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Full Time review – super-stressful French drama about a working single mum on the edge

Laure Calamy is superb in Eric Gravel’s compelling Paris-set film about the perils of suburban commuting

E ach night, Julie ( Call My Agent! ’s Laure Calamy ) dreams that she’s drowning. Water fills her ears and presses down on her chest. But when she wakes – jolted out of a bone-tired slumber by her alarm – the reality is not so different. A single mum of two children, with debts mounting and her ex-husband missing along with his alimony, she is barely keeping afloat. Her childcare options are running out; her job, as the head chambermaid at a five-star hotel, is stressful; her commute, from a Paris suburb to the centre of the city, is precision-timed. And just when she thinks there’s a chance of a new opportunity – an interview for a much better job – a strike paralyses the entire transport network.

It’s impossible to overstate just how sickeningly stressful this propulsive drama about suburban commuting manages to be. Director Eric Gravel uses every tool at his disposal, matching the nervy, lurching camera with a galloping, tumbling electronic score. And then there’s the use of sound – subliminal stressors such as the sound of pumping blood and circling helicopters are mixed in with the jangling ambient noise.

Keeping it all together (just about) is the always terrific Calamy, with a barnstorming performance. Outwardly capable and poised, she lets us glimpse the flicker of relief when her maxed-out credit card is miraculously accepted one last time; the almost imperceptible tremble in her voice as she argues with the supervisor who is trying to let her go. Watching the picture is a bit like getting your head clamped in a vice. Allow time to decompress afterward.

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“Full Time,” Reviewed: A Hectic Thriller of Everyday Life

By Richard Brody

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a movie that takes mass transit as seriously as does “Full Time,” a drama set in and around Paris by the Canadian director Éric Gravel. It’s the story of a hotel chambermaid named Julie Roy (Laure Calamy) who commutes by train between her job in Paris and her home in an unnamed small town at an unspecified long distance from the city. Even under the best of circumstances, Julie’s life is complicated: she’s the divorced mother of two young children whom she’s raising alone. There’s very little leeway in Julie’s schedule: she gets the kids up before dawn and hustles them over to the nearby house of an elderly woman, Mrs. Lusigny (Geneviève Mnich), their caregiver before and after school. Then Julie rushes to the local train station, goes to work, takes the train back to her town, picks up the children, brings them home, gets them to bed, falls asleep, and starts again the next morning.

Next time you rush for a train, think of Julie. Consider why you’re running late, why it matters that you catch this train rather than the next, why you expect that the train will show up promptly and get you reliably to your destination, what the consequences to you and others will be if it stops running—or doesn’t show up—and you’re late. Imagine all the working people and the functioning equipment that it takes to keep the whole system running, to keep your job and your life in order. One’s own place in the system, “Full Time” shows, is the tip of an immense iceberg—which is, rather, all tips, each individual’s perspective and participation in the mass affecting the lives of the others, albeit as invisibly as if submerged beneath the ocean’s surface. In “Full Time,” Gravel dramatizes the iceberg from the point of view of one tip. The film’s meticulous realism, both at the intimate level of Julie’s personal life and at the over-all societal one that knocks it off balance, lend it the excitement of a thriller; tiny perturbations of daily routines and large-scale disruptions of mass transit converge to yield high drama.

As the title promises, “Full Time” is centered on work. It’s one of the best recent movies about work, and it approaches the subject with sharply analytical specificity. As for Julie’s private life, it’s nearly blanked out: she’s treated largely like a cinematic lab rat whose temperament and tendencies are underplayed in order to emphasize her functioning in her environment, which is one that’s carefully constructed—and Julie’s character is carefully constructed to bring it to light. For starters, she’s created as a French stereotype, the identity of no identity—a straight white person of unspecified ethnicity and religion. She doesn’t display any outside interests or hobbies; what she reads or listens to during her commute is unspecified, and her radio at home is tuned to the news—because that news is of immediate import in her daily life.

The prime disruption that her tightly scheduled life endures is a very French one: strikes, of the sort that the country is currently experiencing, and for very similar reasons, a proposed increase in working years in order to reduce government spending. Their effect sends shock waves through Julie’s life; they come at a critical moment in her life—and her work. Julie is a liminal figure, a manual laborer who’s also a supervisor. She’s the head of the staff of chambermaids—the all-female, crisply uniformed staff that’s responsible for the physical order of all of the hotel’s rooms. She’s also, it turns out, the holder of a master’s in economics, a former market-research specialist in the retail food industry, who, after years at the hotel, is now applying for a corporate office job in her former field—and attempting to schedule her interviews around the demands of her job, a series of maneuvers that turn into high-pressure adventures because of the strikes.

Yet before Julie dashes off to an interview, Gravel depicts, with a remarkable specificity in a conventional format, the essence of her work and that of her colleagues: “Full Time” carefully defines manual work as being largely mental. The film snippets the hotel staff’s daily rounds into a hectic montage of a familiar sort, but one that makes clear how intensely detail-oriented, memory-centered, and perceptually demanding the job is: envisioning the ideal of pristine cleanliness and precise order that’s expected, noticing the multitude of fine points on which this ideal depends, knowing and executing the techniques to realize them, having a sense of mental organization to move efficiently and effectively from task to task without fail or delay. The work may be routine, it may be exhausting, it may be boring, but it requires discernment and dexterity along with organization and focus. It’s fiercely demanding of mind and body alike—and that’s even apart from the nearly medical level of physical intimacy that it requires, because of what guests do in (and with) their rooms. (There’s a crucial scene in which the staff is required to clean shit from walls, an occurrence so familiar that the staff has a nickname for it.)

For all the rules and regulations, standards and specifications that the job imposes, the lives of workers—their negotiations with the demands of the job, with one another, and with management—are built around ruses and evasions, deceptions and lies that force open personal room for maneuvering amid the rigid strictures of the workplace. One of the crucial dramatic observations of “Full Time” is the gap between official regulations and actual behavior, the little favors and little payoffs, the manipulations of a system to personal ends that create, in the routine of everyone who works, a sort of rule-debt: an ever-mounting collection of broken rules that may or may not go unnoticed or unrecorded but that, individually, could result in discipline and, taken together, could get more or less anyone fired. It’s a vision of mental precarity, of perpetual fear, that goes beyond the usual depiction of economic precarity to reveal the underpinnings of a society that subjects workers to ever more intrusive forms of surveillance and documentation. (One of the movie’s key plot points involves the time stamps left by a magnetized I.D. card.)

