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Fancy Dance (2024) – Movie Review

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Fancy Dance (2024) – Movie Review

Fancy Dance, 2024.

Directed by Erica Tremblay.
Starring Lily Gladstone, Isabel Deroy-Olson, Ryan Begay, Shea Whigham, Audrey Wasilewski, Crystle Lightning, Tamara Podemski, Patrice Fisher, Ryan RedCorn, Lillian Faye Thomas, Casey Camp-Horinek, Tyler Tipton, Dennis Newman, Trey Munden, Arianne Martin, Blayne Allen, Michael Rowe, Hauli Gray, Blake Blair, Kylie Dirtseller, and Cory Hart.

SYNOPSIS:

Following her sister’s disappearance, a Native American hustler kidnaps her niece from the child’s white grandparents and sets out for the state powwow in hopes of keeping what is left of their family intact.

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Infuriatingly, displacement is common among minorities, especially natives. Co-writer/director Erica Tremblay’s Fancy Dance tells such a tale, highlighting the distinction between the effort, or lack thereof, child protective services, local authorities, and even FBI agents funnel into cases under certain circumstances. If it involves white relatives, authorities will feel more pressed to investigate and likely be more prominent in the outcome.

This is also a complicated story, so that’s not to absolve Lily Gladstone’s Seneca-Cayuga nation clan member Jax, who does sneak her 13-year-old niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) away from the white grandparents Frank and Nancy (Shea Whigham and Audrey Wasilewski) she has been forced under the guardianship of following yet another disappearance from her troubled mother (longer than usual and still missing) and the powers that be believing a slight criminal record has made the aunt unfit to take over those responsibilities. Considering Jax has normalized stealing and theft to Roki and does have a history of selling drugs, there is a small amount of concern, but nothing that should kickstart uprooting someone away from their people, home, and culture.

The inquisitive, good-natured Roki is also excited for the annual powwow not just for the traditional symbolic dancing but also because she believes that, regardless of where her mom is now, she will be there, and they will be reunited during a ceremonial dance. What exactly the relationship is like between daughter and mother feels underexplored and isn’t exactly spoken about, but it’s also apparent that there is a darker truth, with Jax urging her local reservation cup brother JJ (Ryan Begay) to convince authorities with the more pull that the situation this serious this time, or to break some ground in the case himself.

Working together with screenwriter Miciana Alise, Erica Tremblay also portrays the white grandparents, particularly Nancy, as more misguided than outright villainous, which goes a long way in further grounding the narrative. They don’t understand how important the powwow is to Roki (who has already been practicing her moves and has a cute jacket picked out as part of her outfit), claiming they must get her settled into this suburban home hours away from the reservation. Frank also seems to incorrectly assume that it would be wise to keep Roki away from that “mess,” referring to nearby drug dealers, prostitution, and the alarming amount of missing person cases that could be related to some shady surrounding white men. Meanwhile, Nancy cluelessly believes ballet lessons will replace something deeply entrenched in Roki’s identity and sense of self.

This is important to note since, when Jax essentially kidnaps Roki to figure things out (she is along for the ride since they will be going to the powwow), it’s even easier to be on her side and to feel that instant frustration when all types of authorities instantly jump to assist the white grandfather. And even if Jax is not necessarily the most positive influence in some areas, there are also tender moments among the thieving and squatting in rich people’s homes, such as managing Roki through her first period. In many respects, Jax feels like a friend to Roki, who hasn’t yet embraced the fact that it’s time to be a second mom.

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The chemistry between Lily Gladstone and Isabel Deroy-Olson is airtight and sweetly expresses a mimicry bond but convincingly conveys their trust-breaking, as the latter becomes wiser to the former not telling the full truth about her missing mother. Their wonderful performances continuously overcome the shakier, more overblown story beats (such as something involving a firearm). Furthermore, Lily Gladstone is tremendous, maneuvering between steely toughness, desperation, and vulnerability. Between avoiding authorities on this road trip, piecing together clues about her sister’s disappearance, and pestering her brother JJ to investigate some of those revelations, it brings out a nuanced, emotionally layered performance.

