She Dances: Plenty of the right moves

She Dances (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for fleeting profanity and some drug references

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang

This is a Wince During The First Half And Pray For A Reasonably Happy Outcome movie.

 

I don’t mean that in a bad way. Director/co-writer Rick Gomez’s feature debut is a frequently charming little character drama, which depicts the often embarrassing struggle of an estranged father and his teenage daughter trying to re-connect, after a tragedy ripped the family apart.

 

As Claire (Audrey Zahn, left) and Kat (Mackenzie Ziegler) look on with mounting
dismay, a flummoxed Jason (Steve Zahn) discovers that his intended hotel room
upgrade has misfired in a devastating way.

The film also features a noteworthy acting debut by dancer/choreographer Audrey Zahn, working here with her father Steve Zahn, playing — you guessed it — the aforementioned daughter and father.

This seems to have become something of a thing. Ethan Hawke directed his daughter Maya in 2023’s Wildcat; and Ewan McGregor and daughter Clara played a similarly estranged family unit in that same year’s Bleeding Love.

 

This new film is considerably better McGregor’s effort, and for several reasons. The situation is more relatable; Gomez’s touch is gentler, and at times quite funny; and the script — by Gomez and Steve Zahn — grants everybody plenty of persuasively awkward moments that’ll likely feel familiar to many viewers.

 

Kat (Audrey Zahn) has spent her entire life dancing, both for joy and in competition. Her bedroom is filled with ribbons and trophies, and everything has built up to the impending Southern Regional Dance Finals. Kat lives with her mother Deb (Rosemarie DeWitt); her long-unseen father Jason (Steve Zahn) parted following their divorce.

 

The plan was for Deb to take her daughter and longtime partner/BFF Kat (Mackenzie Ziegler) to the competition, but a last-minute emergency demands Deb’s presence elsewhere. With no other options — although Claire initially views this as a non-starter — Deb calls Jason and asks him to step in. Claire still is 17, and the rules require her to be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

 

“It’ll be perfect,” Deb insists.

 

“It’ll be perfectly imperfect,” Claire snaps back.

 

Due to the sort of coincidence that often lurks in stories of this nature, Jason and longtime business partner and best friend Brian (Ethan Hawke) are in the midst of negotiating the sale of their popular Two Jack Bourbon business. Immediately recognizing the importance of this opportunity, Brian insists that the astonished Jason doesn’t pass it up.

 

Zahn’s wavering expressions, over this wholly unexpected turn of events, speak volumes: Jason is surprised, pleased, worried and — most of all — terrified ... particularly because he can tell, over the phone, that Claire isn’t wild about the idea. He hasn’t spent quality time with her for years, and hasn’t the faintest idea how to relate to her.

 

Then, too, the long-ago tragedy hovers over everything.

 

Feel the Beat: Dance 7, Script 3

Feel the Beat (2020) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated TV-G, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.17.20

For the most part, this is a Hallmark TV movie with delusions of grandeur, having debuted instead on Netflix.

When April (Sofia Carson, left) agrees to coach her small town's young dancers, the
girls in question don't realize they're about to face a prima donna drill sergeant tackling
this challenge for her own selfish reasons.

It’s saved from sentimentality overload solely due to its feisty kid supporting cast, and a few nice touches in the otherwise formulaic and wholly predictable script from Michael Armbruster and Shawn Ku.

Director Elissa Down brings nothing to the party; her approach is unremarkably bland from the first frame to the last. Even during the rare moments of something approaching dramatic conflict, the atmosphere is relentlessly bubbly and cheerful.

Many of the adults here don’t feel like real people; they’re closer to TV sitcom constructs. Notable exceptions include the always dependable Enrico Colantoni, best remembered as Veronica Mars’ gumshoe father, and similarly cast here as our protagonist’s father; and Brandon Kyle Goodman, who displays solid comic timing as a flamboyant Broadway costume designer.

The kids, happily, are a different story. They’re a lively mix of sizes, appearances and attitudes, ranging from 7 to 13 years of age; they credibly inhabit characters who, if not granted much depth, are sketched deftly enough to be distinctive; we have no trouble telling them apart, and each gets numerous opportunities to shine.

Star Sofia Carson, an appealing Disney Channel discovery looking to expand her horizons, delivers what little the script demands of her; she can’t be blamed for a director and writers who don’t show much imagination. (I’ve long felt that scripts which don’t give their characters last names — as is the case here — tend to lack depth.)

