2007), Jason Reitman’s […]

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The Trial of the Chicago 7

Brian Eggert — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 20:57:17 +0000

Aaron Sorkin channels Frank Capra in The Trial of the Chicago 7, a Netflix release that manages to have crowd-pleasing airs, even though you’ll probably watch it in your living room. It harkens back to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1938) or Meet John Doe (1941), where an idealistic minority stands up against an unbalanced bureaucratic force. In this case, it dramatizes the trial of seven defendants accused of conspiring to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Courtrooms have always been bombastic places in the movies, and Sorkin mines the real-life story for pieces of cinematic gold. His characters make grandiose speeches, his judge issues unjust orders from on high, and his emotions are earnest and sweeping. No wonder Steven Spielberg originally asked Sorkin to write a screenplay he planned to direct himself. But Sorkin shows he’s up to the task, drawing from the naturally dramatic situation and often using actual court testimony and events from the trial. To be sure, he doesn’t have to dig deep to find the inherently moving substance here, nor does he have to allude to its modern-day relevance. The historical parallels remain on the surface; no underlining is needed. The events […]

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Private Life

Brenda Harvieux — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 20:05:08 +0000

Tamara Jenkins has not been a prolific filmmaker—she writes and directs something every ten years or so. When she does apply herself to a project, the story centers around unconventional families and uncomfortable situations. She wrote and directed Slums of Beverly Hills, released in 1998, about a neurotic family of nomads who are determined to stay within the city limits of Beverly Hills, the deadbeat father moving them from crappy apartment to crappy apartment to avoid paying rent. In 2007, The Savages was released—another project written and directed by Jenkins—telling the story of siblings dealing with their aging father and the awkward, sometimes bitter-sweetly humorous situations their family is put in as their father’s mind starts to go. Most recently, Jenkins helped adapt the screenplay for this year’s Juliet, Naked, based on the novel by Nick Hornby, which follows a woman in her late thirties/early forties who breaks up with her long-time, live-in boyfriend and starts a long-distance relationship with the reclusive musician her ex is obsessed with. The musician has a bunch of kids with a bunch of different women, and she’s thinking about having a baby on her own but still wants a relationship with the musician—quite an unconventional […]

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The Founder

Brian Eggert — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 18:47:22 +0000

The Founder should come with a warning: Film proves blander than it may appear. In another case of aggravatingly deceptive trailers, following 2016’s Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence starrer Passengers, the advertisements for the biopic of McDonald’s shyster Ray Kroc appear to contain a more engaging film than the one delivered. The first official trailer has been available since April 2016, with the film’s release planned for the following August. After talk of potential awards consideration for Michael Keaton, whose energetic portrayal of Kroc contains all the bravado of his turn in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the film shifted dates to a limited release in December, and finally a wide distribution in January. For nearly ten months, prospective viewers have been sold a formally innovative, fast-paced picture in which the fourth-wall-breaking protagonist revels in his duplicitous back dealings. Of course, trailers are lies meant to draw audiences. And as Passengers demonstrated, the more egregious the advertising lie, the more viewers will reject the film for the disparity. As a critic accustomed to such deception, I should have been better prepared for it and not allowed my expectations to influence my eventual assessment. Nevertheless, dear reader, I am a […]

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Jackie

Brian Eggert — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 00:00:19 +0000

Natalie Portman plays Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis in Jackie, an uncommon biopic that looks at its subject through a narrow frame, rather than a sweeping (and ultimately insufficient) birth-life-death story. Chilean director Pablo Larraín arranges a film that opens with dissonant, falling chords by composer Mica Levi, whose score for Under the Skin remains some of the most memorable music of the last decade. Levi’s grandiose and tragic notes underscore the drama of this picture, as Jackie considers its subject just after the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The music and thematic dramaturgy of the film announces a fallen empire from Jackie’s perspective, the death of her family’s carefully constructed kingdom and legacy. Fortunately, Larraín and Portman remember that Jackie was also a human being, and they render her convincingly in a complex portrayal. Jackie served as First Lady during her husband’s brief years as President of the United States of America. During that time, she played a major role in establishing a national identity for the presidency by instilling the notion that her family was the People’s Family. In 1962, she famously invited America into her newly reconstructed and redecorated White House, insisting that, […]

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The Invitation

Brian Eggert — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 00:00:25 +0000

