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evdebs
Reviews
Love, Ludlow (2005)
ludlow at the Big Apple Film Festival
We saw Love, Ludlow at the Big Apple Film Festival and like it very much. Big Apple is the newest and still the smallest (and I'm sure they want to feel, the hippest) of the three NYC festivals--NYFF and Tribeca.
The first several minutes are slow and not involving enough, but then once the characters start to play out, you are taken in. Terrific acting, and a great woman hero for a change. I grew up in Queens and I think the lead character is completely right.
Brendan won Best Male Performance of the Festival, and the film took second place for Best Feature.
All deserved, of course.
Winter Solstice (2004)
A film that captures the true dynamics of a father and his sons.
Saw the film at Tribeca, and was very taken with it. So few films show normal, non-violent life to be as dramatic and as sweet and as hurtful as it really can be. This film does. The acting is terrific. The direction stays out of the way of the actors and the story. A young man has a hearing impairment, for example, but this is never called attention to or made maudlin use of--it's just there as part of the family's reality. Same with the missing mother. That's part of the back story, and no one is going to spend minutes explaining it to the audience, you just enter into the family's life as it goes on. Every moment is entirely believable, and usually, touching as well. I am afraid it may not reach many viewers, since it has not sex or violence to speak of, just the truth of family life.