her composition movie review

HER COMPOSITION: A Sensual Journey Of Sound

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With all of the inundation of CGI filled mega messes in mainstream film, it’s nice to get back to the basics of artistry. Her Composition follows Master’s student Malorie Gilman ( Joslyn Jensen ) through her sonorous journey to find inspiration and create her musical thesis. Colored with sounds and textures, it’s a journey through the mind of an artist.

A Desperate Plan

Malorie is a Ph.D. candidate in a prestigious NYC School of Music. Though she is up for a scholarship, she is disillusioned with her life and uninspired to write her Master’s thesis; an original musical composition to be played upon her graduation. Her professors have assured her a scholarship if she is able to finish her piece, but later, she finds out that she has lost that. This composition then becomes something her graduation hinges upon. If she doesn’t finish it, she doesn’t pass.

Her Composition: A Sensual Journey of Sound

Seeking comfort in her loss, she calls her live-in boyfriend, Arthur ( Ryan Metcalf ), only to find out that he is breaking up with her. Coupled with a letter for rising rent; an unknown inability to call her parents for help nor desire to live back home with them, she is faced with having to pay tuition and the entirety of rent by herself.

Malorie’s best friend, Gila ( Margot Bingham ), who works for a woman’s rights organization, gets contacted by “Kim” ( Okwui Okpokwasili ) , a high-end escort, who’s interested in being an informant for the FBI in their ongoing sting of an illegal sex ring. Gila tells Malorie about the story with the intention of creating a point of interest in her life. Malorie requests to go and meet “Kim” as if she works for the organization herself.

When Malorie meets “Kim”, she shares with Malorie a list of her favorite clients and everything each one likes. Though Malorie is supposed to give this information back to the women’s group to turn in, she keeps it herself, concocting a crazy plan to make money fast.

A Presumptuous Awakening

Malorie then takes it upon herself to continue where “Kim” left off with her clients. Her adventure as an escort isn’t just for money though; she ends up using each different client, to create each individual musical movement for her thesis composition. Incorporating all of the sounds she hears from the street (drummers in the park cars honking and random people’s conversations), she invents an elaborate “map” of the city on her apartment wall, connecting the locations of the men she services, into musical sections of the opus. The film itself is set up in “movements”; each titled something different for the “progression” of Malorie in the story.

The film is presented with abundant artistry through action, dance sequences, musical sequences and copious amounts of sound which could also work as a theatrical piece. As an artistic person myself, it was quite profound to watch the way I see and hear things, textures, sounds and patterns laid out before me. I could intimately relate to and appreciate the intricacies designed by writer/director Stephan Littger . He brilliantly added layer upon layer of different sensory experiences throughout.

I found myself less than enamored with Malorie as a character though. She came off, the entirety of the film, as spoiled and quite arrogant. When she first meets “Kim”, she presumed she’d be meeting a man, when it turns out to be a black woman. Then she goes right ahead and contacts “Kim”‘s clients, presuming that the clients will automatically like her. Why would a group of people once interested in a black woman be interested in a skinny, white girl? Luckily for her, that conveniently works out. Also, there are many overlooked implications in a story about a privileged white woman choosing to become an escort, versus the many women of color, cis or not, who end up escorting out of necessity. Where Malorie can make the money she needs escorting and quit, the reality is that many others cannot.

Without knowing if Jensen was intended to play Malorie callously and unfeeling, I can only say that doing so made me like the character even less. She walks around in a bit of an emotionless whirlwind, leaving human beings in her wake. We don’t have enough knowledge of her history; why she supposedly can’t go home or ask her parents for help; nor why she believes this particular situation is so dire that it necessitates prostitution. Because of this, I found it very difficult to sympathize with her.

Taking Responsibility

In a day and age of social unrest and change all over the world, I feel it’s crucial for artists to take great care and responsibility with their work. There are so many marginalized groups struggling for equality, a voice, representation, and even their very lives. With so much at stake, when filmmakers choose to take on a sensitive group’s plight, it MUST be thoroughly researched, inclusive and labored over exhaustively.

We must not let privilege of any kind get the better of us. The person in front of and behind the camera lens counts.

Women of color all over the world face a plight that many cannot comprehend. Violence against women of color in America, is disproportionately higher compared with their white counterparts. White women report offenses more often, but African American women were more likely to experience rape and intimate partner violence, overall. They are more likely to be criminalized, viewed promiscuously, and imprisoned . In 2009 a study of hate crimes committed against the LGBT community, 79% were people of color. Though there is a scene of violence against Malorie by one of the clients, she gets out of the situation relatively easily. Many sex workers don’t make it out of these kinds of situations at all.

By the end, Malorie seems unscathed and unchanged by her experiences. Even though the circumstances are supposedly desperate enough for her to take on such a controversial living, there is no humility or respect for the profession itself, the people involved or the inherent moral conflict involved in such circumstances. It looks easy for Malorie. She seems to even enjoy certain men as if she were just dating them. Everyone pays her willingly, rarely objectifies her, generally treats her with respect and instantly accepts her as their substitute. I can’t imagine that clients who spend this much money per encounter accept just anyone, even with a good reference from their usual escort.

Also, though the medical implications of risky sex are touched upon, Malorie avoids any of these consequences as well. She comes out of this experience feeling, seemingly, ok. This can’t be the reality of being an escort.

Conclusion: Her Composition

Even though there are distinctive character/story problems, there is a lot of beauty and creativity in this film. The visuals created by cinematographer Andres Karu , coupled with a highly skilled sound crew, create a symphonic world of imagery laced with sensory texture in the vein of Master filmmaker, Adrian Lyne .

Littger is a highly skilled artistic and visual storyteller. Most of the film was shown and not spoken, the way film is supposed to be. There is nothing extraneous in what is spoken. In fact, we could’ve used a bit more of Malorie’s story in order to give us a greater sense of who she is and where she is coming from. What would cause her to believe that escorting was her only alternative to get out of this situation? If her relationship is so bad with her parents that she’d resort to escorting rather than go back home, why do they show up at her graduation looking all happy and proud of her? We also could have used a few more overt clues throughout the general storyline. Much of it is left open to interpretation that could easily mislead or be misconstrued by the audience.

And what did she learn in the end? We never see her character grow, only get what she wants and that simply does not work for me. There’s nothing alluring or interesting about Malorie. She can’t possibly be just a “girl next door”, because escorting is not what an everyday person does in a crisis. There is clearly more darkness lurking in the back of her mind that needs exposure and fleshing out.

As a first-time feature for writer/director Littger though, Her Composition is ambitious and full of earnest affectivity. The idea of someone using their desperation and sexual exploits to create a one of a kind musical composition is truly compelling and innovative. Littger is definitely “one to watch”. I hope he clings to his artistry as he rises but dares to go much further exploring and exposing his characters in future works. If an audience can’t connect with the characters, much will be lost in the rest of the film.

Her Composition is available to stream on Amazon’s Prime Video.

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Amyana Bartley is a screenwriter and producer. Her company, Queen B. Productions, supports filmmakers of all walks, interested in creating thought provoking, moving projects. As her company grows, she will create "real jobs" for any talented artist, in front of and behind the screen, who is passionate about making a difference using the art of film.

