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Review: ‘Student Body’ is inconsistent genre fare saved by its performances.

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STUDENT BODY

Synopsis:
A distressing incident compels childhood best friends Jane and Merritt to take action against their high school math teacher, driving their splintered relationship into further turmoil and provoking deadly consequences.

When a close-knit circle of private school friends attempts to request a makeup calculus test, things do not go as planned. Student Body flips the script, quite literally, on whatever genre you thought you were watching. In a film of consequences and crazies, surviving high school just became a lot harder.

Each member of the group has their role to play; manipulative leader, aggressive jock, comic relief, activist, and smart girl. Together, their chemistry makes Student Body worth your time.
Stand-out performances come from two players. Austin Zajur as French is the loveable goofball of the bunch. His charming energy gives us the most memorable moments of levity. Harley Quinn Smith is a star. She’s such a natural, your eye goes to her immediately as her confident voice echoes above the fray of group scenes.

Writer-director Lee Ann Kurr gives us two distinct genres by structuring the script as one half character development and the other half horror. The issue with the second half is pacing. The urgency is missing. There are 15 minutes between murders, a brief slump then the third. Then, it stops being cohesive at all. There’s an overall emphasis on safety. We know new locks and safety glass were installed as they make a point to highlight it over and over. Unfortunately, unless I missed it, there’s no president for the measure. As the generation who experienced Columbine, some of these details seem nonsensical. Bulletproof windows and roll-down gates, but no classroom locks from the inside?

While I suspect the filming was done in an empty high school, halls, and classrooms lacking almost all signs of life, in the end, this probably lent to efficiency. Overall, there’s a lot of solid material in Student Body. The editing is fantastic and the soundtrack (at least in the beginning) lends itself to teen movie cult status. I wish that had continued. The dialogue is never pretentious or tries too hard. That and the cinematography make it enjoyable.

Now On Digital!

Directed by Lee Ann Kurr
Written by Lee Ann Kurr

Starring:
Christian Camargo, Montse Hernandez, Cheyenne Haynes, Harley Quinn Smith, Austin Zajur, Anthony Keyvan

Run Time: 1:28:48
Rating: N/A

Review: ‘All These Small Moments’ is what life is made of.

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SYNOPSIS: A teenage boy’s infatuation with a woman he sees on the bus further complicates his already tumultuous adolescence.

There is something about this film that stuck with me. While it might appear to be about a young man’s infatuation with an older woman he sees on the bus every day, it’s really about everything else going on around him. All These Small Moments is a film about a family breaking down. It’s about first love, and adolescence, and loss, and discovery. There is not one single loose thread in this honestly written script. It’s a true ensemble piece. I didn’t know I was missing Molly Ringwald in my life on a regular basis until I saw her in this role of Carla, a mother at the end of her emotional rope. Harley Quinn Smith does such a perfect job I thought I was watching myself in a flashback of high school… or in college. Somewhere between bold and shy, she takes the reigns of Lindsay and rides this opportunity further than one might expect from her actual time on screen. Brendan Meyer’s Howie is the driving force of this story. Giving a quirkier but completely believable performance rounds out a film that really does take the small moments and show us that each of them adds up to a much larger meaning. There are no massive explosions, no crazy otherworldly occurrences, just regular down-to-earth scenarios that happen as they would in any other family’s life in America, statistically speaking. That’s entirely the point. Although, there is a cool animated opening sequence with some pretty sweet music. You can see All These Small Moments in theaters and On Demand and Digital HD today. 

ALL THESE SMALL MOMENTS features emotionally raw performances by veteran actors Molly Ringwald (“Riverdale,” Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club) and Brian d’Arcy James (“13 Reasons Why,” First Man, Spotlight) with breakthrough performances from up-and-comers Brendan Meyer (“The OA,” Fear The Walking Dead: Flight 462, The Guest), Sam McCarthy  (“Condor,” “The Blacklist,” The Jim Gaffigan Show”), Harley Quinn Smith (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Yoga Hosers, Holidays) and Jemima Kirke (“Maniac,” “Girls,” The Little Hours). The film is the theatrical film debut for writer and director Melissa B. Miller Costanzo who previously worked in the art department on such films as IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK, THE FIGHTER and PRECIOUS.