The story begins in New York, where talented but self-centered dancer April (Carson) rudely steals a cab en route to an audition; naturally, the person left behind turns out to be the director for whom she’s auditioning. Said individual, justifiably furious, has the power to blackball April. And uses it.

Days later, with no other options, April returns to her small Wisconsin hometown of New Hope, with her metaphorical tail between her legs. Her sympathetic father says all the right things, with the mildly acerbic edge that Colantoni delivers with such eye-twinkling élan. 

Step: Moves to a terrific beat

Step (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for thematic elements
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.18.17

Far too many years have passed, since we’ve been enchanted by feel-good performing arts documentaries such as Mad Hot Ballroom (2005) and Young@Heart (2007).

We also need reminding — particularly these days — of the value, power and rewards to be experienced, when people work hard toward a common goal.

All eyes are on their (unseen) coach, as she demonstrates a routine for the performance
piece being rehearsed by members of the Baltimore Leadership School for Young
Women's step class; the participants include Tayla (standing, foreground) and Cori
(also standing, center left)

All of which makes Step a welcome addition to the big-screen documentary family. Director Amanda Lipitz’s film is both celebratory and at times painfully intimate: a raw, mostly unvarnished window into the lives of inner-city families that barely tread water, while attempting — often with limited success — to do better by their children.

The setting is the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (BLSYW), the city’s first all-female public charter, which opened in 2009 with enough space for just 120 students. The school boasts a motto — “Transforming Baltimore one young woman at a time” — that is just as ambitious as its goal: to graduate 100 percent of its high school senior class, and send all of them to college.

This film depicts events taking place during the 2015-16 academic year, as BLSYW prepares to graduate the 60 members of its entering class who’ve become high school seniors. Lipitz, one of the numerous volunteers who helped found the school, actually began shooting footage in 2009; that’s when she discovered that a subset of sixth-graders had formed a step team, soon to be known as the Lethal Ladies of Baltimore.

Lipitz, already a veteran documentarian, knew that she’d found her narrative hook.

After a bit of vintage footage introduces the youthful step team, and briefly explains the school’s purpose and origin, Lipitz brings us to the beginning of the girls’ senior year. They’re introduced to a demanding new step mentor, Coach G (Gari McIntyre), who bluntly insists that everybody needs to do much, much better, in the wake of a disappointing junior year that saw many of the girls slacking off.

Team leader Blessin Giraldo all but abandoned her post that year, cutting school frequently enough to jeopardize her academic standing.

Blessin is one of three students profiled extensively, along with their families, during the course of this film. She’s a tough cookie with a chip on her shoulder: a talented step performer who nonetheless feels “stuck” at school and at home. She makes repeated promises to do better, but her subsequent behavior belies such claims. She’s not dumb; she tearfully recognizes the consequences of sloppy effort, particularly during frequent meetings with tenacious BLSYW college counselor Paula Dofat (who deserves sainthood for patience and understanding, and is by far this film’s most engaging adult).

But when push comes to shove, Blessin is too easily distracted, and too prone to impulsive behavior. She comes by it honestly; her single mother, remarkably candid on camera, laments the degree to which her daughter takes after her. Blessin is fortunate to have several other adult relatives at close quarters — all women — but we worry that she’ll nonetheless fall through the cracks.

Footloose: A bit TOO loose

Footloose (2011) • View trailer for Footloose
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, for profanity, sensuality, violence, and teen drug and alcohol use
By Derrick Bang


Those with the chutzpah to re-visit an older film need to remember the essential rule of remakes: They’d better be at least as good as — if not better — than the original. Otherwise, what’s the point?

And since few filmmakers are interested in remaking bad films, that generally sets the bar pretty high.

Ariel (Julianne Hough, center) loves showing off her hot little body, much to
the amusement of Ren (Kenny Wormald, at her right), and a massive country
line dance is a great place to kick up one's heels. Although this dance sequence
and others display plenty of energy, this remake doesn't have nearly as much
heart — or savvy restraint — as the 1984 original.

Director Craig Brewer broke the rule.

At first blush, he seems an odd choice for a remake of 1984’s Footloose. Brewer’s most visible credentials include 2005’s Hustle and Flow and 2006’s Black Snake Moan, both quite gritty, vulgar and sexually charged. The latter, thanks to an eye-popping star-slut turn from Christina Ricci, is almost a masterpiece of hilariously bad behavior.

