Kelly McCormack Archives | Deep Focus Review Movie Reviews, Essays, and Analysis Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:54:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://www.deepfocusreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/cropped-DFR-Favicon-5-32x32.png Kelly McCormack Archives | Deep Focus Review 32 32 Sorry, Baby https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/sorry-baby/ https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/sorry-baby/#respond Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:42:16 +0000 https://www.deepfocusreview.com/?post_type=reviews&p=29210 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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]]> https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/sorry-baby/feed/ 0 Problemista https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/problemista/ https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/problemista/#respond Fri, 01 Mar 2024 14:27:08 +0000 https://www.deepfocusreview.com/?post_type=reviews&p=23757 By all accounts, immigrating to the United States is an impossible maze of maddening confusion, unclear paperwork, and bureaucratic red tape. The process has been accused of intentionally dissuading applicants and catering only to those with the financial resources to support themselves on this labyrinthine path. Immigration has been the subject of countless documentaries and journalistic exposés, and it’s also at the center of Julio Torres’ debut film, Problemista, a delightfully bizarre blend of idiosyncratic humor, Kafkaesque nightmares, and surrealist imagery. A former Saturday Night Live writer and creator of HBO’s now-canceled Los Espookys, Torres applies a generous dash of magical realism to the comic proceedings, telling a personal story through a dreamlike filter. Although the writer-director-producer-star roots his narrative in familiar life lessons, his account feels vitally particular and expressive, sometimes veering into fabulist absurdism reminiscent of Terry Gilliam or Charlie Kaufman’s work. It’s an inspired, assured debut that suggests Torres has fully realized his vision in cinematic terms.  Problemista is also about a young man’s two mother figures. Born in El Salvador, Alejandro, or “Ale” (Torres), has developed a sense that he could have anything, instilled by his mother (Catalina Saavedra). Isabella Rossellini narrates the film, offering the […]

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