And economic precarity, the movie shows, is no less real, endemic, and urgent—and no less a matter of a carefully ordered system that inevitably gets disturbed. Julie gets harassing calls from her bank because she’s behind in her mortgage payments and at risk of overdrafts—and she’s behind because her ex-husband is behind in his alimony payments. Her fear of losing her job, as she lives from paycheck to paycheck, dominates the film like a silent scream. (American viewers may, however, note with dismay her low-stress dealings with the medical system.) The underlying precarity, though, is time-precarity: the interdependence of transportation, work, school, family, child care, and whatever remains for social life and private life. Indeed, the very concept of private life is shown, in “Full Time,” to be a fiction, an unreal abstraction, because it’s inseparable from the practical relations and political circumstances of a person’s world. The strikes, with their large-scale shutdowns of public transportation, throw Julie off her schedule and, so, also disrupt her children’s lives, the life of Mrs. Lusigny, and the lives of her co-workers and supervisors, and their troubles, in turn, blow back to Julie in a tensely accelerating cycle. The pressures that she faces, as something of the crux of this network of relationships, risk becoming untenable, both practically and emotionally. One twist, and a total breakdown—personal and collective—looms.

In the course of the film, the strikes—largely unseen, making themselves felt in their effects—become increasingly widespread and give rise to violence. Organized opposition to government policies turns into protest against endemic conditions—and in one telling, albeit underplayed twist, the shutdown of the transit system (and, in other cities, the docks) also leads to protests in “the projects,” prompting a news reporter to wonder whether they’ll “catch fire again.” In “Full Time,” the divisions of society—and of the working population—are built into the action. Julie doesn’t say a word against the strikes or the strikers, and has a charming encounter with one of the strikers, a neighbor; her position on the flashpoints of contention go unexpressed. Rather, the movie depicts, with no comment but plenty of fervor, the conquering of the masses that emerges from these divisions. Separating those who work from those who don’t, the working poor from the nonworking poor, those in the city from those in the country, sparking conflict on the basis of religion and race all come off as strategies from above that deflect and impede the effort to contest the ways of power. The working many are pitted against one another to prevent them from uniting politically.

The lack of culture—political, religious, aesthetic—is something of a ruse in itself, not only because there’s nobody in real life who has as little of it as Julie does but also because those are the very mechanisms of mind that don’t only underlie divisions. They also provide the energy and the pretext for action, whether of sheer endurance or of organized responses. In blanking out all but Julie’s economic and affective relations, her work and her family, Gravel pushes the fault lines to the fore and offers little consolation, little distraction, little relief from the material stresses and emotional demands of modern life—and little chance for people overwhelmed by their practical problems to look beyond them to their political causes.

And that’s not even to consider the class division that’s at the basis of Julie’s own life and livelihood. Though nothing is known of her youth or her family background, she lived a bourgeois life until, four years ago, she vanished from the field of market research and took her current job. The effort to return to her field of expertise, to reënter the corporate world and the managerial ranks, is itself a struggle that requires its own ruses and deceptions, in the face of other forms of surveillance. Yet the main crisis that Julie faces is starkly practical; her struggle to get to and from interviews, in the course of her work day at the hotel, amid transit shutdowns gives rise to some of the most stressful, tightly ratcheted, fear-inducing scenes in the film. Along with the particular sympathy for her situation that the movie evokes, it adds another, grim and grave one: the immense difficulty of seeking another job suggests the burdensome inertia of remaining in the same one. In making Julie a heroine, “Full Time” suggests that mere sustenance is turned by the modern economy into a feral struggle and that the progress promised by society at large, far from being the normal course of things, is the exception—the province of extraordinary daring, valor, shrewdness, and luck. ♦

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Éric Gravel’s “Full Time” follows an ordinary working-class person as they attempt to keep their head above water in a society that seems set up to ensure they will fail at said task. This is the kind of narrative the Dardennes brothers have made a specialty out of in recent years, but here it's done with breakneck pacing that will remind viewers of the similarly headlong “ Run Lola Run ” while leaving them almost as exhausted as its central character by the time it is all over. Though these two concepts may sound wildly incompatible, "Full Time" looks and sounds like a nail-biting thriller and tells a story that many viewers will be able to relate to on an intensely personal level.

The film’s protagonist is Julie ( Laure Calamy ), a single mother of two kids. She lives in the suburbs of Paris but commutes into the city for her job as the head chambermaid of a swanky four-star hotel. For her, this is not the ideal situation—she's struggling to make ends meet while waiting for her ex to pay alimony and the nanny (Madame Lusigny) who watches her kids ends up seeing more of them than she does. However, there's one bright light on the horizon in the form of a job opening at a marketing firm that would be a much better fit for her skill set than her current occupation. Getting to the job interview without her supervisor knowing her intentions will require some iffy behavior, including coaxing coworkers to risk their jobs by covering for her. In this case, she figures the risk is worth the reward.

The problem is that Julie is totally dependent on public transportation to get her to and from work. As anyone in the same circumstance can attest, many things can happen with public transit that are theoretically out of your hands but still have enormous repercussions on one’s livelihood. In Julie’s case, a week that's already going to be hectic because of the job interview becomes even more so when a citywide transit strike is called—although she barely seems to pay it any mind when it's being discussed on the news, the reality of its impact hits as the simple act of getting to work, let alone on time, becomes only slightly less fraught than the truck journey in “Sorcerer.” Despite the city being brought to a near-standstill, Julie goes to extraordinary lengths to try to make it work—rushing from one transit terminal to another in the hopes of finding a still-running train or bus, hitchhiking, or using her rapidly dwindling funds to pay for a van rental or a jacked-up cab fare. But she can only keep her metaphorical plates spinning for so long before the inevitable crash.

The notion of applying an action film feel to someone going about their daily routine may seem a bit precious, perhaps even contrived, but it is a conceit that Gravel is able to pay off effectively. From a technical standpoint, the construction of the film is very impressive as both Mathilde Van de Moortel’s editing and Irene Dresel’s score (both of whom received Cesar nominations for their efforts) give the film a sense of real tension right from the get-go and sustains it until the end—even the rare moments when Julie can steal a minute for herself are hardly a respite as we can sense how guilty she feels for even those all-too-brief bits of calm. And while it may sound like a gimmick, anyone who has ever raced to catch the bus to work as it's about to pull away from the stop or has waited on the platform for a late train will easily recognize Julie's pulse-pounding feelings.

