Thelma Adams: Novelist, Critic, Oscar Expert

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Review: Keira Knightley Awakens Seattle in ‘Laggies’

October 30, 2014 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Keira Knightley dresses down (and out).

Keira Knightley dresses down (and out).

“Suck it up, go with your gut.” That’s the advice Seattle late twentysomething Megan (Keira Knightley) gives to adolescent Annika (Chloe Grace Moretz) at the end of Lynn Shelton’s most commercial movie yet, Laggies. Shelton herself has followed that mantra, pioneering a successful indie career by going with her gut. She’s a generous filmmaker, giving female characters dimension and detail without sacrificing the crispness of her men.

Shelton has created a cottage industry in Seattle making films that are cool, contemporary, and just a little bit angsty without being all tattooed-edgy. I loved the sibling issues raised, and the actresses engaged — Rosemarie DeWitt and Emily Blunt — in the prickly yet tender comedy Your Sister’s Sister. I sighed during the uneven masseuse dramedy Touchy Feely, also starring DeWitt, a yeasty bread that refused to rise. Everyone makes mistakes, though women directors often don’t get a second chance.

But Shelton, who directs both TV (the upcoming Fresh Off the Boat) and has three film scripts in development, sucked it up, undeterred. And along came the Sundance hit Laggies, slang for folks that are lagging behind but don’t have the true philosophical entropy of slackers. It’s a more temporary condition.

The comedy, which Shelton directed from Andrea Seigel’s sexy, sweet-natured screenplay, opens briskly. Megan escapes a claustrophobic wedding reception in which her sympathetic beau (Mark Webber) has just tried to kneel down and propose. He’s doing the right thing, but Megan instinctually recoils: How can it feel so wrong? Is that all there is, my friend? What happened to flat-out fun on the modern woman’s rush to career, love, marriage, and a baby carriage?


Read More on IndieWire’s “Women and Hollywood” blog…

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: Chloe Grace Moretz, Keira Knightley, Lynn Shelton, Review, Sam Rockwell, Women Directors

Review: ‘Lone Survivor’

November 23, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Kitsch, Wahlberg, Foster, Hirsh: the band of bearded brothers (photo credit Universal Pictures)

Kitsch, Wahlberg, Foster, Hirsch: the band of bearded brothers (photo credit Universal Pictures)

With a title like “Lone Survivor,” clearly this war drama will not end well. And since it’s a documented case of 19 Navy Seals on a mission to take out isolated, high-level hard target Ahmad Shahd in Afghanistan in June 2005 narrated by the last man standing, Marcus Luttrell, the blood, sweat and tears will be mixed with a minimum of triumph.

Director Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights”), working from his own script adapted from the New York Times Bestseller, proceeds to dig in deep to the Navy SEALS psyche and to understand who these individuals are, rescuing them from reductive statistics. At the same time, he embeds the audience so deeply in the men’s perspective on the doomed “Operation Red Wings” mission, that the experience is visceral and intensely disturbing.

The result is a contemporary “Platoon,” a band-of-brothers war story. Even for someone like me that isn’t a natural or easy fan of that genre, I recognize that one chief pleasure is the opportunity it provides for a group of actors to peel back pretense and reveal their characters at their most frightened, challenged and, even, transcendent. Real men cry on the battlefield, particularly when it’s a stony outcropping in Afghanistan and a once buff body has become a rag doll chewed by a vicious pit bull. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, Eric Bana, Lone Survivor, Mark Wahlberg, Navy SEALS, Review, Taylor Kitsch

Review of ’12 Years a Slave’ by Vassar Student David Lee

November 15, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Ejiofor (left); Fassbender (photo credit Weinstein Pictures)

Ejiofor (left); Fassbender (photo credit Weinstein Pictures)


It is difficult to watch Director Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” without looking away from the screen every so often. Lynched, murdered, raped, sold, traded, and owned: these are verbs we never want to associate with human existence. But it’s undeniable that these acts are a part of our legacy as Americans. And it’s utterly painful. It doesn’t play into our national denial, like “Lincoln,” by marginalizing the black experience by lionizing white political leaders, or like “Django Unchained” by reimagining the past as a Spaghetti Western. McQueen (“Hunger,” “Shame”) mounts horrifying images of the shredded backs, twitching feet, floating bodies, and chained limbs atop another to give a glimpse into the lives of slaves lived in constant fear and oppression. With strong performances by the incredible Chiwetel Ejiofor in the title role, Lupita Nyong’o, and Michael Fassbender among many, McQueen delivers one of the greatest films about American slavery and the need to own up to our checkered past.

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: 12 Years a Slave, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong'o, Oscars 2014, Review, Slavery, Steve McQueen, Vassar

Critic’s Pick: ‘Frances Ha’

July 10, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

While bromances flourish – doctors, racecar drivers and superheroes bond regularly — memorable movies about best girlfriends are a rare species. But in that environment, “Frances Ha,” the brilliant black-and-white comic collaboration between star-writer Greta Gerwig (“To Rome with Love”) and writer-director Noah Baumbach (“Greenberg”), is a game-changer.

Best friends since college, happy-go-lucky Frances (Gerwig) and roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner), now in their late twenties, share the same bed and the same inside jokes. Frances quips that they are like an old lesbian couple without the sex. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Review, Yahoo! Movies

Playdate Review: Chattanooga Times Free Press

March 28, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

“Adams, a master of her medium whose language reads like that of a literary novel”

Reviewed by Adera Causey (highlights)

Sunday March 27, 2011

“Beyond every white-picket-fence lawn are people whose lives rarely are as neatly pruned as the protective shrubbery. This axiom coupled with a voyeuristic fascination for peering behind closed doors has led high culture and popular culture alike to exploit this interest. The latest entry to this form comes from Thelma Adams in her delightful little “Playdate.”

.  .  .  .  .While this book is wholly predictable, the wickedly smooth plot and the vivid imagery supplied by Adams, a master of her medium whose language reads like that of a literary novel, this book is elevated to a wonderful, wicked pleasure and a perfect excuse to set aside some time for a playdate.”

Filed Under: Books, Playdate Tagged With: Chattanooga Times Free Press, Comedy of Manners, Playdate, Review, Suburban Novel, Thelma Adams

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