And, in fact, misguided dollops of vulgarity are the first problem with Brewer’s update of Footloose. Most of the off-color remarks spring from the lips of Willard (Miles Teller), the cornpone best bud whom Boston-bred Ren McCormack (Kenny Wormald) cultivates after a forced moved to Hicksville USA, otherwise known as the sleepy town of Bomont.

Willard’s of the opinion that Bomont would be more tolerable with regularly scheduled wet T-shirt contests, and he’s not above asking a waitress — during a brief visit to a rowdy big-city nightspot — whether the barmaids serve drinks stuffed between their boobies. Actually, he may have said titties, but it scarcely matters; the line fell with the thud of cast iron.

Not that a kid like Willard wouldn’t have said such a thing; it’s probably perfectly in character, in the real world. But not for this character, and not in this story.

Brewer — who also takes a co-scripting credit, for “expanding upon” Dean Pitchford’s original story — thumbs up the volume of the original film’s core elements, apparently assuming that this is the difference between life in 1984 and life in 2011. As a result, the plot elements are meaner, and everybody here is louder, cruder, nastier and — with respect to some of the patronizing adults — more aggressively stupid.

Dennis Quaid needlessly hammers the arrogantly pious mien of the Rev. Shaw Moore, a role handled with much better grace and subtlety by John Lithgow, back in ’84. The villain of this story, a thuggish lout named Chuck, challenged Ren to a tractor duel back in ’84; this time — with Chuck given homicidal inclinations by Patrick John Flueger — it’s a four-way demolition derby with tricked-up school buses, in a scene that rather oddly evokes Mad Max and The Road Warrior.

Black Swan: Intense flight

Black Swan (2010) • View trailer for Black Swan
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, sexual candor, drug use and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Director Darren Aronofsky grabs us by the scruff and buffets us into submission, much the way a terrier shakes the life out of a favorite toy.

Aronofsky’s films are far from passive experiences; they’re confrontational head trips about unhinged, deeply flawed characters, sometimes barely recognizable as human beings. And even when the approach is more or less realistic – as was the case with The Wrestler, which garnered well-deserved Academy Award nominations for Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei – Aronofsky can’t resist the occasional sadistic touches of Grand Guignol. (Recall the bout that put Rourke’s character into a broken glass and razor-bladed cage match.)

When Nina (Natalie Portman) fails to project the sensual heat required for a
segment of her performance in Swan Lake, ballet company director Thomas
Leroy (Vincent Cassel) gets aggressively physical with her. The result, far
outside the young woman's comfort zone, eventually proves quite unexpected.

Black Swan isn’t nearly that conventional, although Aronofsky once again narrows his gaze on a competitor in a highly stylized discipline: the world of ballet. But be warned: This isn’t the luxuriously romantic ballet of The Turning Point, with its soft-focus camerawork and beautifully toned bodies. This is more the unhealthy obsession of The Red Shoes: an aggressive depiction of an artform that involves punishing rehearsals, merciless competition and emotionally battered young women who – like jockeys – flirt with dietary dysfunction in order to make their weights.

Early on, we’re challenged with every bulimic purge, every toenail split down the middle by excess en pointe practice. The environment is punishing to the point where single-minded dedication becomes all-consuming mania.

Ah, yes: This is a story of madness.

Specifically, a descent into madness. Black Swan is the most riveting depiction of a woman coming unhinged since Catherine Deneuve lost her mind while inhabiting the claustrophobic apartment in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. And I suspect the similarity isn’t accidental; more than a few of Aronofsky’s touches feel like deliberate nods to Polanski.

Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is introduced in the protective cocoon of her bedroom: a frilly, fluffy, pastel-pink womb that would be the envy of any little girl. But Nina is many years beyond being a little girl, and this room – as lensed by Matthew Libatique – feels more than a little malignant.

Worse yet, the womb-like atmosphere also is an unsettling metaphor. The emotionally repressed Nina’s every move and thought are subject to the approval of her mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), a control freak whose smothering embrace doesn’t quite mask long-simmering rage: Erica was forced, years ago, to abandon her own ballet career when she became pregnant. Ever since, this older woman has channeled her own desires through her daughter’s now-identical ambition, employing passive-aggressive mind games to get “little Nina” to cater to her every whim. And Nina, the classic victim, craves nothing more than this malevolent monster’s approval.

Nina is similarly mentally abused by Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), the hard-charging director of the New York City ballet company that counts her as likely heir apparent. The troupe’s current star, Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder), has grown a bit long in the tooth for the ingénue roles that sell tickets and encourage grants from deep-pockets benefactors.

Or perhaps Thomas, who sleeps with all his stars, merely has grown tired of Beth.