At the same time, the film is careful not to completely let her off the hook either, whether in regards to her stubborn determination to be employed in the city despite a horrific commute (in order to live up to her dreams of upward mobility), or her general lack of concern for the motives behind the strike in general, or how her efforts negatively impact everyone from her children to her overtaxed nanny to co-workers who wind up paying the price for her behavior. Although her efforts to better herself are admirable, the same cannot always be said for Julie. It is to the credit of both Gravel’s screenplay and Calamy's performance (which both also received Cesar nominations) that they are willing to paint her as a recognizably flawed human being, and not some kind of cruelly oppressed saint.

“Full Time” does have a couple of problems it doesn’t quite manage to work around. While it's a key plot point that Julie never displays any significant curiosity about the strike that affects her life so profoundly, the film likewise doesn’t seem to have much to say about organized labor, the conditions that would lead to such a paralyzing strike, or whether it's in favor of such actions or not. As a result, the final moments in which Gravel tries to wrap up his story prove unsatisfying when all is said and done. For the most part, however, “Full Time” is an intelligent and mostly engrossing movie about a situation that will seem all too familiar to many. Gravel's film unites quietly observed humanism and palpable tension and somehow makes it work.

Now playing in select theaters. 

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Full Time (2023)

Laure Calamy as Julie Roy

Anne Suarez as Sylvie

Geneviève Mnich as Mme Lusigny

Nolan Arizmendi as Nolan

Sasha Lemaître Cremaschi as Chloé

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Railway strikes, needy kids, a birthday party to plan, a job in Paris (a long commute away), interviews for another job (which demand sneaking away from work), and a babysitter who is increasingly over it: The deck of Julie Roy’s life is full, and because that life is happening fast, Éric Gravel’s César-nominated Full Time establishes much of this fullness within only 15 minutes.

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It isn’t that Julie blames the strikes. It’s that she has to get to work. It isn’t that Full Time sets her in opposition to those strikers, despite their making her life that much more difficult. It’s that the movie is intent on showing us a ground-level view of labor , and of the effort to pull oneself up into a better and more equitable life (meaning: to make more money). It’s a view of labor in which the fates of the working class are intensely, tragically interdependent. There is no better way for the strikers to make their point, argue for their intrinsic worth, than to demonstrate the chaos of what will happen when they opt out. Julie’s life feels the effect of this, but only because the lives of the strikers have implicitly been subject to similar travails — this is what justifies the strike.

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Full Time is political and topical, though not because it leans on a sense of discourse or goes out of its way to pain Julie in purely downtrodden terms. It is more so interested in characterizing Julie’s life as a fight, by default. Her worried face, courtesy of the expressive portraits of Calamy that fill and sustain the movie, speaks quite loudly on its own. Gravel has designed Full Time like an intricate, whirling trap predicated on the rhythmic repetitions of a workweek — only, day by day, more and more goes wrong. And when things go wrong, the movie gets to remind us of how contingent everything is. Each new interview for Julie’s new job opportunity means having to call on favors from her coworkers to be able to slip out. Each newly-crowded workday means the risk of getting home later and making her babysitter angrier. It’s a house of cards. You watch with a sense that any new detail will have the power to make it all topple over — and Julie with it. The movie is a thriller because it hangs on a set of practical, incurably dramatic questions. Will Julie get the job? Will she survive this? What else will go wrong?

Gravel’s strategies as a director work because they’re straightforward and efficient, just like his star, and just like the character she plays. Every scene feels short — every mishap proceeds amid an onrush of too much going on. We spend a lot of time watching Julie run — literally haul ass — from place to place, which is one of a few reasons that the movie has garnered comparisons to the work of Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne , famous for their stripped-down, thriller-adjacent studies of working class contingency. I thought of Lorna’s Silence , watching Full Time , because of that movie’s indebtedness to the sound of Arta Dobroshi’s heels as she runs and frets from place to place, like a soundtrack to the urgency of her ordeal. I thought, too, of Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night , who has been charged with convincing her coworkers to give up their work bonuses in order for her to keep her job.

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Full Time is entertaining but appropriately nauseating. The movie arcs, in its own way, toward something like relief. But there is tragedy in even this. Because the relief should not be so hard-won: Julie’s future, her ability to provide for her children, should not come at such a high price. There’s a shot late in Full Time that shows Julie waiting, yet again, for the train. Only: we’re seeing her stand at the track’s edge. We are catching her from behind with her face in profile, turned toward the speeding machine as it comes. We can hear the train coming. It is impossible not to wonder if Julie will jump. The ending of Full Time is less like a breath of fresh air than like the panicked inhales of a woman who’s just been saved from drowning.

There’s no room, in this, for the kind of optimism that you can trust — there’s no certainty, still, no real, durative promise being made that from here on, all will be well. There is no one around to make such a promise. For some, Gravel’s movie might feel too reductive, too tightly sewn to the very bottom line of Julie’s life, and thus like too much of a thriller with too myopic a view of the life that it depicts. But what saves it from these flaws are precisely its well-timed moments of relief and the sense, even in the movie’s most harrowing, nose-to-ground moments, of how far Julie’s fate extends beyond her story alone. They are all — each one of the workers depicted here — leaning on as many other people as they can. They are going down together. There is no other way of spinning it. What should feel like laudable displays of care between vulnerable people instead become proof of the risks people pose to their own jobs, and their own fates, by offering to help others. Full Time works because of, not despite, its cutting thrills. The anxiety we feel as we watch is very much the point. Julie is living on the edge. The movie marvels at her ability to keep her balance. And it laments the fact that her survival should depend on it.

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‘Full Time’: Venice Review

By Wendy Ide 2021-09-04T12:25:00+01:00

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Laure Calamy races against the clock in this grippingly tense French drama from Eric Gavel

Source: Be For Films

‘Full Time’

Dir/scr. Eric Gravel. France. 2021. 88 mins

A single mother’s precarious balance of commuting and childcare is upended when an interview for a better job, one which might finally haul her out of her cycle of debt, coincides with a paralyzing transport strike. Call My Agent star Laure Calamy delivers a sympathetic but nerve-flaying performance as Julie, both a frazzled mum at the end of her tether and unflappable head chambermaid at a five-star hotel. It’s a propulsively intense piece of filmmaking – at times a bit like watching a highwire chainsaw juggling act about to go horribly and catastrophically wrong.