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Her Composition Reviews

This is absolutely a thinking film, but a bizarrely beautiful and entertaining one as well.

Full Review | Aug 17, 2018

A love letter to the sights, sounds and attractions of New York through the eyes and ears of a failing artist who regains her inspiration from her sexual encounters.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 28, 2018

The film is engaging, a quiet study in artistic genius and inspiration as well as an observation on empowerment.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 27, 2018

Self-consciously arty, sometimes to a fault. But Joslyn Jensen carries through a fascinating composer/sex trade worker story arc.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 25, 2018

As a first-time feature for writer/director Littger though, Her Composition is ambitious and full of earnest affectivity.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2018

The result of all this is something very different from most of what you're likely to see at the cinema - an art film worthy of the name. It has already enjoyed success on the festival circuit and it's well worth seeking out.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 23, 2018

Cast & crew
User reviews

Her Composition

A talented, artistically stuck composition student starts seeing escort clients after failing to secure her scholarship. Struck with unexpected sounds during her sexual encounters, she turns... Read all A talented, artistically stuck composition student starts seeing escort clients after failing to secure her scholarship. Struck with unexpected sounds during her sexual encounters, she turns them into music and the clients into her muse. A talented, artistically stuck composition student starts seeing escort clients after failing to secure her scholarship. Struck with unexpected sounds during her sexual encounters, she turns them into music and the clients into her muse.

Stephan Littger
Lulu Wilson
Heather Matarazzo
Margot Bingham
21 User reviews
26 Critic reviews
10 nominations

Gallery Owner

Vice Branch Manager

Malorie Gilman

Delivery Man
Bank Teller

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Soundtracks Wonder Written by Anja Plaschg Performed by Anja Plaschg (as Soap&Skin)

User reviews 21

MayhemFilmKreations
Jun 11, 2019
How long is Her Composition? Powered by Alexa
2017 (United States)
United States
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Malorie's Final Score
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Runtime 1 hour 33 minutes

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> Her Composition (2015) Film Review

Her composition.

Reviewed by: Jennie Kermode

Malorie (Joslyn Jensen) is a student of composition. Her course is coming to an end; to secure a scholarship that will enable her to proceed to a pHd, she needs to produce a piece of work that will really impress the funders and mark her out as a distinctive talent. But where to begin? Close to the deadline, she finds herself abandoning what she had been working on. It's too staid, too formulaic. She needs inspiration.

She also needs money. There's no room here for the Hollywood myth that every student has rich parents to turn to in time of need. There's one obvious way that a young woman who also values her time can make good money. Though initially hesitant, Malorie quickly commits herself to working as a call girl. The discovery of just how varied clients are, how different her experiences are with each one, prompts her to use these experiences in her music, taking something from these intimate encounters without their knowledge and making it part of her creation.

The ethical and emotional complexities of these decisions are explored with a deft touch by writer/director Stephan Littger in what is a strikingly ambitious début feature. Malorie is intrigued and visibly moved by some of her more vulnerable clients; unsurprised by the violence she faces at the hands of another, and personally drawn to one of them, who gradually forms an attachment to her that seems to go beyond business - a matter complicated by that secrets she's keeping. Each contributes something different to her composition, but as she opens herself more and more to these external influences, her own mind and body seem to wither away.

The film rests on an extraordinary physical performance by Jensen, who carries her slight frame so that it takes up as little space as possible. Costumed in shades of pink, white and beige to create an impression of unassuming, fragile femininity, Malorie seems to be trying to recede into the background of her own story in order to make room for her creation. As her work goes on, friends begin to worry. She's hardly eating. She doesn't seem to be herself any more.

We've all seen the theme of the obsessive, doomed creative artist played out before in the likes of Amadeus and The Red Shoes , whilst stories of women disintegrating under pressure are everywhere from Repulsion to The Eyes Of My Mother . Littger, however, does something a little less obvious with his story, in the process highlighting the difficult line many artists feel they need to walk and what it takes to do so. These themes are complemented by the creative work in the film itself - we never do hear all of the music (indeed, it's not clear if Malorie is able to take it all in at once), but we see something of the visual map she uses to assemble it, and we journey with her as she explores the textures of her physical environment, from tree bark to traffic fumes, each element painstakingly reinterpreted in sound.

Director: Stephan Littger

Writer: Stephan Littger

Starring: Heather Matarazzo, Lulu Wilson, Christian Campbell, Kevin Breznahan, Margot Bingham, Rachel Feinstein

Runtime: 93 minutes

Country: US, Germany

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> Her Composition (2015) Film Review

Her composition.

Reviewed by: Jennie Kermode

Director: Stephan Littger

Writer: Stephan Littger

Starring: Heather Matarazzo , Lulu Wilson , Christian Campbell , Kevin Breznahan , Margot Bingham , Rachel Feinstein

Runtime: 93 minutes

Country: US, Germany

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Her Composition

Where to Watch

Lulu Wilson (Victoria) Heather Matarazzo (Gallery Owner) Margot Bingham (Gila) Christian Campbell (Client 1) John Rothman (Dean) Kevin Breznahan (Carl) Rachel Feinstein (Rachel) Meg Gibson (Miranda) Okwui Okpokwasili (Kim) E.J. Carroll (Vice Branch Manager)

Stephan Littger

Her Composition

By Bradley Gibson | July 27, 2018

Malorie (Joslyn Jensen) is a talented music composition student at a prestigious art school in Manhattan (that definitely isn’t Julliard but might well be). After losing a scholarship she was counting on she suspects a professor of taking revenge for her rejecting his sexual advances by advocating for another student. At the same time her live-in boyfriend admits he’s been cheating and leaves. She suddenly finds herself creatively stuck amidst the chaos. With the college term closing out, she must complete her piece in progress and submit it for evaluation or face expulsion.

She runs an errand for a friend and finds herself chatting with another artist who had spent time as a highly paid escort to fund her artistic life. Malorie acquires her client list with notes. Facing the loss of the scholarship and rising rent for her apartment she decides to contact the first client on the list and begins having sex with him for pay, which leads to her working through the client list.

In Stephan Littger’s somewhat abstract Her Composition , Malorie’s relationship with her own body takes center stage as she explores new experiences and stretches herself in terms of what she’s willing to do with and for her art. Nudity and sex are presented graphically, but is absolutely un-erotic. Malorie makes no effort to act as though she’s interested in the encounters. The men are presented as animals with money, barely more than props in the film.

“ … relationship with her own body takes center stage as she explores new experiences and stretches herself in terms of what she’s willing to do with and for her art. “

In the course and aftermath of sex with strangers, she begins to experience a form of synesthesia in which what she’s seen becomes sounds and melodies. During an intense disconnected fugue she translates these bursts of insight as a map on her apartment wall by assembling a collage of images and artifacts. This random collection is eventually given coherent form to express her journey. The map is music.

Her body becomes a tool for generating income, and then an enemy, seemingly turning on her as she foregoes food and self-care in the burning obsession to survive financially and musically. The reactions of other women who discover the truth are a revelatory contradiction between condemnation of “slut-shaming” and shock at the reality of sex work.

