Film Review

It’s like “The Office,” only with no takes to the camera and both male and female full frontal nudity. And I mean that in a good way.

“Hannah Takes The Stairs” was my first foray into the genre now known and made sub-popular as mumblecore. Mumblecore is defined in wikipedia as: “An American Independent film movement that arose in the early 2000’s. It is primarily characterized by ultra-low budget production (often employing digital video cameras), focus on personal relationships between twenty-somethings, improvised scripts, and non-professional actors.”

“Hannah” happens to fit that very definition. As it turns out, the film was apparently directed without a script by one of mumblecore’s pioneers - Joe Swanberg. The film is the epitome of honest and at times unbearably uncomfortable because of how real it feels. The characters feel less like characters in this dramedy and more like the people you eavesdrop on at your favorite restaurant or grocery store.

Greta Gerwig stars as Hannah, a twenty-something that just can’t seem to make up her mind about what she wants and who she wants to be with. We witness her clumsiness as she tries to figure out how to break up with a guy she doesn’t really like anymore and then land head first in the middle of an office love triangle. At heart she hast the best of intentions, but as mentioned before - she just can’t seem to make up her mind.

Art imitating film.

There were six of them - The Indian, The Explosives Expert, The Former Slave, The Mystic, Charles Darwin, and The Masked Bandit. They had nothing in common except for one thing, they all sought revenge against the evil Governor Odious.

It’s rare to find a film like this one. Every once in a while a director will release something that is truly a visual masterpiece to it’s viewers. Tarsem (director of “The Cell” and REM’s “Losing My Religion” music video), found the perfect vanity project to unleash his inner creativity. He found an epic and sweeping children's story told by a suicidal actor. With it he paints one hell of a picture.

“The Fall” is the story of little Alexandria, a young foreign girl stuck in a hospital with a broken arm after suffering a fall in a California orange grove. This precocious little youngster does her best to satiate her boredom by wandering the hospital as her arm heals. In one of the recovery rooms, she comes across and befriends a mysterious stranger named Roy, willing to tell her an epic adventure story - for a price. As the story unfolds Alexandria’s already active imagination takes flight, and gives us some of the most beautiful imagery that we have seen on film. But as the story progresses - so does the storytellers sadness. Alexandria must confront her storyteller in order to save the story she has grown to love.

First thing’s first, Alexandria is PERFECT, played by newcomer Catinca Untaru. Her every moment on screen is just as humorous and heartfelt as the one before it. What could have easily been an overacted children’s performance is an adorable and sincere girl that we can’t take our eyes off of. She gets some of the best laughs in the film, and your heart breaks for her as the story reaches it’s climax.