Propulsively intense

Full Time (A Plein Temps) is the second feature from writer and director Eric Gravel, his first was another picture which dealt with workplace tribulations, Crash Test Aglaé . This is a creditable, satisfyingly lean addition to the ‘desperate running woman’ sub-genre – see also the Dardenne brothers’ Two Days, One Night and Rosetta ; Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola, Run and Sebastian Schipper’s single-shot panic attack Victoria . Calamy’s terrific performance will be a selling point, both at further festival screenings, and, potentially, to arthouse cinema audiences.

It’s not always an easy watch – there’s no gun-based peril, gambling debt and gangsters involved admittedly, but in its way, the film is every bit as janglingly stressful as Uncut Gems . Perhaps more so, as Julie is repeatedly jeopardised by circumstances beyond her control rather than by her own bad decisions. If someone as capable and professional as Julie can’t hold it together, what chance would the rest of us have in her perfect storm of a situation?

The scene is set for Julie’s exhausting daily slog with an extreme close up of her unconcious face; her slow breaths deeply submerged in sleep. Then her alarm blasts her awake and she snaps into action. There’s not a moment of stillness; both Julie and the camera are in constant motion. Jump cuts give a sense of panicky acceleration as she posts breakfast into the mouths of her still barely awake kids. And the score, by Irène Drésel, is all electronic urgency, a pounding synthetic pulse which weaves other stress-inducing sounds subliminally into the music. At one point, it sounds as though the rushing blood of an ultrasound scan is part of the score, at another we can pick up on an ominous rumble which sounds like circling helicopters.

But even without the considerable contribution of the score, the full tilt storytelling gives us barely enough space to breathe. A headlong dash for a train poised to leave the platform without her, cancellations due to “passenger illness”, unwelcome calls from her bank demanding that she addresses her defaulted mortgage. Julie’s childminder has graduated from grumbling about lateness to veiled threats of the involvement of social services. And she has an ex-husband who is missing in action along with his overdue alimony payments. At work, managing a SWAT team of ultra-professional hotel maids, the pressure rarely drops. The hints about her job insecurity from her supervisor don’t do much to diffuse the situation as Paris grinds to a halt and Julie, who commutes into the city each day, clocks in late, time and again.

With no time to be anything other than a mother or hotel maid, Julie has little opportunity to just be herself. She has to be coerced into sharing a drink with the best friend who barely recognises her anymore; she badly misjudges an encounter with the father of her son’s schoolfriend in one particularly mortifying scene. She cries through her mascara as she puts on her game face for Monday morning and another impossible week. And when Gravel, with a train announcement and a thunder of wheels on rails, gives the subtlest of hints of a possible way out of this unendurable grind, we realise just how invested we are in Julie succeeding against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Production company: Novoprod Cinéma, France 2 Cinéma, Haut et Court Distribution

International sales: Be For Films  [email protected]

Producers: Rapahaëlle Delauche, Nicolas Sanfaute

Cinematography: Victor Seguin

Editor: Mathilde Van De Moortel

Production Designer: Thierry Lautout

Music: Irène Drésel

Main cast: Laure Calamy, Anne Suarez, Geneviève Mnich, Nolan Arizmendi, Sasha Lemaitre Cremaschi

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FULL TIME: A Riveting Race For Survival

Venom: the last dance trailer 1, tribeca film festival 2024: they’re here, away from the hype: star wars: episode i – the phantom menance , tribeca film festival 2024: the devil’s bath, tribeca film festival 2024: brats: a nostalgic odyssey back to the 1980s, mars express: a well-built android neo-noir, tribeca film festival 2024: champions of the golden valley, bam bam: the sister nancy story & the weekend, a family affair trailer, tribeca film festival 2024: vulcanizadora, wolfs trailer, children in war: a documentary for our times, kinds of kindness trailer.

Winning both the Best Director and Best Actress awards at last year’s Venice Film Festival, Eric Gravel ‘s  Full Time might be an against-the-clock thriller by design but has far more on its agenda than just nerve-rattling escapism. Part character study and part morality play that’s like a neo-realist blend between  Run Lola Run  and the Dardenne Brothers ‘ Two Days, One Night,  it’s a story about one woman’s struggle to build a better life and how she’s forced to manage that within a complex social climate.

Life in the Fast Lane

When a national transit strike breaks out that brings the entire network of public transport to a halt, Julie suddenly finds herself in a city-wide pandemonium that’s totally out of her control. To make matters worse, Madame Lusigny ( Geneviève Mnich ) threatens to stop babysitting Julie’s children just as she’s asked to attend a job interview that could lead to a path of financial freedom, catapulting her into a series of obstacles that puts everything she’s worked hard for in the line of fire.

Running on Empty

Right from the film’s tender opening sequence, it’s clear that  Gravel  has a handle on his subject with a sensitive eye. We first meet Julie while she’s sleeping, where the director uses a montage of close-ups to show her in a state of peace that’ll be inevitably shattered by the outside world from the moment the sun rises.  Victor Senguin ‘s camerawork finds the perfect balance between intimacy and distance and is often complimented by Irène Drésel ’s pulsating, acidic score.

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

Have you seen Full Time ? If so, what are your thoughts on its message about the world we live in? Leave your comments in the section below.

Full Time was released in the USA on the 22nd of April, and the 28th of July in Australia and is yet to be released in the UK. For other release dates, please click here .

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Full time review: a woman races against the clock in eric gravel’s tense drama.

Eric Gavel’s Full Time is more of a nail-biter than the thrillers it takes its breakneck pacing from.

Most of us know in our bones the sleep-shattering jab of an early-morning alarm and the plummeting sensation of a job interview gone wrong. If Eric Gavel’s Full Time is more of a nail-biter than the thrillers it takes its breakneck pacing from, this can be chalked up to the relatability of its protagonist. Julie (Laure Calamy) is a single mother of two who commutes to Paris from the suburbs in her capacity as head chambermaid at a four-star hotel, while at the same time looking for a job better suited to her university education. The film’s title is quite literal, alluding to the “second shift” that still falls disproportionately on the shoulders of women, often expected to perform hours of unpaid domestic labor after clocking off from work.