I was a bit surprised to find that the director is male, to be honest. Littger has a light touch and delicate sensibilities in dialog, camera work, pace, and sound. He tells a female story from the right perspective. Joslyn Jensen is his talented co-conspirator, bringing it to gritty life with realism and precision.

The film is engaging, a quiet study in artistic genius and inspiration as well as an observation on empowerment. There’s liberation in finding one’s own limits and consequences for pushing past them. Ultimately, Malorie finds that she is composing herself.

Her Composition (2018). Written and directed by Stephan Littger. Starring Joslyn Jensen, Heather Matarazzo, Lulu Wilson, Christian Campbell.

7 out of 10

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Her composition.

Directed by Stephan Littger

A college music student turns to prostitution to make a little cash and look for inspiration, as she has blocked on a major musical composition that she must create in order to graduate.

Joslyn Jensen Ryan Metcalf Paul Helou Matthew Rosenberg Kevin Breznahan Margot Bingham Okwui Okpokwasili John Rothman Elaine Liebmann Christian Campbell Sean Grissom Genson Blimline Meg Gibson Desmond Hurt Tyler Ziegel James Aronson Kara Vedder Ashton Crosby Robert Kabakoff Burton Cran Francine Berman Alexander Stine Esther Bills Lulu Wilson Heather Matarazzo

Director Director

Stephan Littger

Producers Producers

Stephan Littger Leah Chen Baker Isabel Kleber

Writer Writer

Editor editor, cinematography cinematography.

Andres Karu

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Rene Bastian

Composer Composer

Christopher Libertino

Alternative Title

Malorie's Final Score

Music Drama Fantasy

Releases by Date

30 oct 2015, 22 sep 2016, releases by country.

Theatrical Raindance Film Festival

93 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Jessica Baxter ★★★★

www.hammertonail.com/reviews/her-composition/

Review by Marina Antunes ★★★★

"I appreciate that Her Composition is layered and complicated and not easy to love. The fact that this is a debut feature is even more impressive. "

Full review: www.quietearth.us/articles/2015/12/WFF-2015-Creativity-and-Obsession-are-Beautifully-Explored-in-HER-COMPOSITION-Trailer

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HER COMPOSITION

( Stephan Littger’s debut film Her Composition (starring HtN buddy Joslyn Jensen) is available now on VOD

Her Composition is a feminist film that was made on the cusp of an ideological revolution. Though it was just released on V.O.D. in 2018, it was made in 2015. Back then, time wasn’t yet up. Films about the emotional Odysseys of women were all told by white men and didn’t pass the Bechdel test. That’s not to say Stephan Littger’s debut is a bad film. It’s actually quite lovely and ambitious. But it also feels a bit like a feminist time capsule.

Captivating up-and-coming actress Joslyn Jensen plays Malorie, a music PhD student who loses her scholarship to a man because her thesis piece doesn’t come from the heart. Desperate for money and inspiration, Malorie takes on the dossier of a high-end sex worker. She doesn’t seem to have a plan at the outset. She just knows she needs to shake things up. But she discovers self-assurance during her first encounter and soon, she’s got a “crazy wall” covered in quotes, snippets of written music, and meaningful insect corpses. There is no shortage of men saying and doing awful things to Malorie, but she also meets a few kind and lonely people. As she goes deeper into her titular composition, she begins to mentally and physically unravel. Before long, Malorie is racing her declining health to the finish line.

Cinematographer Andres Karu is instrumental in expressing Malorie’s shifting perspective. At first, all the shots are simple and orderly. But the camera moves more wildly as the artist loses her inhibitions and submits to the process. The film is truly beautiful to behold.

Littger’s narrative occasionally flirts with heavy-handedness. The story is broken into 4 “movements”: Awakening, Inspiration, Creation, and [Untitled]. Malorie spends the early part of the film getting shit from all the men in her life. But Jensen’s expressions and body language go a long way toward selling her character. Malorie’s journey to liberation is a throwback. She’s a D.H. Lawrence feminist, finding agency through sex with men (and one woman!). Her clients are mostly innocuous wealthy odd-balls who either can’t get laid any other way or else their particular kinks are too much for the average person.

Littger peppers the cast with indie notables like Christian Campbell ( Reefer Madness ), and Heather Matarazzo ( Welcome to the Dollhouse ).

Clearly Littger is doing something right, because in 2016, 355 people signed a petition to block a screening of Her Composition on the grounds that “disguising man-bashing in a film about female empowerment is not okay.” Two years later, we’re finally embarking on the next wave of feminism. Hopefully this means more women will get to tell their own stories and not have to rely on handouts from men. In the meantime, Her Composition keeps the conversation going.

– Jessica Baxter ( @tehBaxter )

Jessica Baxter

Jessica Baxter is a visual media critic with a background in filmmaking (including the 2005 award winning horror comedy short film, Snow Day, Bloody Snow Day). She began writing on the internet circa 2006, and spent 10 years as the Seattle City Editor for Not For Tourists. She’s been a contributing writer for Film Threat, Hammer to Nail and Screenrant. She also produces and co-hosts the podcasts Paid in Puke (covering female-driven films) and Really Weird Stuff: A Twin Peaks Podcast. She lives in Seattle, WA with her spouse, kids, and too many pets. In addition to movies, she loves singing, cool clouds, and pie. Follow her on twitter (for now) @tehbaxter and on BlueSky @thebaxter.

Jessica, sorry, but this review seems a little lazy as I usually like you writing. You completely missed the point that this is a film about music (you don’t even mention that) and the complex struggle of an artist trying to follow her inspiration. I loved the movie, didn’t find it preachy at all. Also Jensen is incredible in this!

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Her Composition

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Her Composition (2015)

Genre: drama, duration: 93 minuten, alternative title: malorie's final score, country: united states / germany, directed by: stephan littger, stars: joslyn jensen , kevin breznahan and margot bingham, imdb score: 5,3 (336), releasedate: 30 october 2015.

Her Composition plot

In the middle of her graduation project, a music student gets creatively stuck. At the same time, she is abandoned by her boyfriend and confronted with a rent increase. Through an acquaintance she decides to work as an escort. During the meetings with her clients and on the way there, she collects all kinds of impressions, which she collects on a wall in her apartment to use later when writing her composition…

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Her Composition Movie Review

By Harvey Karten

HER COMPOSITION Picturetrain Company Reviewed by: Harvey Karten Director: Stephan Littger Screenwriter: Stephan Littger Cast: Joslyn Jensen, Heather Matarazzo, Lulu Wilson, Christian Campbell, Margot Bingham, Rachel Feinstein, Kevin Breznahan, John Rothman, Meg Gibson Screened at: Amazon Prime, NYC, 7/27/18 Opens: On DVD May 1, 2018. Originally viewed theatrically in 2015 and available now to Amazon Prime members for no extra charge.

Artists are different from you and me. They see and hear things more creatively than the masses of people. Because of this, while they may have more joy from what they’re doing than accountants and burned-out physicians, most find it difficult to pay the bills. What artists crave above all, maybe even more than money, is inspiration, without which they will feel unfulfilled and ultimately driven into the cruel world of routine jobs.