Even if Fancy Dance falls into some melodramatic trappings elsewhere, the resolution of the mystery aspect is realistically bleak. It makes the case for not just an unfortunate element of reservation life but also what continues to happen because it’s seemingly unimportant to local authorities. It’s not all gloom, though, as the final moving scene is earned, fits the characters’ journey, and celebrates the culture.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

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Movie Reviews

‘Nickel Boys’ movie review: In another life, RaMell Ross’s devastating adaptation would have won Best Picture

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‘Nickel Boys’ movie review: In another life, RaMell Ross’s devastating adaptation would have won Best Picture

A still from ‘Nickel Boys’
| Photo Credit: Prime Video

RaMell Ross has been trying to reshape our understanding of what storytelling can be. His debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, turned everyday Black life into something lyrical and ineffable, demonstrating how cinema could hold time gently and reverently, before it slips away. Now, with Nickel Boys, his adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel, he has done something even more audacious. His reimagining of the novel wrestles with the weight of history in a reckoning that lingers in the body, mind, and in spaces that were never meant to be remembered.

Most filmmakers would approach a novel as precise and devastating as Whitehead’s with a kind of solemn fidelity, ensuring that every plot point is accounted for. Ross breaks the story open and lets its spirit breathe, unearthing something inside that feels even more elemental. He understands that trauma is how it is felt, rather than merely a retelling of how it happened, and the film unfolds not as a sequence of conclusive events but as elliptical and sensory, and as fractured as memory itself.

Nickel Boys (English)

Director: RaMell Ross

Cast: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

Runtime: 140 minutes

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Storyline: Elwood Curtis’ college dreams are shattered when he’s sentenced to Nickel Academy, a brutal reformatory in the Jim Crow South

The film tells the story of Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), a bookish Black teenager in Jim Crow- era Florida. He is studious, hopeful, the kind of kid who absorbs Dr. King’s words like scripture and assumes that if he walks the righteous path, the world will walk with him. But America has never been kind to children like Elwood, and a cruel twist of fate sees him thrown into a brutal reform school for wayward boys — the titular Nickel Academy. There, he meets the streetwise and world-weary Turner (Brandon Wilson), and their friendship and tenuous hope forms the film’s emotional core.

A still from ‘Nickel Boys’

A still from ‘Nickel Boys’
| Photo Credit:
Prime Video

Ross’s decision to shoot Nickel Boys in first-person feels at once radical and deeply empathetic (although admittedly disorienting at first). Stories like these conventionally offer observation, but this one demands immersion. Ross reclaims the trick to mimic the sensation of a video game or a found-footage thriller as something deeper — a way of dissolving the barrier between audience and subject and stripping away the safety of detachment. There is no looking away because there is no “other” to look at; there is only us, trapped in the body of a boy whose fate pulses beneath our skin.

The infamous White House, where boys are taken to be abused, is filmed with an almost abstracted malice and its terror is only amplified by the unbearable sounds of a whirring industrial fan, meant to drown out the screams but failing to do so. Cinematographer Jomo Fray captures these moments with a disturbing detachment, letting shadows stretch and encroach, suffocating the frame as the school’s buried horrors make themselves felt.

His camera lingers on the textures of the world — dust catching in the air, the dull shine of sweat on a boy’s temple, the sweltering sun above a field where unspeakable things have happened. Ross even understands the story as a history of unnerving sensations —  the sickening lurch in your stomach when you realize the world doesn’t see you as a child but as a problem. The sound of footsteps in a hallway, the knowledge that someone will be taken, and it might be you.

But he’s uninterested in suffering for suffering’s sake. The film embeds us so deeply in Elwood’s interiority that his pain, and his small, stubborn joys, feel like our own. Both Elwood and Turner are still just boys, in all the ways boys are — restless, curious, alive. The world has tried to steal that from them, but Ross refuses to let it.

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A still from ‘Nickel Boys’

A still from ‘Nickel Boys’
| Photo Credit:
Prime Video

As it draws to a close, Ross makes Nickel feel so deeply, viscerally, in the marrow of our own memories that it forces us to sit in the terrible knowledge that the past is not past, that justice is often deferred into oblivion, and that the bodies buried in unmarked graves continue to shape very real landscapes. 

RaMell Ross has done something that far transcends just adapting a really good novel — it has altered the way we see. Nickel Boys is a redefinition of what cinema can do, how it can speak to us, how it can reshape the very act of remembering, and serves an argument for documented fiction as something more than just a well-meaning exercise in period-accurate suffering. In another life, it would have made for one of the most inspired Best Picture winners of this decade. But that’s unlikely.

Nickel Boys is currently available to stream on Prime Video

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Christopher Landon’s ‘HEART EYES’ (2025) – Movie Review – PopHorror

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Christopher Landon’s ‘HEART EYES’ (2025) – Movie Review – PopHorror

Slashers are among the favorite subgenres of most horror fans. When you add in the murder mystery elements of a whodunit, it becomes even more of an immersive and nostalgic watch. Such is the case with Heart Eyes, the newest Valentine’s Day related entry in the horror world. Let’s take a look at why this may make the perfect date night movie selection.