Have you ever reconnected with an old friend who seems far removed from who they used to be? Something in them has changed. They’ve found some new religious sect or have thoroughly embraced a self-help program. It’s strange and upsetting to witness someone with whom you were once so familiar now show signs of a complete transformation you don’t understand. Now imagine you’re at a dinner party and the hosts are your old friends who’ve changed. Social decorum demands you behave politely, despite signs that something’s not right with the whole situation. That’s the basic setup of The Invitation, director Karyn Kusama’s intensely slow-burning thriller that meticulously and effectively unsettles the audience. Kusama started out with her indie smash Girlfight in 2000, but quickly descended into the lifeless, Hollywoodized productions Aeon Flux (2005) and Jennifer’s Body (2009). She has now returned to her indie roots with The Invitation, which debuted at SXSW in 2015 and has received limited theatrical distribution, along with a VOD release, a year later. She’s also received some stellar reviews for her fourth feature. Kusama’s restrained, disquieting approach to the script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (also producers) builds subtle backstories for a group of […]

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Zodiac

Brian Eggert — Sun, 04 Oct 2015 00:00:04 +0000

From the late 1960s to early 1970s and beyond, Zodiac Killer mania rattled the San Francisco Bay Area of northern California. With several confirmed attacks and numerous others attributed to his name, the self-titled Zodiac claimed to have 37 victims; however, just three men and two women died by either gunshot or stabbing, while another two were seriously injured but escaped. The murders themselves were frightening enough, but then on August 1, 1969, the Zodiac began to write letters to newspapers. Their coverage launched the fervor to a new level. Not since Jack the Ripper had such a high-profile killer written the press and teased authorities with hints to his identity. The San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and Vallejo Times-Herald each received letters with specific information only the killer could know, cryptograms that when deciphered revealed a feverish rant, and most signed with either the zodiac symbol (crosshairs) or his name (“Dear Editor: This is the Zodiac speaking…”). Whether their author mocked the police’s inability to catch him, claimed to be collecting slaves for the afterlife, or promised to shoot children on a school bus, Zodiac’s published correspondence resulted in frantic reactions from authorities and the public. The coverage […]

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Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Brian Eggert — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:00:27 +0000

Though obnoxiously punctuated, Crazy, Stupid, Love. doesn’t fall prey to many of the unfortunate downfalls prevalent in your typical romantic comedy. At the outset, one notices how the characters in Dan Fogelman’s screenplay behave as though some thought was put into them. They’re not quite three-dimensional or developed on every level, but they’re not used as mere comic devices to propel a series of wacky rom-com antics, either. It’s a multigenerational love story in the vein of Love, Actually, except with fewer characters and all more interrelated than Richard Curtis’ mosaic. Glenn Ficarra and John Requa directed the film, and their adept handling of a mature, raunch-free script that earned $80 million at the box office implies that audiences will flock to a smart romance if only Hollywood would produce them more often. In the opening scene, the 25-year marriage between Cal (Steve Carell) and his high school sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) comes to an end when she abruptly asks for a divorce, confessing she’s slept with a coworker, David Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon). Devastated, Cal moves into an apartment and begins spending his nights in a posh cocktail lounge, where his sad sack demeanor is noticed by Jacob (Ryan Gosling), […]

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Shutter Island

Brian Eggert — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:55 +0000

From his earliest work onward, Martin Scorsese has always pondered the manner in which his characters contend with their guilt, personal tragedies, and sense of displacement. He’s shown us a hoodlum who holds his hand over a candle’s flame for a crude form of self-flagellation that soothes Christian guilt. He’s peered into the impenetrable psyche of a loner cabbie, finding desires to both become a hero and lash out through violence. His characters have banged their heads against the wall as they curse themselves; they’ve gone out wandering late at night only to find that the night bites back; they’ve seen the ghosts of patients they could not save; and they’ve been nailed to a cross. From the pretext of a thrilling murder mystery, Shutter Island slowly develops into Scorsese’s first venture into the genre of psychological horror, as the film’s entire arrangement concerns the disturbing ways in which people manage their inner demons. Through maddened sociopaths and the scarred psyche of the story’s hero, Scorsese underscores his long-existing exploration of our external responses to inner stimuli. Based on the novel by author Dennis Lehane, the script by Laeta Kalogridis allows the director to delve into material that he has […]

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