Do you know people like that? If not, you will meet one such person, maybe even an icon in her ability to demonstrate the frustrations that come from a failure of inspiration. Maybe they will blame others, as this young woman did, and maybe they realize that fifty percent of the problem is not from society but from their own paucity of imagination. This young women, Malorie Gilman (Joslyn Jensen), is having difficulties, both financial and artistic. As a student in one of New York’s most prestigious conservatories, Malorie is told by the dean that the scholarship she needs to continue her studies has been awarded instead to a man. She blames the patriarchy at first before realizing that while women are still not treated right in our republic, moaning about injustices will neither pay the landlord nor give her satisfaction. So her Brooklyn apartment is going up $200 a month. So her dull accountant boyfriend Arthur (Ryan Metcalf), is dropping her. So she’s about to be discarded by the conservatory. Happily, help comes along that will solve her problems, both financially and artistically. We should all be so lucky.

Her friend Gila (Margot Bingham) works for a women’s rights organization, attracting the attentions of Kim (Okwui Okpokwasili), who is willing to turn over a list of her clients for possible FBI prosecution. Kim wants the info to be delivered to Gila, a list of clients with each one’s fetishes, though she praises her favorite guy as “romantic.” Instead Malorie keeps the documents and, bypassing escort agencies, contacts a few of the men herself. Somehow, though these fellows all dug a black escort, they are all fine with a skinny white woman who is on the shy side and at first does not really know what to do in bed to warrant payments of $1500 to $4500 a night. She makes heaps of money, but mirabile dictu, she uses her sexual experiences to write a thesis project for the school, one which she hopes would allow her to proceed with her doctoral studies.

In fact she mixes her bed times with sounds of the city—African drummers in Washington Square park, the vroom of the subway, people’s chit-chat. Now she is not only a composer: she is a painter who, after rolling white paint on her walls uses her new creativity in the service of an unusual cartography. She knocks out a map of New York on the wall with arrows pointing to the men she has been servicing. I don’t know if you find this concept appealing. In fact you may be more interested in the sex scenes, a few of which could qualify as soft porn in the style of “Fifty Shades of Gray.” The most sensual scenes are with the romantic, a hip bearded fellow who, given the sculptures in his apartment could mark him as a world traveler. The scariest is with a guy in a New York Sheraton Hotel who makes sure to double lock the door and who in one scene does something to cause Malorie to fight him off.

This movie is the feature of Stephan Littger, who also wrote and edits the film and whose previous work, “Toxic Oranges:* a Wall Street Fairy Tale” is about a homeless seller of oranges on Wall Street who gains success by inventing a credit system. This marks him as a man with the imagination to create movies with fairy tale implications, the trippiness of “Her Composition” serving as a sharply edited bit of cinema with stunning sound effects, segments of musical compositions, and a story that makes the most of sounds—city scenes and sexual unions—that are transformed by one creative person into surprisingly absorbing music.

As for Malorie, Joslyn Jensen is in virtually every frame captured by Andres Karu’s lenses, sometimes in extreme close-up, sometimes with her hair in a bun (not attractive) and other times free flowing (yes!). Her emergence from a timid, frustrated near-failure to an assertive woman thanks to her sexual experiences (which only an artist would be able to translate into painting and music) is oddly credible. And the film is a love letter to New York; its subways, its diversity, its schools, and the creativity it offers to those who can profit artistically.

Story – B Acting – B+ Technical – A- Overall – B+

Harvey Karten is the founder of the The New York Film Critics Online (NYFCO) an organization composed of Internet film critics based in New York City. The group meets once a year, in December, for voting on its annual NYFCO Awards.

Her Composition

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Her Composition (2015) Stream and Watch Online

Watch 'her composition' online.

Looking to feast your eyes on ' Her Composition ' on your TV, phone, or tablet? Hunting down a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or watch the Stephan Littger-directed movie via subscription can be difficult, so we here at Moviefone want to take the pressure off. Read on for a listing of streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription alternatives - along with the availability of 'Her Composition' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into the various whats and wheres of how you can watch 'Her Composition' right now, here are some finer points about the fantasy flick. Released October 30th, 2015, 'Her Composition' stars Joslyn Jensen , Ryan Metcalf , Paul Helou , Matthew Rosenberg The movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 33 min, and received a user score of 53 (out of 100) on TMDb, which compiled reviews from 9 experienced users. What, so now you want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "A college music student turns to prostitution to make a little cash and look for inspiration as she has blocked on a major musical composition that she must create in order to graduate" 'Her Composition' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on Apple iTunes, Vudu, VUDU Free, Amazon Video, Tubi TV, YouTube, The Roku Channel, Google Play Movies, and Pluto TV .

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A college music student turns to prostitution to make a little cash and look for inspiration, as she has blocked on a major musical composition that she must create in order to graduate.

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Movie Review: Everything must change for her to create “Her Composition”

A student composer finds herself passed-over for a scholarship for playing it too safe with her music, abandoned by her boyfriend for being dull and naive and about to lose her New York apartment thanks to a rent hike.

She figures she can solve every single one of those problems just by becoming a sex worker. Who’s prim and demure and broke and uninspired now?

That pitch for “Her Composition” might point in a couple of promising commercial directions. But as it’s a “film festival” movie, arty and self-conscious, caught up in the visual “language of the cinema” and the artist’s need to flirt with madness and personal disaster to break through, it was probably never destined for a multiplex near you.

(It goes into limited theatrical release and onto VOD/DVD soon.)

It’s a striking movie built around an awakening performance by Joslyn Jensen (star of film festival favorite “Without”), playing a conservatory post-graduate hurling herself off a personal and creative cliff, something suggested by her dismissive mentor ( Kevin Breznahan ), taking in the sights, sounds, minutia and textures of the Big City as she reinvents herself and her music.

Malorie is a classic small-towner in the big city, delicate but flinty, loathe to accept defeat and “go home” when the Big Scholarship for Women is awarded to a male classmate.

Despondent at this news, comforted right up to the moment he says “I’ve been hanging out with someone else” by her cowardly beau, Malorie takes a walk on the wild side to help her pal Gila and their favorite non-profit, Purple Justice. They’re a rapist-shaming NGO in contact with a sex worker who’s offered to share her client list with them.’

The exotic and mysterious “Kim” ( Okwui Okpokwasili ) has taken careful notes and photographs and “rated” her various clients. It’s a list that promises to make noise in the media, we’re told. And Malorie, noting that Kim is also an artist (she denies it), is intrigued.

With Gila’s help, Malorie takes over Kim’s list — as an experiment, as an experience, as a money-making side hustle. She’s got two deadlines hanging over her — her Phd composition for “The Schmeerstein Ensemble,” a modern music quintet, and the end of any government investigation of “the list,” the paying customers she’s helped set up for arrest.

Complicating this? She’s timid and boring in bed.

But as she lies back and focuses on wallpaper patterns, a street busker outside the hotel window (one client likes it standing up against windows), of the sounds her sometimes tender, generally brusque, always selfish with perhaps even a rapist or two in their ranks lovers, Malorie loses herself in what could be her masterpiece.

