When you search for the “best British directors” on Google, one of the names you’ll come to see is Mike Leigh. The highly experienced film director is also a theatre director, playwright, and screenwriter best known for his 1993 comedy film Naked. It took him a while to tap into the interests of the American audiences, but he managed to do so with his 2008 comedy Happy-Go-Lucky. Even though I’d heard a lot about Mike Leigh, I hadn’t actually sat down to watch one of his films until last night, so, I thought Happy-Go-Lucky would a good place to start.

The film follows a jovial and optimistic primary school teacher named Poppy Cross (Sally Hawkins) and her encounters with every kind of troubled person you can think of. Poppy is happy with her life as a single woman, living with her best friend. She does what she wants to do and what will make her feel fulfilled, even if it makes her seem immature or childish to others. And while this is refreshing to see on the screen, her badgering cheerfulness can be, as the description for the film calls it, “exasperating” at times.

I, personally, found Poppy to be an extremely riveting character. This is mostly because of how she adapts to her surroundings and the situations she’s put in. Although she can be a bit annoying at times, she is kind, empathetic, and wonderful at what she does, and that, in the end, completely won me over. One fascinating observation I made was that she behaves like a child amidst adults, and like an adult amidst children. Watching the scenes where she has to take on the responsibility of teaching young children, and dealing with a troubled child, one can see that she genuinely cares.

She cares about everyone. She cares about her best friend, she cares about her lazy sister, she cares about the homeless man she meets in the middle of nowhere, she even cares about her neurotic, obsessive, and verbally abusive driving instructor. She cares so much. One could even say she cares too much. And this is both beautiful and completely exhausting to watch.

Seeing Poppy being so open to other people and watching her suffer the consequences of being vulnerable is what makes the film so poignant. After I finished the film, I kept thinking about how she didn’t shed a single tear throughout the 1 hour 58-minute film (could not be me!), and there was something about her unwavering positivity that actually made me sad. It was as though she was incapable of letting herself be, without trying to make everyone around her happy. This film is widely considered a “comedy,” but I respectfully disagree. Maybe it’s just me looking at things with my pessimist goggles on, but the whole film feels infused with the sadness that comes from not letting yourself be sad. If that makes any sense.

Although it isn’t an instant favorite, I recommend people see this film. Especially teachers and those who wish to connect with their inner child. This film won’t make everyone happy, but it will make you smile. A strong 3.5 out 5 stars!

I can honestly and wholeheartedly say that I have never seen a film like Zola. To begin with, the film is actually an adaptation of a viral twitter thread. Yeah, feel free to read that again and let it sink in. It’s times like this that make me realize that we truly are living in a new age of cinema. And perhaps it’s a good thing? We’ll see!

In October of 2015, A’Ziah King, or Zola, told the story of her absolutely mind-boggling weekend in Florida and ended up going viral on Twitter. Big names like Solange Knowles, Ava DuVernay, Keke Palmer, and Missy Elliott all interacted with the thread on Twitter which at that point was being spread using the hashtag #TheStory. So, when the trailer came out for Janicza Bravo’s bright and colorful 2020 adaptation with the tagline being the first line from the twitter thread “Y’all wanna hear a story?”, my answer, of course, was “Yes.” The film follows Zola (Taylour Paige), a waitress and part-time stripper, and her adventure in Tampa with Stefani (Riley Keough), a stripper and prostitute, who gets Zola into an awful lot of trouble.

From the minute the movie started, I knew there was something about it that was simply magnetic. It maintained the same energy of the Twitter thread; playful and funny and peppered with details that might have been overlooked if the story was told by someone unaffected by the casual oversharing that is so commonly seen on Twitter. I felt like I was listening to a friend telling me a crazy story which created an inviting aura to the film and immediately garnered my emotional connection.

Additional to the storytelling, the incredible cast definitely had an effect on how quickly I got emotionally invested in the film. Taylour Paige and Riley Keough’s chemistry as friends, and later enemies, on the screen is electric and hard to keep your eyes off of. It is an incredibly tough thing to lose your inhibitions to better fit yourself to the role of a character, and I applaud Taylour Paige and Riley Keough for their ability to not only do that, but make it seem so effortless. There’s a certain level of unhinged-ness to a lot of the characters in the film and I think the cast did a phenomenal job in embodying that (special shoutout to Nicholas Braun for being the funniest anxious and spineless boyfriend a prostitute can have).

Zola walks a thin line between surreal and brutally honest. Much like many other A24 films, the visuals are colorful and dreamlike. Being shot on 16mm film, the movie has the grainy look that emphasizes the fever-dream-like feel of the film. There’s a certain irony in a movie as rooted in digital technology being shot on film, but I think this irony is intentional and thought out.

With all this being said, I still believe Zola is not for everyone. It is unfiltered and hectic, so much so that it borders on being cringe-worthy at times. There were points in the film where I felt as though the situation being portrayed was much more dire in comparison to the mood of the film at that point in time. It took some time after viewing the film for me to understand that the goal of the film was not to speak on more serious issues such as sex trafficking and sexual exploitation, but to simply tell the story of Zola’s weekend. And although the film is successful in telling #TheStory, I was still left feeling like it could have handled the more traumatic side of the weekend with added care and sensitivity.

However, for the most part, Zola is well-made and refreshing to watch. Brava to Bravo for successfully translating a series of 140-character tweets into a darkly comedic and suspenseful feature film. 3.5 out of 5 stars!