Julie’s day-to-day life would be grueling enough were it not for the transit strike that serves as a backdrop to her struggle. It makes her late for work and late to pick up her kids from their nanny, Madame Lusigny (Geneviève Mnich), forcing her to hitchhike or pay for taxis that she can’t afford while she waits for her ex-husband to pay alimony. Still, she views the strikes almost as a rogue weather phenomenon, never blaming them for her troubles but never showing any solidarity either, let alone pausing to consider why she can’t go on strike herself. Instead of trying to organize her workplace, she pins her hopes on a job interview at a marketing firm. In her desperation, she cuts corners and relies on her co-workers to cover for her.

The frenetic editing of scenes that see Julie sprinting from terminal to terminal through seething crowds and traffic jams, barely keeping her cool as further delays and cancellations of service are announced, never relents, and her work routine is shot at the same level of intensity. The pulsing Minimal soundtrack by Irène Drésel matches the rhythm of rapid-fire close-ups showing Julie changing into her uniform, making beds, fluffing pillows, scrubbing toilets, and so on. All of which provides a palpable contrast to the rare scenes in which she gets a breather.

Full Time ’s offers an even-handed depiction of its flawed protagonist. Cornered though she is, the individualism that drives Julie’s actions leads to the firing of another single mother, Lydia (Mathilde Weil). A scene at a party suggests that her past reliance on alcohol, as much as anything, lead to her divorce. When she hears a striker interviewed on the radio saying that he hasn’t seen his children in 10 days, it puts her own struggle into perspective.

Vincent (Cyril Gueï), the only character in Full Time with any direct relation to the strikes at all, is an ex-military man who gives Julie a lift into Paris on his way to join a supporting march, and later helps her to repair her hot water heater, gently rejects her advances, which he rightly interprets as an act of desperation rather than passion. Here and elsewhere, Calamy’s performance deftly captures the moment-by-moment collapse of Julie’s composure.

The screenplay’s critique of work can only extend so far, framed as it is by Julie’s perspective as a middle-class woman, fallen on hard times but with middle-class aspirations. There’s an ironic edge to the fact that her job transposes the domestic labor she performs at home to a hotel—domestic space in its most alienated form. That both Julie’s boss at the hotel, Sylvie (Anne Suarez), and her job interviewer at the marketing firm, Jeanne (Lucie Gallo), are women suggests that it’s capitalism, not sexism merely, that’s at the root of everyone’s troubles.

But Full Time never resolves what happens with the transit strike, which serves only to intensify the main action. Julie’s situation may change by the end of the film but only as a refurbishment of the status quo. Despite its premise and themes, Full Time doesn’t have much to say about organized labor, or labor in general, other than that work can be really stressful . Julie’s escapist attitude bleeds into that of the film, making it little more than a competent thriller.

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William Repass

William Repass’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Bennington Review , Denver Quarterly , Fiction International , Bending Genres , and elsewhere. For links to his published writing, click here .

It appears that Mr. Repass wishes that “Full Time” was a different, albeit important film. One that explores capitalism, the state of organized labor and the disappearing middle class. We all wait for that one, but Full Time is simply a story of one woman’s pursuit of a place in the middle class.

Biggie G, I get your point; this film should not be criticized because it failed to make a sweeping critique of capitalism’s treatment of labor. But if Repass saw the film the same way I did, he found it oddly allergic to context. It was the director’s choice to forefront the transit strike…while avoiding the transit strikers. At times I felt it was mostly a film about a transit strike, and the human cost to other labor sectors. Bringing the two together would have added much-needed depth to this thrill ride of a movie.

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Review: You think your life is rough? Laure Calamy’s struggles are a ‘Full Time’ sprint

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A high-speed movie about the grind of responsibility, the French nail-biter “Full Time” paints a working mom’s commuter life in skyline smears, hard-won favors and quick changes of dress and mood. In a performance that rushes by in the gear of stress, all the while leaving potent afterimages with each vexing swerve in her character’s day, Laure Calamy (“Call My Agent!”) contributes an all-timer to the slice-of-life canon — the “Mission: Impossible” of mother tales.

In writer-director Éric Gravel’s thumping narrative — starting with the sound of breathy sleeping, interrupted by an alarm clock — divorced mother of two Julie (Calamy) is having a real tornado of a week. Getting from the suburbs of Paris to the high-end hotel where she toils on a tightly run schedule as head maid is exasperating enough without one more transit strike making hay of her mobility options, not to mention testing the patience of an older kid-sitting neighbor (Geneviève Mnich).

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Julie also is navigating an upcoming important interview for a better-paying job — a corporate gig closer to a skill set she hasn’t tapped since having to make ends meet. But that’s in another area of the city, requiring its own time-stealing management away from the watchful eyes of her understanding-to-a-point boss (Anne Suarez), and appeals to work colleague goodwill (the other maids’ lives aren’t easy either) alongside the ever-worsening transportation snafus.

And while Julie handles the logistical obstacles and piled-on pressures with warrior-like swiftness and even the occasional forbearing smile, it’s an inherently maddening heroism to be exhilarated by — like watching someone succeed simply by not losing her mind when given every conceivable chance. (There’s also an alimony-owing ex not answering Julie’s calls, as she in turn ignores her bank’s over mortgage payments. And did I mention her young son’s upcoming birthday party?)

“Full Time” is canny enough to understand that many people’s make-do existences are ready-made for compassionate thriller-ization. Gravel, in the heart-stopping vein of Belgium’s social-realism-minded Dardennes brothers, invests his protagonist’s one-challenge-at-a-time needs with the kind of visual intimacy and racing rhythm that makes us feel intensely close to Julie, from first sprint in her dehumanizing day to the exhaling bathtub soak she takes each night. French techno artist Irène Drésel’s percolating electronic score, like Giorgio Moroder sweating through a bender, certainly does its part, as does cinematographer Victor Seguin’s documentary-like viscerality and editor Mathilde Van de Moortel’s versatility with both adrenaline-charged sequences and quieter human moments.

It’s Calamy’s show, though, and in Julie’s gantlet of duties and drags — running, cleaning, cajoling, collapsing, recharging — she brings as much no-nonsense physicality as Keanu Reeves would fending off an array of “John Wick” assassins. (She even finds time to flirt with a helpful neighbor played by Cyril Gueï — and the pocket of joy that creates is thoroughly charming.) Overall, it’s a dazzlingly exterior and interior portrait of supreme capability and grit — what will seem like momentary bravery to some but is more like a granite truth about workforce motherhood. Things get done. “Full Time” is just expertly dramatic packaging on an invisible given.