Writer-director Stephan Littger doesn’t dwell on the morality of what’s going on, the “victimless” crime shrieked into scarlet-letter-shaming by a shrill organization that both supports sex workers and condemns, without irony, their clients.

Littger exults in the music of the city, from clacking subways to street cellists and bongo drummers, the gritty patter of life in New York. He gets lost in extreme closeups of ordinary objects allegedly “meaningful” thanks to their juxtaposition within the editing — a dead bird on the street, dead fly on the table, the card-reader on the subway, sneakers hanging over a telephone cable looking like musical notes as they do.

That is Malorie’s new experience of the city — at the atomic level. As she gathers input, she covers her newly-repainted walls with a Mind Map, charting ideas and inspirations to make them flow into creative output. It’s a vast, messy collage of torn sheets of music, drawings, busted door privacy chains, that dead fly, a torn plastic plate we’ve watched Malorie drag her nails across while eating take-out curry.

Screeeeek, screeeek.

Jensen makes Malorie seem on the spectrum in early scenes, meek but given to flashes of anger, slow to follow conversations, a tad too innocent to be in New York.

Her journey through the sex trade begins in fear, transitions to transactions and teeters on the cusp of guilt and guilty pleasure. With a return to fear reminding us why this “list” might be righteous.

Decoding the visuals here could be a fun exercise for some, but most of us will latch onto Jensen’s attention-consuming turn at the center of it all, a scattered, perhaps “talented” creative person whose eyes open to a new world of possibilities when she burns down that old life and throws herself into risks.

Malorie is a fascinating, prudish riff on amorality and creativity and Jensen makes her worth following all the way through to her inevitably climactic final “Composition.”

But for parents shipping their kids off to art, music, acting or dance conservatories, it deserves better intertitles than the pretentious quotes from Georgia O’Keef and Joan of Arc. A simple “Don’t try this away from home” would suffice.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, explicit sex

Cast: Joslyn Jensen, Margot Bingham, Kevin Breznahan, Christian Campbell, Okwui Okpokwasili , John Rothman

Credits: Written and directed by Stephan Littger. An Indie Rights/Picture Train release.

Running time: 1:33

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Spike Jonze's "Her" plays like a kind of miracle the first time around. Watching its opening shots of Joaquin Phoenix making an unabashed declaration of eternal love to an unseen soul mate is immediately disarming. The actor is so unaffected, so sincere, so drained of the tortured eccentricity that's a hallmark of most of the roles that he plays. It's like falling into a plush comforting embrace. Then one understands that the declaration isn't his, but something he, or rather, his character, Theodore, does for his job.

As the movie continues, and the viewer learns more of what an ordinary guy Theodore is—he checks his e-mail on the ride home from work, just like pretty much all of us these days—director Jonze, who also wrote the movie's script, constructs a beguiling cinematic world that also starts to embrace the viewer. The way Theodore's smart phone and its earpiece work is different from ours, and soon it becomes clear that "Her" is something of a science-fiction film, set in the not-too-distant but distinctly fantastic future. A big part of the movie's charm is just how thoroughly Jonze has imagined and constructed this future Los Angeles, from its smoggy skies to its glittering skyscrapers to its efficient mass transit system and much more. (There has already been, and there will no doubt be more, think pieces about how Caucasian this future L.A. is. There will likely be few think pieces about how the fashion for high-waisted pants in this future makes life unpleasant for the obese.)

The futuristic premise sets the stage for an unusual love story: one in which Theo, still highly damaged and sensitive over the breakup of his marriage ("I miss you," a friend tells him in a voice mail message; "Not the sad, mopey you. The old, fun you"), falls in love with the artificially intelligent operating system of his computer. The movie shows this product advertised and, presumably, bought in remarkable quantity, but focuses on Theo's interaction with his OS, which he gives a female voice. The female voice (portrayed beautifully by Scarlett Johansson ) gives herself the name " Samantha " and soon Samantha is reorganizing Theo's files, making him laugh, and developing something like a human consciousness.

It's in Theo and Samantha's initial interaction that "Her" finds its most interesting, and troubling depths. Samantha, being, you know, a computer, has the ability to process data, and a hell of a lot of it, at a higher speed than human Theo. "I can understand how the limited perspective can look to the non-artificial mind," she playfully observes to Theo. And while Samantha's programming is designed to make her likable to Theo, her assimilation of humanity's tics soon have the operating system feeling emotion, or the simulation of it, and while the viewer is being beguiled by the peculiarities and particularities of Theo and Samantha's growing entanglement, he or she is also living through a crash course on the question of what it means to be human.

In the midst of the heavyosity, Jonze finds occasions for real comedy. At first Theo feels a little odd about his new "girlfriend," and then finds out that his pal Amy ( Amy Adams ) is getting caught up in a relationship with the OS left behind by her estranged husband. Throughout the movie, while never attempting the sweep of a satire, Jonze drops funny hints about what the existence of artificial intelligence in human society might affect that society. He also gets off some pretty good jokes concerning video games.

But he also creates moments of genuinely upsetting heartbreak, as in Theo's inability to understand what went wrong with his marriage to Catherine ( Rooney Mara , quite wonderful in what could have been a problematic role) and their continuing inadvertent emotional laceration of each other at their sole "present" meeting in the movie.

This is all laid out with superb craft (the cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema takes the understated tones he applied to 2011's " Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy " and adds a dreamy creamy quality to them, so that even the smog layering the Shanghai skyline that sometimes stands in for Los Angeles here has a vaguely enchanted quality) and imagination. If there's a "but," it's that the movie can sometimes seem a little too pleased with itself, its sincerity sometimes communicating a slightly holier-than-thou preciosity, like some of those one-page features that so cutely dot the literary magazine " The Believer ." As in, you know, OF COURSE Theo plays the ukulele. And I'm still torn as to whether the idea of a business specializing in "Beautifully Handwritten Letters' is cutely twee or repellently cynical or some third thing that I might not find a turnoff. For all that, though, "Her" remains one of the most engaging and genuinely provocative movies you're likely to see this year, and definitely a challenging but not inapt date movie.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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'Madame Web' Review: Dakota Johnson Gets Trapped in Her Own 'Morbius'

Sony's 'Madame Web' is an utterly tedious slog of a movie drained of fun visuals and, most pressingly, any sense of tangible humanity.

The Big Picture

Madame Web 's uninspired cinematography and drab visuals waste the potential of the early 2000s setting.
Awkward writing and directing result in characters that lack depth and authenticity.
Madame Web fails to deliver the laughs and thrills expected from a superhero movie.

Credit where credit is due, Madame Web kicks off its runtime by giving the people what they want: a mom researching spiders in the Amazon right before she dies . The first scene of this comic book movie centers on the mother of Cassandra "Cassie" Webb scoping out arachnids in the Amazon with the seemingly trustworthy Ezekiel Sims ( Tahar Rahim ) by her side. However, as these two characters begin to talk, something is immediately obviously wrong. Words are rigidly spit out of the mouths of the actors on-screen rather than delivered with verve. This pair of souls are speaking as if they've never engaged in a conversation before! Director S.J. Clarkson fails to instill any excitement or tangible humanity in their rapport. The stilted line deliveries here are enough to make one wonder if the projectionist has accidentally played a Neil Breen movie by mistake.

