In her Die My Love review, Sentimental Value review and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You review, Lisa Johnson Mandell says there’s no doubt the performances are sublime, but the stories? Not so much.

I’m a great advocate of superlative female performances and female forward films. But I’m not a fan of films that show messy people just being messy, (male or female) with no payoff. It seems they entirely exist just to showcase disfunction, and the actors ability to pull it off believably. Oscar bait? Perhaps.

Die My Love and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You fall into that category. Sentimental Value rises above that, but I’m not as thrilled with it as everyone else seems to be.

Die My Love Review

Indie director Lynn Ramsay both helmed and co-wrote the screenplay for this film about Grace, an emotionally unstable woman fiercely played by Jennifer Lawrence, who moves with her partner Jackson, (Robert Pattinson), from New York to rural Montana where Jackson has inherited an isolated, rundown house.

Their frantic and explicit passion results in the birth of a son, and Grace quickly spirals even further with postpartum depression. She swings between desire, rage, numbness, affairs, knife wielding, self-injury and more. Much stalking through a field on hands and knees ensues.

The cinematography is interesting, but it’s not enough to induce an audience to be invested in such an undefined and completely unlikable character, her depression or her mania.

The ending is takes the audience places they never wanted to go, but knew it was likely inevitable. It’s a frustrating reward for sitting through all that ugly, unhinged misery.

Rated R

1 Hour 59 Minutes

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Review

This is another female-directed film about a woman on the verge, helmed by Mary Bronstein and starring Rose Byrne as Linda, a mother in an impossible situation.

The daughter, whom we never see but we hear whining incessantly, has a feeding tube inserted for some reason, and is in treatment, which is not going well. Linda’s husband is away on a professional assignment for eight months, and is unable to provide support.

Linda is a therapist who is also in therapy with a grumpy psychologist played by Conan O’Brien and that combination is more enervating than helpful. She neither gives nor gets advice that will enable her to cope with all the truly awful traumas that threaten to overwhelm her.

It’s pretty much a one-woman show, with Byrne progressively making desperate choices that make matters worse. She is frustrated, distraughtand outraged. She resorts to dishonesty, fooling only herself, constantly denying the gravity of her emotions and her situations.

Yes, Byrne’s performance is electric, but audiences may feel as if they’re being electrocuted by it through the majority of the film. And after enduring all that, to be given an ending like this one? It’s not exactly the entertaining experience most people hope for when they go to the theater.

Rated R

1 Hour 53 Minutes

Sentimental Value Review

Receiving multiple top nominations from myriad awards organizations including my own, the Critics Choice Association, the Danish film Sentimental Value from director Joachim Trier left me wondering what all the fuss is about. My colleagues nominated it for Best Picture, Renate Reinsve is nominated for Best Actress, Stellan Skarsgård is up for Best Supporting Actor and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas got a nod for Best Supporting Actress.

In addition, Trier is up for Best Director, and shares an Original Screenplay nod with Eskil Vogt. All this for a movie that I consider, sigh, bland. Perhaps my Norwegian ancestry has bred—I wouldn’t exactly say contempt—but I would say ennui. We Scandinavians tend to be a stoic bunch, not often given to intense emotion. While many are looking at Sentimental Value as sophisticated, I see it as restrained. 

It opens with Reinsve’s best scene, and by far the best scene in the film. She’s a prominent actress suffering from crippling stage fright. The film slows down after that. Her father (Skarsgård), a once successful but now flagging director, returns to his ancestral home in an attempt to revitalize his career and his family, while his two daughters deal with their own relationship issues.

Perhaps “contained” is a better word to describe the film. It’s a nice, quiet contrast to the over indulgences of explosions, cruelty, blood and terror we see in so many films, but it’s hardly overflowing with wonder, awe or creativity either. I found it to have very little sentimental value.

Rated R

2 Hours 13 Minutes

See which Critics Choice Awards these films were nominated for on CriticsChoice.com.

In her Die My Love review, Sentimental Value review and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You review, Lisa Johnson Mandell says there’s no doubt the performances are sublime, but the stories? Not so much.