Wondering if Julie will crack may be the knee-jerk source of tension, but it’s worth remembering that embedded in Gravel’s scenario, in what we hear in the background on TVs and radios, is where things will go the more we push workers to the breaking point: strikes that expand, and protests that can bring a city to its knees. Julie’s having a go at coping without exploding, but there’s a world around her that is fed up, and it’s that macro detail inside this micro character study that shrewdly keeps us from simply enjoying “Full Time” as some nerve-racking one-off in a woman’s life. The movie concludes on a rare moment of stillness and emotion for Julie, but it’s not an ending. It’s just a break.

'Full Time'

In French with English subtitles Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes Playing: Starts Feb. 10, Laemmle Royal, West Los Angeles

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Full Time – movie review

In Full Time, Julie (Laure Calamy) is a single mother who works as the head chambermaid in a prestigious five-star hotel in Paris. She lives in the outer suburbs and daily commutes to and from work. She juggles the demands of her job with raising two young children (Nolan Arizmendi and Sasha Lemaitre Cremaschi). She has applied for a position as a market researcher with a financial company, a job for which she is eminently qualified. She is also struggling financially and is constantly trying to get hold of her ex-husband who has fallen behind in his alimony payment.

But in the week in which she is to be interviewed for the position France is almost paralysed by a massive general strike that disrupts the transport. This puts increased pressure on Julie whose desperation becomes almost palpable as she struggles to cope.

Full Time is the sophomore feature for writer and director by Eric Gravel (Crash Test Aglae) and it deals with some universal themes. Full Time is a piece of socially realist filmmaking that could have come from the Dardenne brothers. Gravel deftly captures the pressure cooker environment as Julie struggles to cope with her situation. He cleverly shows us the daily grind and repetitiveness of Julie’s routine, and most people in the audience will be able to relate to her situation and empathise with her.

Calamy ( Antoinette in the Cevennes ) brings intensity and tension to her icily controlled performance as she desperately tries to stay in control. She brings a quiet desperation to the role as she tries to overcome the increasing challenges she faces.

Full Time has been crisply shot by Victor Seguin (Home) who gives the city a cold look with his grey palette. He also uses closeups to capture Julie’s expression giving us insight into her frustration and inner turmoil.

Full Time has been loosely inspired by the general strike that crippled Paris in 1995. The propulsive and relentless electro score from first time composer Irene Dresel adds to the sense of a pressure cooker building up around Julie and adds to the increasingly urgent tempo. The diegetic score adds the sounds of traffic and urban street noises to the mix. The pace rarely lets up for the duration of the running time, and Mathilde Von De Moortel’s razor sharp editing adds to the tension and kinetic energy.

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Greg King has had a life long love of films. He has been reviewing popular films for over 15 years. Since 1994, he has been the film reviewer for BEAT magazine. His reviews have also appeared in the Herald Sun newspaper, S-Press, Stage Whispers, and a number of other magazines, newspapers and web sites. Greg contributes to The Blurb on film

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The Bad Guardian: Is the Lifetime Movie Based on a True Story?

Directed by Claudia Myers, ‘The Bad Guardian’ is a Lifetime thriller that explores possibly the worst-case scenario of having a court-appointed guardian and conservator. The film introduces us to Leigh Delgado, whose elderly father, Jason, is injured by a fall when she is out of town. To support Jason, the court appoints an unknown woman, Janet, as his guardian. Janet is initially very helpful, but Leigh realizes that she now has complete legal control over Jason and his finances. Leigh’s nightmare begins as Janet auctions off Jason’s house, places him in a nursing home, and closes all his bank accounts.

With the law on Janet’s side, Leigh fights an uphill battle to save her father from the clutches of the deadly guardian. Janet doesn’t allow any of the family members to visit Jason as his health deteriorates, being denied life-saving treatment by her. Together with other whistleblowers, Leigh faces the corrupt system in which Janet thrives. Watching the terrifying scenario unfold, questions are generated regarding whether the Lifetime movie is based on a true story.

The Bad Guardian is Inspired by Real Cases of Conservatorship

‘The Bad Guardian’ draws inspiration from many cases relating to the conservatorship system. While real-world examples of guardians misusing their power can be unearthed, there are none in the public eye that can be considered close to as severe as in the story of ‘The Bad Guardian,’ which is penned by Ashley Gable. In recent years, two cases have drawn public attention to the possible need for a review of the conservatorship system. The first was Britney Spears’ highly publicized alleged mistreatment under guardianship, and the second was Lifetime’s docu-series on Wendy Williams’s time under conservatorship.

The conservatorship system is a legal arrangement designed to protect individuals who are deemed unable to manage their own affairs due to physical or mental limitations. A conservator, appointed by a court, is granted authority to make decisions on behalf of the incapacitated person, managing their finances, healthcare, and other aspects of their life. Epistemologically, conservatorship pertains to overseeing the financial affairs of someone who isn’t capable of doing so themselves, while guardianship relates more to managing medical and physical care. However, the terms are often used interchangeably, and in many states’ regulations, the duties of conservatorship cover those of guardianship.

One of the most high-profile cases that has cast doubt on the conservatorship system is that of Britney Spears. Britney Spears, the pop icon, was under conservatorship since 2008 following highly publicized personal struggles. Under this arrangement, her father, Jamie Spears, had controlled her finances and major life decisions for over a decade, along with a lawyer and financial advisors. The #FreeBritney movement, fueled by concerns from fans and supporters, brought widespread attention to the restrictions placed on Spears and raised questions about the legality and ethics of her conservatorship. In 2021, Spears’ conservatorship ended after she challenged it in court.

Lifetime’s ‘Where Is Wendy Williams?’ became the center of controversy when its release was challenged by Williams’ court-appointed guardian, Sabrina Morrissey. The documentary recounted how the television star had faced struggles with alcoholism and health issues and required external support. At this point, her financial managers at Wells Fargo froze her accounts in 2022, and after a few months, a court-appointed her a legal guardian. However, the guardian was not a member of her family, as in the case of Spears, but an unknown professional.

The documentary series found deficiencies in the care provided to Williams by her guardian, who allegedly restricted her family members from calling her. “How did she go from this aunt or sister that we love and is healthy one minute to this person who’s in and out of the hospital?” asked Williams’ sister Wanda Finnie. “How is that system better than the system the family could put in place? I don’t know. I do know that this system is broken. I hope that at some point, Wendy becomes strong enough where she can speak on her own behalf.”