Alas, no such luck. This scene merely functions as a warning to the viewer about what the next two hours of Madame Web entail. A slew of performers look as lost Webb’s mom as they navigate a script (penned by Clarkson alongside Matt Sazama , Burk Sharpless , and Claire Parker ) that never feels fully comfortable in its skin. Whether it’s trying to be funny, exciting, or intense, Madame Web always comes off as awkward and in dire need of a human touch. Save for offering up an instantly memeable moment where Dakota Johnson says “You did it!” in an inappropriately condescending tone, Madame Web has little to give moviegoers.

Cassandra Webb is a New York City paramedic who starts to show signs of clairvoyance. Forced to confront revelations about her past, she must protect three young women from a mysterious adversary who wants them dead.

What Is Going on in 'Madame Web?'

The critical flaw that deflates Madame Web is its lack of consistent tension . An urgency to protect these teenagers drives Webb to help a trio of people she initially believes are just strangers. Sims is a powerful man and they need protecting! However, on two different occasions, after this problem is established, Webb nonchalantly leaves the trio behind on their own so she can discover fragments of her backstory. One of those trips even involves our hero traveling outside of the country for a week! It’s hard to buy Sims as a threat if Webb feels comfortable leaving his targets unprotected in the forest for hours at a time.

Worse than a creaky narrative devoid of suspense, though, is how much Madame Web’s writing strains to emulate teenage girls cracking wise with each other or any other kind of positive human emotion . This is a screenplay that speaks in backstory and surface-level comic book references (like Sims always being barefoot). It doesn’t understand how people actually interact with one another.

A scene of Webb attending a BBQ with her pals, for instance, depicts “lively banter” containing all the naturalism of Peter Lorre trying to freestyle rap. This is supposed to be a gathering between friends, but none of the heroes and villains in Madame Web seem cozy with one another . Other lighter moments (like the three teenage leads dancing on a diner table for the approval of some boys) meant to flesh out characters are executed with discouragingly little spirit or believable humanity. Those diner shenanigans, for instance, come off as a rote recreation of teenage rebellion rather than something with real energy or passion (it doesn’t help that the personalities of these three individuals are tediously interchangeable even when they're bending the rules). In terms of ordinary interactions between human beings, only Johnson's genuinely amusing dry wit as she nonchalantly references her mom dying during childbirth at an otherwise chipper baby shower feels human.

Save for that one humorous sequence leaning on Johnson's best assets as an actor, Madame Web's attempts to flesh out its characters suffer from the same silted lines and awkwardly inhuman performances that plagued its prologue . Stan Lee once proclaimed that the creative impetus for Spider-Man in the first place was to put a teenager just like the reader into the world of superhero mayhem. Madame Web runs counter to that ethos with its batch of characters who never come off as authentic. They’re unrecognizably human individuals getting into antics that have no concrete emotional grounding. Good luck getting invested in anything on-screen.

How Does 'Madame Web' Look Visually?

Clarkson’s de facto visual style for Madame Web occasionally leans heavily on crooked camera angles and intentionally jagged editing by Leigh Folsom Boyd to communicate how Webb is now a woman permanently out of time. Her present and future are always colliding, so the images on-screen also overlap in what space in time they occupy. The most visually evocative scene of Madame Web depicts Webb and Sims talking about the trio of teenagers without ever moving their lips while occupying a sort of astral plane. This heightened conversation makes good use of that disorienting fusion of differing periods and personas.

Unfortunately, it’s the only real burst of creativity Madame Web offers. Otherwise, Webb’s superpowers are reflected through editing and camera angles reminiscent of so many other movies where people are aware of what the future entails ( namely time-loop films like Palm Springs or Groundhog Day ). Meanwhile, Clarkson, Boyd, and cinematographer Mauro Fiore disappointingly fail to lean into visual impulses that evoke the movie’s 2003 setting. Imagine if more of Madame Web’s filmmaking was reminiscent of early 2000s media like the “you wouldn’t steal a car” PSA . Perhaps then this superhero feature would finally have a sense of visual identity to it!

Reinforcing the blah visual aesthetic in Madame Web is the complete lack of colorful superhero costumes save for very brief glimpses into the future in just two scenes of the entire movie. Just eight months after Sony’s own Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse plastered movie theater screens worldwide with vibrant visions of superhero attire, Madame Web now has its leading ladies evading evil in completely ordinary outfits. This is a “grounded” superhero movie, with even the “evil” Spider-Man outfit donned by Ezekiel Sims drained of nearly all its color. Even darker weighty features like Certified Copy and The Northman have more variety in their color palette than this superhero movie blockbuster! Trying to lend “realism” to such an innately heightened character like Madame Web was always going to be a fool’s errand. Going this boring route merely solidifies Madame Web’s total lack of visual imagination .

'Madame Web' Will Leave Your Brain Instantly

The actors inhabiting Madame Web have done great work elsewhere , whether it’s Rahim in A Prophet , O'Connor in Selah and the Spades , or Johnson in The Lost Daughter . At their best, these performers have earned a positive reputation as artists for taking bold swings that stick in your mind long after the movies they inhabit finish playing. What a tragedy, then, that these actors have become trapped in Madame Web . The only thing that’s remotely memorable about this project is its most incompetent bits of filmmaking, like the distractingly awkward ADR work and editing surrounding Rahim’s performance leaving him rarely visibly speaking on-screen (think Val Kilmer in The Snowman ).

Beyond even those staggeringly amateurish filmmaking flourishes, Madame Web has none of the laughs or thrills that general audiences come to superhero movies for. Much like Morbius from two years ago, it’s a pale imitation of comic book motion pictures from the past. In this case, Web cribs pools of magic water, unresolved parental trauma, teenage superhero antics, and other elements from the last two decades of Marvel adaptations. Going that route merely makes Madame Web feel like a half-hearted rerun, though, rather than automatically rendering it as good as The Avengers or Across the Spider-Verse . Not even immediately delivering that sweet “moms researching spiders in the Amazon before they die” action right away can salvage Madame Web .

Madame Web wastes a talented cast on a superhero movie shockingly devoid of tangible humanity.

Dakota Johnson has one scene of wry humor at a baby shower.
Uninspired cinematography fails to take advantage of the early 2000's setting.
Awkward writing and directing leave the characters feeling like shells of themselves.
Drab visuals don't capture the vibrancy of the heightened source material.

Madame Web is now available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

WATCH ON NETFLIX

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‘The Substance’ Review: Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in a Visionary Feminist Body-Horror Film That Takes Cosmetic Enhancement to Extremes

Coralie Fargeat works with the flair of a grindhouse Kubrick in a weirdly fun, cathartically grotesque fusion of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and "Showgirls."

