Saturday, April 9, 2022

Holler (2020)

Jack and I liked this story of a young woman who, with her brother, joins a scrap metal crew in rural Ohio to pay for college. Jessica Barden and Gus Halper are very good as the siblings, as well as Becky Ann Baker as a kindly aunt-like figure and Pamela Adlon as their mother.

Writer/director Nicole Nicole Riegel fleshed out her 2016 short film into this feature debut, which was nominated for the Best First Feature Spirit Award and more. I have a running list of this year's nominees and winners of selected awards, as if you didn't know.

Here's a fascinating interview with Riegel from NPR to listen to or read.

As I write I'm streaming the lovely Appalachian-tinged music by Gene Back on Apple Music.

Cinematographer Dustin Lane shot it on location in southern Ohio, with a lot of jiggly hand-held camera movements, forcing me to move to a chair farther from the screen in our home screening room (I don't mind, it is my second favorite chair). That's what I and other sufferers of Motion Picture Motion Sickness need to do in such cases. I also have an alphabetical list of some of the strongest inducers of MPMS

Baker was last blogged for The Half of It. Barden, who is British (her American accent is very good) has been in dozens of movies and TV episodes, including three of Better Things, created by and starring Adlon. Halper has been in five episodes of Dickinson and other shows. Adlon's hundreds of credits started with Grease 2 (1982) (she was 16 when it was released) and she has won several Emmy awards for voicing Bobby Hill and others in King of the Hill, writing and producing the series Louie, and for acting in Better Things, which I love.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are hollerin' in the holler with an average of 92%, while its audiences are using their inside voices with 76.

We streamed it on Showtime March 29.

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