Movie Review Angelica

Angelica (2017) 

Directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein 

Written by Mitchell Lichtenstein 

Starring Jena Malone, Janet McTeer, Tovah Feldshuh 

Release Date February 7th, 2015 

Angelica starring Jena Malone has had quite a struggle to get to the big screen. The film was completed and shown to festival audiences all the way back in 2015. Only now, however, is this Mitchell Lichtenstein-directed Victorian-era thriller starring Jena Malone finally making it to a release date. I have no insight as to what has held the film back from release, though the strange and ambitious story and daring sexuality may have had a role to play. Angelica is not a movie that mainstream marketers would love to be assigned.

Angelica tells the story of Constance, the mother of Angelica, both of whom are portrayed by Jena Malone in an apt, if slightly confusing choice. Constance is working in a small shop when she meets Dr. Joseph Bardon, or Bardoni, (Ed Stoppard) though he prefers to downplay his Italian roots. Bardon falls for Constance immediately and begins to court her and soon marry her. This being the Victorian age, Constance is a virgin at marriage and when the two have sex on their honeymoon it is a revelation for her.

This revelation unfortunately turns harrowing when Constance nearly dies giving birth to their first and only child, Angelica. Doctors, being quarrelsome, Victorian fools, inform Constance that due to the difficult pregnancy and birth that she can no longer have sex. This is nonsense, of course, but this being Victorian era England, it’s a common bit of a bad advice and it goes immediately to Constance’s head. As Constance denies her desires for her husband and begins spending nights curling up with Angelica to avoid him and sublimate her desires, something strange begins to take hold of the household.

As Angelica grows older and Constance continues to freeze out her husband on doctor’s orders, they practically call her a whore simply for wanting to sleep with her husband for pleasure. Constance begins to have visions of some sort of viral presence floating in the air near her daughter. This floating specter takes on several, almost corporeal forms and Constance feels them in a way that seems to reflect the desires of her husband and herself. Slowly, Constance convinces herself that her sexual desires are manifesting as an attack on her daughter, as if a demon were punishing her sexual desire by threatening the child.

Find my full length review in the Horror Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Come Find Me

Come Find Me (2023) 

Directed by Daniel Poliner 

Written by Daniel Poliner 

Starring Victoria Cartagena, Sol Miranda, Tovah Feldshuh 

Release Date January 10th, 2023 

Published January 3rd, 2023 

Come Find Me is based off of a short film that writer-director Daniel Poliner had made a few years back. That film starred Sol Miranda, beloved character actress from The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt, among other shows, as a principal at a struggling New York City middle school. Wanting to give Miranda a larger platform to show off her skills, Poliner expanded the original short film by adding in the story of the daughter of his original main character, here played by Victoria Cartegena. 

It's a lovely motivation to want to do something to showcase a talent you respect but the result is a deeply confounding drama that shifts in time and space so often as to completely lose the point and purpose of the story. The characters seem to know what's going but they don't do very well to let those of us in the audience in on what is happening. Come Find Me is filled with what appears to be ideas about mothers and daughters, domestic abuse, confronting death, and other such ideas but none of the ideas make much sense as the movie descends into a series of repeated scenes that I think were shifting in time, maybe? 

Come Find Me opens on Christina (Victoria Cartegena), a lawyer on the verge of making partner but questioning her future. Christina is back home in New York City for a big case involving a bank. Meanwhile, she's also plagued by something happening back in California where a pro-bono client is being stalked by an ex-boyfriend and has just found out that she's pregnant. Victoria is also pregnant and is rather ambivalent about that fact. She's in a new relationship with a fellow lawyer back in California and worried about what being pregnant might do to this new relationship and her future as a lawyer. 

Also, while Victoria is in New York, she's avoiding her mother, Gloria (Miranda). Gloria is a very involved mom, a long-time teacher and now principal who gets very involved in the lives of her students. This, in the past, caused a rift between mother and daughter after Gloria had Christina attend private school instead of the struggling middle school where she worked. Christina would have preferred to be close to her mom during this time. 

As Christina is struggling through a case that could make her career, she's also dealing with her mother's finances, much to her mother's disdain. It's all very dramatic and weighing on Christina's conscience as she's also waiting for word on what is happening with her pregnancy. This all comes to a head at the end of the first act of Come Find Me which then abruptly shifts to two years in the future and becomes a movie about Gloria and not Christina. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Kissing Jessica Stein

Kissing Jessica Stein (2002)

Directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld

Written by Heather Juergensen, Jennifer Westfeldt

Starring Heather Juergensen, Jennifer Westfeldt, Scott Cohen, Jackie Hoffman, Tovah Feldshuh, Michael Ealy, Jon Hamm 

Release Date March 13th, 2002 

Published September 18th, 2002 

When it comes lesbian relationships in film, we generally get distracted by the sex stuff and the relationship aspect gets lost. That is not the problem with the comedy Kissing Jessica Stein. In fact you would be hard pressed to find many problems in this wonderful comic romance. Written by and starring Heather Juergensen and Jennifer Westfeldt, and adapted from their stage play, Lipschtick, Kissing Jessica Stein is the non PC story of two straight women who begin a tentative lesbian romance. 

Helen (Juergensen) is an art gallery owner who has dabbled in bisexuality but is first glimpsed cheating on a jerk boyfriend in the middle of a gallery show. Helen is tiring of the meaningless sex and is exhausted of men so she places a personal ad seeking a woman. Helen's ad catches the eye of a copy editor named Jessica (Westfeldt) almost by accident. As Jessica and some friends are glancing over the personals they come across an ad in which there is a quote from Jessica's favorite poet. While Jessica's friends dismiss the ad after finding it's a women, Jessica finds herself strangely intrigued. In a move that totally goes against her conservative nature, Jessica answers the ad.

Helen and Jessica hit it off and thus begins a series of funny, sweet moments of a budding relationship. The film is well written and well acted. It's no surprise that Juergenson and Westfeldt, who have been doing this material for a long time, have chemistry unmatched by many straight romantic comedy couplings.

The supporting cast is as strong as the two leads, especially veteran actress Tovah Feldshuh as Jessica's mother. The role could have been a sitcom knockoff of a stereotypical overbearing Jewish mother. Instead, Feldshuh brings a wonderful calmness and ease to her performance and has one extraordinary scene with Westfeldt as she finally opens up about the new relationship that is funny, smart and touching.

Kissing Jessica Stein never gets overly caught up in the sexuality of Helen and Jessica's relationship, at least not in the sleazy B-movie way most lesbian relations are treated. Sex is an issue in their relationship but it isn't the only issue. While the ending left me cold, I still really liked Kissing Jessica Stein, one of the best comedies of the year.