Molly Gordon Archives | Deep Focus Review

Oh, Hi!

Brian Eggert — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 21:17:54 +0000

“I did a thing,” confesses Molly Gordon’s Iris, the sympathetic if somewhat unhinged protagonist of Oh, Hi!, a familiar, convoluted rom-com that escalates into bad-sitcom level absurdity. When Iris and Isaac (Logan Lerman) escape to a picturesque farmhouse—singing the Dolly Parton-Kenny Rogers duet “Islands in the Stream” in the car like an old married couple—their weekend trip brings some details about their relationship status to light. The “thing” she admits to over the phone, speaking to her best friend Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), is that she has chained Isaac to the headboard and refuses to release him. It started as playful bondage and good sex, until he remarked that he didn’t consider them boyfriend-girlfriend. “I’m not really looking for a relationship,” he says, after four months of dating. And so, Iris has resolved to leave him there, hoping that he might come around after twelve hours or so. This twisted look at modern dating from writer-director Sophie Brooks is the kind of insufferable movie where, if the characters just had a quick conversation to clarify their feelings, they could have avoided everything that follows. But then, of course, there wouldn’t be a movie—meaning Oh, Hi! exists to perpetuate itself. Brooks lays […]

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Theater Camp

Brian Eggert — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 11:45:49 +0000

For drama kids, dance studio performers, musical enthusiasts, and arts educators, Theater Camp will instill moments of recognition and humor. Made by performers from Broadway’s Dear Evan Hansen and its big-screen adaptation, the film details both the unique experience of theater camp for those familiar and offers a glimpse of this strange microcosmos for the uninitiated. Although the scrappy conditions, single-minded passions, brutal auditions, egomaniacal instructors, and resulting haphazard stage productions may seem alternately miserable and delightful from an outsider’s point of view, the staff and committed attendees know how to “turn cardboard into gold.” Everyone’s there because they love what they’re doing, and that’s catching, even for someone with no theater experience. Still, this affectionate portrait of a distinct community and the eccentric types therein crams too much into a short runtime, suggesting the filmmakers started out with much more footage and cut too deep, leaving a mangled result. Conceived by co-directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman, who co-wrote their screenplay with Noah Galvin and Ben Platt, Theater Camp expands on their 2020 short of the same name. The filmmakers clearly draw from Christopher Guest’s output, adopting a mockumentary format, for better or worse. The device informs the structure […]

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Shiva Baby

Brian Eggert — Tue, 11 May 2021 01:38:37 +0000

Emma Seligman’s debut feature Shiva Baby runs a mercifully short 78 minutes. Any longer, and it may have caused a heart attack. The writer-director’s expansion of her same-named short film is riddled with anxiety. The second-hand embarrassment is palpable, causing us to squirm in our seats, gasp in horror, or broadcast more than one audible “oh no” at the screen. Cringe comedy isn’t an unpleasant enough term, given how expertly Seligman manipulates the viewer into the rattled, sweaty, palpitating frame of mind of her central character, Danielle, played by Rachel Sennott. When the film opens, Danielle finishes hooking up with her sugar daddy and leaves for a shiva, though she’s unsure who died and missed the funeral for her sex work. But even before her recent patron, Max (Danny Deferrari), arrives at the same shiva and makes an already unbearable family situation worse, the single-setting film becomes achingly tense and uncomfortably funny. Seligman’s treatment of Danielle’s sex work is honest and humanizing, placing us on the protagonist’s side in the first shot when Max almost forgets to pay, and then sends Danielle off with a lingering, inappropriately intimate hug. Whereas other films either demonize sex workers or portray them with […]

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Good Boys

Brian Eggert — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 19:02:40 +0000

The new comedy Good Boys doesn’t have much to offer in terms of narrative, nor does it deliver sophisticated jokes or wit. It’s a lowdown, raunchy flick that uses the age of its 12-year-old characters as a persistent source of ironic humor. Gene Stupnitsky makes his directorial debut, having co-written the screenplay alongside Lee Eisenberg, his writing partner from the underwhelming comedies Bad Teacher and Year One. Don’t hold that against them. They’ve come up with a hilarious concept here: a group of inexperienced, preadolescent friends talk with potty-mouths, play with sex toys, and deal drugs—though most of the time they don’t grasp the full context of what they’re doing. The story follows Max, played by Room star Jacob Tremblay, as he tries to learn how to kiss in advance of a basement “kissing party,” where he hopes to smooch his grammar school crush. He’s joined by his best friends: the future drama kid Thor (Brady Noon) and the cannot-tell-a-lie Lucas (Keith L. Williams). Together, the tweens call themselves the “Bean Bag Boys,” which Max tells people with an ultra-cool squint, as if he were James Dean. Why do they call themselves that? They have bean bag chairs. Duh. Stupnitsky […]

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