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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“The Substance” tells the story of an aging Hollywood actress-turned-aerobics-workout-host, named Elisabeth Sparkle and played by Demi Moore , who gets fired from a TV network because she is now deemed too old. In a rage of desperation, she calls a number that’s been handed to her anonymously and gets hooked up with a sinister sci-fi body-enhancement program known as The Substance. She is given a heap of medical equipment sealed into plastic bags (syringes, tubing, a phosphorescent green liquid, a gooey white injectable food product), and she’s told about the protocol regarding her new self — which, the program warns, will also be her old self. “The two of you are one,” say the instructions. What does that mean?

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Fargeat, who has made one previous feature (2017’s “Revenge”), works in a wide-angle-lens, up-from-exploitation style that might be described as cartoon grindhouse Kubrick. It’s like “A Clockwork Orange” fused with the kinetic aesthetics of a state-of-the-art television commercial. Fargeat favors super-close-ups (of body parts, cars, eating, kissing), with sounds to match, and she also vacuums up influences the way Brian De Palma once did (though he, in this case, is one of them). We’ve all seen dozens of retreads of the Jekyll-and-Hyde story, but Fargeat, in her imaginative audacity, fuses it with “Showgirls,” and even that isn’t enough for her. She draws heavily on the hallucinatory moment in “The Shining” where Jack Torrance embraces a young woman in a bathtub, only to see her transformed into a cackling old crone. Beyond that, Fargeat‘s images recall the exploding-beast-with-a-writhing-face in John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” the bloodbath prom of “Carrie,” and the addiction-turned-dread of “Requiem for a Dream.”

What makes all of this original is that Coralie Fargeat fuses it with her own stylized aggro voice (she favors minimal dialogue, which pops like something out of a graphic novel), and with her feminist outrage over the way that women have been ruled by the world of images. At first, though, the over-the-top-ness does take a bit of getting used. Dennis Quaid plays the brash pig of a network executive, in baroquely decorated suit jackets, who has decided to fire Elisabeth, and when he’s having lunch with her, shoving shrimp in his mouth from what feels like four inches away from the audience, you want to recoil as much as she does. But Fageat is actually great with her actors; she knows that Quaid’s charisma, even when he’s playing a showbiz vulgarian as reprehensible as this, will make him highly watchable.

And Demi Moore’s performance is nothing short of fearless. She’s playing, in some very abstract way, a version of herself (once a star at the center of the universe, now old enough to be seen by sexist Hollywood as past it), and her acting is rippled with anger, terror, despair, and vengeance. There’s a lot of full-on nudity in “The Substance,” to the point that the film flirts with building a male gaze into the foundation of its aesthetic. Yet it does so only to pull the rug of voyeurism out from under us. Margaret Qualley makes Sue crisply magnetic in her confidence, and the fact that Sue knows how to package herself as an “object” is part of the film’s satirical design. She’s following the rules, “giving the people what they want.” It’s clear, I think, that Qualley is going to be a major star, and you see why here. She takes this stylized role and imbues it with a hint of mystery. For “The Substance” is finally a story of dueling egos, with Elisabeth’s real self and her enhanced self going at each other in a war for dominance.

“The Substance” does indeed play off “Showgirls” and the whole history of Hollywood cat-fight melodramas. The movie, in its visceral way, is deliriously ambitious (and, at 140 minutes, easily 20 minutes too long). But as it moves into the final chapter, its relatively restrained interface with body horror erupts into something cathartic in its extremity. Sue, at this point, has taken most of the life from Elisabeth, which means that Elisabeth has turned into a body so decrepit she makes the bathtub hag in “The Shining” look like Grace Kelly. But Fargeat is just getting started. The climactic sequence is set during the taping of the network’s New Year’s Eve special, which Sue has been chosen to host, and what happens there must be seen to be believed. Even if you watch horror movies all year long, this is still one of the rare ones to come up with a true monster , not just a mass of warped flesh but a deformation of the spirit. This, the film says, is what we’re repressing. It’s what we’re doing to ourselves.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (In Competition), May 19, 2024. Running time: 140 MIN.

Production: A Mubi release of a Working Title Films, A Good Title production. Producers: Coralie Fargeat, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner. Executive producers: Alexandra Loewy, Nicolas Royer.
Crew: Director, screenplay: Coralie Fargeat. Camera: Benjamin Kracun. Editor: Jérôme Eltabet. Music: 000 Raffertie.
With: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia, Phillip Schurer, Joseph Balderrama, Oscar Lesage, Gore Abrams, Magtthew Géczy.

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Movie Review: Amy Winehouse story flattened in frustrating biopic ‘Back to Black’

This image released by Focus Features shows Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse in a scene from “Back to Black.” (Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse, left, and Eddie Marsan as Mitch Winehouse, in a scene from “Back to Black.” (Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Jack O’Connell as Blake Fielder-Civil, left, and Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse, in a scene from “Back to Black.” (Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse, left, and Jack O’Connell as Blake Fielder-Civil, in a scene from “Back to Black.” (Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse , reflected at left, and Lesley Manville as Cynthia Winehouse, in a scene from “Back to Black.” (Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Jack O’Connell as Blake Fielder-Civil in a scene from “Back to Black.” (Focus Features via AP)

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“ Back to Black ” as a movie is a tame and mediocre affair. A conventionally told biopic about a talented artist who became famous, struggled with drugs, depression and bulimia, and died early. There are nice performances from gifted actors like Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville, and a soundtrack of hits that helps fill the space.

But as a portrait of Amy Winehouse ? It is simply dreadful.

The main problem with any movie about Winehouse is that a defining film already exists — Asif Kapadia’s Oscar-winning documentary “Amy,” released four years after her death from alcohol poisoning at age 27. Told through archival material, home videos and observations from those around her, it felt as intimate and unfiltered as a diary.

“Amy” was a sobering portrait of addiction, fame and complicity that also let you get to know and love the person behind the songs, the eyeliner, the beehive, the bloodied ballet slippers and the invasive paparazzi photos. It was no one’s idea of sensationalistic and she’s doing most of the talking.

“Amy” was also a movie that didn’t sit well with her grieving family. Her father, Mitch Winehouse, said it was misleading and contained “basic untruths.” After it won the Oscar, he doubled down saying that it had no bearing on her life and was manipulative. Kapadia, he said, was more exploitative of his daughter than anyone.

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Timothee Chalamet, left, and Zendaya in a scene from "Dune: Part Two." (Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Following her death, Mitch started a foundation in her name to help young people and wrote a book about her and being the father of an addict. Her mother Janis narrated a documentary, “Reclaiming Amy,” released in 2011. And after years of declining to participate in a narrative biopic, the estate decided to allow one with full use the songs. Like many musical biopics made alongside an estate, it’s hard not to look at “Back to Black” skeptically, wondering whose interests the film is serving.

Sam Taylor-Johnson, who directed, has said that she wanted to take the idea of “blame” out of the equation, that the family had zero input on her cut and would not benefit financially. And yet it also seems like a direct response to Kapadia’s film, depicting more than a few key moments wildly differently. They’re not just shown in a different light — some are telling a completely different story.

The screenplay by Matthew Greenhalgh is empathetic to the ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil (O’Connell) and her father Mitch (Marsan), both of whom have been villainized over the years. In the film, most are just caught up in a whirl of inevitability and the retrospective blur of grief.

