How to Talk to Girls at Parties, the latest film from director John Cameron Mitchell that’s based on a story by popular author Neil Gaman, feels every bit like a film that wasn’t ready to go into production, but they went ahead with it anyway. There’s a lot to like, and many reasons why this has bypassed cinemas and been sent straight-to-VOD.
Alex Sharp
To the Bone wants to be two very different things at once: one of them noble and important and the other hackneyed and clichéd. The feature directorial debut of television veteran and screenwriter Marti Noxon, To the Bone offers a deeply personal look at the struggles of anorexia through the lens of a filmmaker who once struggled with the disease herself. That aspect is the noble, well meaning, and imperfectly delivered one. It’s just unfortunate that about half of To the Bone is a turgid, chaste, thoroughly unconvincing teen romance that bogs down a lot of good and necessary conversations that could be had from the material.