ALL THESE SMALL MOMENTS (2018)
This has all the trappings of the style of film I usually love: small, intimate, slice-of-life, coming-of-age, with lots of silence decorated at the edges by acoustic guitar. I appreciate the effort and enjoyed Brendan Meyer as Howie Sheffield, but I found this movie depressing and confusing and it creeped me out. The story follows sixteen-year old Howie as he manuevers through a difficult time; his parents are on the verge of a divorce, which provides an unstable and unhappy environment for Howie and his younger brother. I didn't find the parents, (played by Molly Ringwald and Brian d'Arcy James), sympathetic; the tone of the narrative was a downer; and I had to push myself to see the film through. I like to support first-time filmmakers, and some people will like this film, but I feel like I wasted an hour and forty minutes.
During this tumultuous time in his life, Howie becomes obsessed with a thirty-year old woman whom he sees riding the bus. Odessa grows veggies on a Brooklyn rooftop, sells them at the Farmer's Market, and apparently likes the smell of Basil and the attention of a teen boy. Coming-of-age tale or not, this part of the storyline befuddled me and made me uncomfortable for no good reason; it didn't give me anything of value or insight. I kept comparing this story to Almost Famous and other films in which similar topics were so expertly handled by writer / director Cameron Crowe. On a parallel track, Howie also meets a girl in high school in a room where they both sit out gym class because his arm is broken and she claims to have asthma. Lindsay has a past of her own to overcome and takes an interest in Howie, unaware that his energy is focused on Odessa. I wanted to root for Howie and Lindsay to get together, or have something to champion in this film, but in the end, it never engaged me in a positive way and I just didn't care.