Heart Eyes is written slickly by Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day 2U 2019), Phillip Murphy (Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard 2021), and Michael Kennedy (Freaky 2020), and directed by Josh Ruben (Scare Me 2020). It stars Olivia Holt (Totally Killer 2023) and Mason Gooding (Scream 2022, read our blu-ray review here) as love-scorned co-workers who are forced together on a business assignment as the Heart Eyes Killer runs amok in their town against established couples.

Holt and Gooding have phenomenal timing and chemistry together, and their relationship really brews nicely as the body count starts to build. Heart Eyes really feels like the coming out party for Gooding, though the characters in general are given such fun dialogue that provides genuine laughs. Part love story and part meta commentary, this movie feels like Scream meets Cherry Falls.

Horror is experiencing a return to the 80s in the reemergence of the casual holiday-themed slashers, and Heart Eyes has the makings of a yearly watch-party flick. It’s not all witty banter though, as the jump scares and exquisite gore leave enough meat on the bone for darker genre fans. It’s simple and doesn’t try to be ‘elevated’. The diversity in this movie will help it to amass an audience of many different types of movie-goers.

The balance of Heart Eyes skews a bit more toward comedy than horror, even to a point of being over the top at times in some of its background characters. But the mystery and relationships do resolve in a very satisfying, fast paced way. It’s quite easy to see why a movie like this could end up in the hearts of viewers as one of the most fun murder mysteries of 2025.

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Movie Review: A Veteran adjusts to Civilian Life with “My Dead Friend Zoe”

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Movie Review: A Veteran adjusts to Civilian Life with “My Dead Friend Zoe”

Perhaps only an Iraq War combat vet would dare to tackle Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with the sort of sarcasm and gallows humor of “My Dead Friend Zoe.”

Director and co-writer and ex-paratrooper Kyle Hausmann-Stokes’ film’s title character is a cynical smart-ass, a female veteran and a ghost. Zoe is, as advertised, “Dead.”

Zoe, given just enough edge by Natalie Morales, has the license to call her service in Afghanistan “the dumbest war of all time,” the sass to suggest she and her fellow GI trooper/ mechanic Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) “watch ‘M*A*S*H’ again,” but this time not “as a drinking game” and the impatience to refer to the group therapy they attend back home as “kumbaya” nonsense.

But Merit is the one physically there at therapy. Dead Zoe is the snide commentator in her head and the ongoing presence in her life, and the most important thing Merit won’t talk about in “group,” no matter how much the doctor and Vietnam vet in charge (Morgan Freeman) demands it.

“My Dead Friend” is a nice showcase for constantly-employed TV actress Morales (“Parks and Rec,” Grey’s Anatomy,” “The Morning Show”). But it’s a star vehicle for “Walking Dead” alumna and “Star Trek: Discovery” lead Martin-Green.

It is Merit who must hide the “dead” friend she still communes with, among other unspoken traumas of her service. She does this while in court-ordered group therapy, something that’s interrupted when she has to care for her testy, “wandering” and increasingly forgetful grandfather and role model, a retired Lt. Col. played by Ed Harris.

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That tells us this script is deep enough to attract talent, even as it gives Zoe and Merit Rihanna sing-alongs at work, even as Zoe serves up therapy-is-for-thee-but-not-for-me tough gal sarcasm softballs, even as she’s mocking Merit’s home state.

“Isn’t Oregon known for its serial killers?”

Freeman, who is as empathetic as he’s ever been on screen and the tightly-wound side of Harris lend the picture extra gravitas. But none of this would work if Martin-Green didn’t have the bearing of a soldier, one who has seen and experienced things. Compulsive jogging and visits to a cemetery are Merit’s coping mechanisms.

Introducing a possible love interest (“Pitch Perfect” alumnus Utkarsh Ambudkar) doesn’t add much that feels necessary, when layers of the Merit-Zoe connection and disconnection are left hanging. But even these mysteries benefit the film as we can infer “this” and understand without knowing “that.”

And Freeman’s doctor gives voice to talking therapy’s one essential truth in facing the many shades of PTSD, that one must “think very seriously about whether living in the past is worth it.”

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Stay through the credits if you want to see how important this subject is, with or without jokes only those who’ve been through it truly “get.”

Rating: R, combat stress subject matter, profanity

Cast: Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Ed Harris, Gloria Ruben, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Morgan Freeman

Credits: Directed by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, scripted by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes and A.J. Bermudez. A Briarcliffe release.

Running time: 1:38

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine

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