The cases of Britney Spears and Wendy Williams have prompted a broader conversation about the conservatorship system. Critics argue that these arrangements can be susceptible to abuse, as seen in Spears’ case, where she has expressed a desire to regain control over her life but faced legal obstacles in doing so. Concerns have been raised about the lack of transparency and accountability in the process of appointing and overseeing conservators, as well as the potential for conflicts of interest.

One of the most outspoken critics of the system is journalist and author Diane Dimond, who advocates for a complete overhaul. “More than some 2 million Americans are currently living under a guardian or conservatorship. It’s estimated that state courts confiscate over $50 billion from their wards,” said Dimond. “There’s no trial, there’s no right to present opposing witnesses. Usually, the judge will just take the petition, rubber stamp it, appoint the guardian or conservator.” This is because the guardianship proceedings take place in a court of equity and not in a criminal or civil court. She also noted a worrying trend of courts appointing professional guardians over family members or close friends.

As shown in ‘The Bad Guardian,’ once under guardianship, the individual cannot make decisions for themselves, making it extremely difficult to challenge the guardianship in court if ill-treatment is suffered. While the conservatorship system has its flaws, it has also helped individuals maintain their financials and health. Lifetime’s documentary on Wendy Williams noted that in her case, the conservatorship can be considered a net positive. ‘The Bad Guardian’ is a fictional movie that is inspired by real-life cases criticizing the conservatorship system, and paints possibly the worst-case scenario through them.

Read More:  Lifetime’s Alone in the Dark: True Story or Fictional?

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Guardians of time, common sense media reviewers.

Magical fantasy adventure has some mild scares.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Some historical nuggets woven in about Amelia Earh

Positive messages include teamwork, self-acceptanc

Zoey, Theo, and Sybil work together to save Alex.

Diverse cast with many characters from different r

Moments with large rock and tree monsters. Dinosau

A sister mentions her older sister having a crush

Parents need to know that Guardians of Time is a magical adventure through a mystical forest and includes dark moments with large monsters and dragons that might be scary for younger or more sensitive viewers. It includes fantastical violence such as magical bursts of power that blast characters back and…

Educational Value

Some historical nuggets woven in about Amelia Earhart and Greek and Roman mythology.

Positive Messages

Positive messages include teamwork, self-acceptance, trust, and not growing up too fast. "Too much power too fast can be a burden to carry rather than a strength to wield."

Positive Role Models

Zoey, Theo, and Sybil work together to save Alex. They don't give up on each other. The group encourages one another to find their powers and work together to defeat evil. All of the girls are smart, brave, and kind.

Diverse Representations

Diverse cast with many characters from different racial backgrounds. Girls are seen as smart and adventurous.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Moments with large rock and tree monsters. Dinosaurs and dragons face off against characters and each other. Some fantastical violence includes magical blasts and storms with creatures flowing within. Brief moments of peril. A girl glows from within and then bursts when her power becomes overwhelming; her injuries are temporary.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A sister mentions her older sister having a crush on her pen pal. A girl kisses a boy on the cheek.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Guardians of Time is a magical adventure through a mystical forest and includes dark moments with large monsters and dragons that might be scary for younger or more sensitive viewers. It includes fantastical violence such as magical bursts of power that blast characters back and cause pain. Characters are chased by monsters and a dragon. In one instance a character glows from within and then bursts from consuming too much power at once, but her injuries don't last long. On a positive note, the movie is packed with diverse characters, including a team of four smart, strong, and adventurous girls working together to protect each other and get back home. Woven into the magical story is a coming-of-age tale about family and growing up (but not too fast). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 3 parent reviews

Worth checking out if you have patience

What's the story.

In GUARDIANS OF TIME, Sybil (Harper Heath), her little sister Alex (Ava Torres), and their two cousins, Zoey and Theo, are visiting their grandfather at their family manor when they discover a mysterious book that leads them to a magical doorway and takes them into the forest of Keoherus. When the girls realize they're trapped, they have to work together to locate secret temples and solve puzzles to collect magical crystals and wield their power to control time. When Alex gets separated from the group, Sybil, Zoey, and Theo have to try to find her. Along the way, the girls discover the power they each possess. Will the group be able to face the dark forces that want the power of time for themselves? As the story unfolds, viewers will watch the four girls learn from one another and lift each other up as they face evil and their own internal battles.

Is It Any Good?

Guardians of Time has a slow start and some cheesy moments, but once it gets going, viewers will be enthralled. It has everything one would expect from a fantasy movie: secret doors, magic, and dragons. There are also some pleasant surprises, such as dinosaurs and plot twists. Why wouldn't a dinosaur companion be in a movie that includes time travel?

If you can look past the mediocre CGI, you can appreciate the coming-of-age story about a kid sister who feels like she just can't keep up with her older sister and cousins. Despite her older sister's warnings to enjoy the time she's in, Alex is in a hurry to grow up. The way that manifests and eventually backfires is yet another pleasant surprise and makes for a dramatic climax filled with time loops and sisterly love. Families interested in a feel-good adventure packed with girl power and minimal scares will be in for a good time with this movie pick.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why Alex wanted to grow up. How do you think she came to realize that being older isn't all it's cracked up to be? Are there ever times you wish you were older? Why?

Did the magical violence seem scary to you? Do you think fantasy action and violence are more or less frightening than physical violence and weapons? Why?

How did the four cousins -- especially Alex -- demonstrate character growth throughout the movie? How did they demonstrate teamwork?

Do you like movies that end on a cliffhanger? Does it make you want to guess what happens next or watch a potential sequel? Why do you think movie creators end movies with cliffhangers?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : October 11, 2022
• Cast : Ava Torres , Natalie Daniels , Samantha Ryan , Nicholas Greco , Carley Colemon , Nia Salaam
• Director : Stephen Shimek
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Family and Kids
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures , Fairy Tales
• Character Strengths : Teamwork
• Run time : 99 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : Some peril and brief mild violence
• Last updated : June 5, 2024

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The Biggest Gamble of Kevin Costner’s Career

Horizon: An American Saga is the type of ambitious Western they don’t make anymore—and it might be worth your time.

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Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

Kevin Costner isn’t the only present-day actor with a fondness for Westerns; ornery old hands such as Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, and Tommy Lee Jones are always ready to don their ten-gallon hats for the right role. But since his movie-star career began, Costner has returned over and over again to one of cinema’s most enduring genres—which, in turn, has always been there to save him . After he first drew plaudits in Silverado , won Oscars for Dances With Wolves , and did the best filmmaking work of his career in Open Range , it’s no wonder Costner is once again setting out for the open plains.

But his newest project, Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 , which Costner co-wrote, directed, and stars in, is far from an easy trot back to familiar territory. As you can probably tell from its unwieldy title, the three-hour epic is just the first chunk of a series, planned to run for four chapters, the second of which is already filmed and ready for release in August. Given that he’s fresh off of dramatically exiting the hit TV show Yellowstone , a mega-soap about cattle ranchers, one might accuse Costner of simply bringing television to the big screen. The charge is hard to refute, considering how Horizon introduces several sprawling storylines across its 181-minute run time and resolves precisely none of them.

Betting that audiences will be intrigued enough to return for Chapter 2 is the kind of gamble we don’t often see in a controlled Hollywood landscape. Costner has laid his career on the line before to make movies that many executives thought were a terrible idea. Sometimes it’s worked ( Dances With Wolves ); sometimes it truly hasn’t ( The Postman , Waterworld ). Horizon might be his riskiest bet ever—especially considering the tens of millions of his own fortune he’s sunk into it—but the actual end product feels radical primarily in how it’s being told, not the story itself.

Read: How the Western was lost (and why it matters)

Horizon Chapter 1 is largely set during the Civil War, which is presented as a rumbling conflict in the distance. Most of the film’s action is confined to Arizona and Wyoming, territory that was just starting to be colonized by white settlers amid tension with its Indigenous population. Horizon is a settlement in Arizona’s San Pedro Valley that, the audience eventually learns, exists as an act of provocation: The U.S. military has warned against living on Apache land far outside the country’s jurisdiction. So while the aesthetics look familiar—billowing tents, ramshackle wooden storefronts, families in cowboy hats and prairie dresses—Costner wants to underline the sense of danger bubbling beneath the idyll.

That threat soon boils over, and Costner depicts an Apache attack on Horizon in unsparing, startling detail. The attack comes so early that there’s no one really to root for, no main character to glom onto, and only a couple of particularly familiar faces (Sienna Miller chief among them as a mother named Frances Kittredge) navigating the chaos. Costner himself, who plays a cowboy named Hayes Ellison, is nowhere to be seen at this point—but it’s fascinating to contrast the action here with the other films he’s directed. In Dances With Wolves , the drama revolved around a white soldier (played by Costner) on the frontier who meets the Lakota Sioux, and eventually joins them, rather than fight. In Open Range , conflict builds between rich ranchers and independent cowboys, but the action is of the old-fashioned showdown variety.

Horizon is far more brutal, but that’s clearly a message Costner is interested in communicating this time: that America’s expansion was violent, wrenching, and often amoral. After the attack, soldiers including Lieutenant Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) show up to help, but they also chastise the populace of Horizon for living so far west. Apache politics are another of Horizon ’s many narrative strands, with disagreement between a warrior named Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe), who led the raid, and his more diplomatic chief, who worries that violence will invite more violence.

Costner’s prior Westerns have been more romantic, even as Dances With Wolves and similar films acknowledged the tragedy that came hand in hand with settling the West. But the attack is just one plotline in Horizon , which throws many more ingredients into the cauldron, and lets them simmer for ages. Costner’s story revolves around his character spiriting a woman named Marigold (Abbey Lee) and the child she’s watching away from a family of marauding revenge-seekers. There are occasional check-ins with a wagon train, making its way west, that’s led by a tired and stressed-out cowboy named Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson). A team of bounty hunters go out seeking revenge with nothing but murder and gold on their minds. Gephardt’s soldiers engage in a lot of heady philosophizing about the future, wondering what could come next on the bloody frontier as war rages east of them.

It's a lot , and perhaps a particularly tough sit for the older audiences Costner is likely aiming this mega-project at. The film hops from location to location without much warning, introducing new characters constantly and hoping the viewer can keep every mustachioed face straight. I was reminded of David Lynch’s masterful Twin Peaks: The Return , an 18-episode TV epic overflowing with actors that cared little for hour-by-hour narrative cohesion. That’s probably not a comparison Costner will be thrilled to hear, but I mean it as an awed compliment of sorts. Horizon might not be “watchable” in the most traditional sense of the word, but it’s audacious enough that I’ll be heading back for more in August, in anticipation of what might happen when all of these tales hopefully, eventually, collide.

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Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter One film review — Kevin Costner’s epic Western is only just beginning

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One day, in the family manor, four cousins discover a passage leading to a mysterious world. Trapped in this unearthed land, the Kingdom of Keoherus, they must confront the Guardian of Time, face dark forces and beasts to hopefully get back home.

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By The New York Times

The Wild (and wildly uneven) West.

‘Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1’

The first film in Kevin Costner’s projected four-film cycle collects various depictions of the Old West starting in the Civil War.

From our review:

“Horizon” is wildly uneven, at times exasperating and filled with distracting details that eat away at its period realism. Among other things, no one seems to know how to spit tobacco, and to judge from the women’s perfect updos and tidy eyebrows, everyone on this frontier has a stylist in tow. It’s easy to smirk at these and other miscues; Costner also has a weakness for speeches, like many filmmakers. But he has a feel for the western and the landscapes of the West.

In theaters. Read the full review.

Starring Lupita Nyong’o but also a VIP cat.

‘a quiet place: day one’.

In Michael Sarnoski’s prequel to the “A Quiet Place” franchise, Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) fights to survive an alien invasion in New York City alongside her cat, Frodo.

Indeed, the action set pieces are fine but also perfunctory, as if they were a nonnegotiable item Sarnoski had to cross off a checklist. “Day One” is on much surer ground when dealing with the quiet that bookends the storms. And it is at its very best whenever Nyong’o’s face fills the screen, like the postapocalyptic heroine of a silent movie. What she can do with relatively little is simply astonishing, and you absolutely believe in both Samira’s despair and her determination.

In theaters. Read the full review .

Great performances, meh drama.

This drama captures the conversations between a cabdriver, Clark (Sean Penn), and the passenger he calls Girlie (Dakota Johnson).

Handicapped by more than a terrible title, Christy Hall’s “Daddio,” set almost entirely inside a New York City taxicab, tries too hard and lasts too long. A synthetic encounter between a gabby cabby and his self-possessed female passenger, the movie is a claustrophobic two-hander oxygenated in part by Phedon Papamichael’s sleekly gorgeous cinematography. The star power of its leads, Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson, doesn’t hurt either.

Two’s company, three’s a crowded rom-com.

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