This image released by Focus Features shows Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse, left, and Eddie Marsan as Mitch Winehouse, in a scene from "Back to Black." (Focus Features via AP)

There seems to be an excessive amount of rationalizing in the way everyone involved talks about “Back to Black,” over justifying its existence and its choices. But just because everyone keeps telling us that it’s a celebration doesn’t mean that we have to get on board. I’m not sure what is celebratory about dramatizing this tragedy, or helpful, or artful, or particularly revelatory about it either. The media, for example, is reduced mainly to the paparazzi camped outside her place as though that’s where the problem stopped.

Taylor-Johnson has said she didn’t want to glamorize depression, addiction or bulimia either, but the latter, which she struggled with before she was famous, is barely even acknowledged. Depiction of eating disorders is inherently fraught, but there had to have been a way to address such a large part of her life and self-image more directly.

Though linear, the story is also oddly confusing, assuming that the audience knows many details of her life (like, say, the bulimia) and the people in it. The film rushes through major career moments in montage, seeming to slow down only for a few things: A performance, Amy’s face in various forms of drunken distress and agony or scenes with her and Blake. Was it attempting a freewheeling jazz form, or is it just messy?

Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse in a scene from “Back to Black.” (Focus Features via AP)

In some ways, this portrait of Amy Winehouse makes her immense talent the sideshow and her obsession/romance/heartache over Blake the defining story of her adult life. This is at least somewhat redeemed by the chemistry between Abela and O’Connell, who look far too glowing and healthy to be believable as heroin addicts.

But the greatest failing is how shockingly cliche the ending is. For all of “Back to Black’s” tiptoeing around delicate subjects, its romantically photographed sendoff to Amy is perhaps the most dangerously glamorized shot in the film. It doesn’t even fade to black after a title card announces her death. Before anyone can feel anything, they’ve cut to Amy telling the audience that all she wants is for her songs to make people forget about their troubles for a bit.

By this point, it reads more like a closing statement for a film that never wanted to challenge, offend or move anyone. Mission accomplished.

“Back to Black,” a Focus Features release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “drug use, language throughout, sexual content and nudity.” Running time: 122 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

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‘my sunshine’ review: poetry and understated charm propel a slender japanese figure skating drama.

Premiering in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section, Hiroshi Okuyama's latest follows a boy who starts training with a rising skating star and her coach.

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Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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In Hiroshi Okuyama’s My Sunshine , three souls find solace and poignant moments of self-discovery in figure skating. The film chronicles a season of the sport in a small town on a Japanese island, the kind of place whose melting snow and changing leaves inspire poetic musings. Guided by the beauty of the landscape and the nostalgia of childhood, Okuyama constructs a quiet narrative buoyed by an understated charm.

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‘Back to Black’ Review: No, No, No

The facts get softened and shuffled for an Amy Winehouse biopic that leaves her perspective at the edges.

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In close-up, a woman with large eyelashes and heavy mascara stands on a stage, bathed in lights.

By Alissa Wilkinson

The director of “Back to Black,” Sam Taylor-Johnson, has said repeatedly in interviews that the movie is meant to center Amy Winehouse’s story in her own perspective. That may or may not be meant as implicit criticism of “Amy,” Asif Kapadia’s Oscar-winning 2015 documentary about the singer, which wove together archival interviews — many damning — with family and friends as well as with Winehouse herself to make the case that everyone was at fault for her untimely demise.

Either way, Taylor-Johnson’s remarks suggest that Winehouse, who in 2011 died at the age of 27 of alcohol poisoning, has been co-opted in the years since her death. “Back to Black,” then, is an effort to tell the story the way she would have.

But, oof. If that was the aim, I’m comfortable saying it failed completely. “Back to Black” has some bright spots. One is Marisa Abela’s performance as Winehouse, which is deeply and lovingly committed, if at times a little distracting. A few sequences work, too, particularly her marathon pub meet-cute with Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell), the man whose exceptionally toxic relationship with Winehouse inspired the album for which the movie is named. (Unfortunately there are very few scenes in which we see Winehouse’s songs coming together — usually the best part of a musician biopic.)

“Back to Black” starts with Winehouse expressing that she simply wants people to listen to her music and forget their troubles for a while, and to know who she really was. Then it follows her through her early gigs in Camden pubs, her friendships and her fights with boyfriends. When she meets Fielder-Civil, everything changes — and not for the best. Always a heavy drinker, she gradually becomes addicted to all kinds of substances, in part because he is an addict. When he goes back to his girlfriend, she writes angry songs that become “Back to Black.” When he returns, things get worse.

Yet the facts of the real Winehouse’s life and struggles are impossible to ignore, and some of the movie’s choices, from a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh, seem aimed at rewriting her history without her consent. Fielder-Civil, for instance, has said he instigated Winehouse’s first encounter with heroin, but in “Back to Black” she starts shooting up on her own.

In the meet-cute scene, he introduces her to “Leader of the Pack,” by the Shangri-Las, of whom she claims to have never heard. Winehouse did indeed cite the Shangri-Las as an influence on “Back to Black,” but in interview after interview in “Amy,” musicians and producers extol the breadth and depth of Winehouse’s musical knowledge. Ahmir K. Thompson, also known as Questlove, has said that Winehouse schooled him on jazz, to a level that floored him. It’s not just hard to believe this scene happened; it’s almost insulting to Winehouse, as if she needed Fielder-Civil to educate her.

Or there’s the matter of Winehouse’s father, Mitch Winehouse (played by Eddie Marsan), whom she adored. “Back to Black” depicts him as a kindly if occasionally misguided man who only cared for his daughter’s well-being. The most damning line about him in Winehouse’s lyrics pops up in her most famous song, “Rehab,” in which she gives “my daddy thinks I’m fine” as a reason to stay out of rehab — a line based entirely in reality. In a scene in the movie, Mitch does say she doesn’t need to go to rehab. We never see her perform the song until the night of her Grammy wins, after she has in fact gone to rehab, and so the line just furnishes a rueful laugh for him.

Yet reality suggests dubious action on his part, too — such as the time he showed up in St. Lucia, where his daughter was recuperating, with a camera crew to film a Channel 4 documentary entitled “My Daughter Amy.” This isn’t represented in “Back to Black,” even though it’s part of Winehouse’s story, too.

Artistic license, the mushing and rearranging of facts, is common in biopics, for better or worse. It’s often necessary, since boiling a life down to fit into a two-hour feature film is no easy task. That a movie messes with the historical record a little doesn’t automatically make it bad.

But in “Back to Black” the omissions feel downright weird, as if something is being ignored. I can only speculate on the answer, but the speculation feels strong. Mitch Winehouse is the administrator of his daughter’s estate (and, incidentally, hated “Amy,” telling the filmmakers, “ You should be ashamed of yourselves ”). He has threatened to block a biopic of his daughter in the past, instead signing an agreement in 2018 for an authorized biopic with one of the producers of “Back to Black.”

Given the movie’s light-fingered treatment of some facts around the two most important men in Winehouse’s life, the picture starts to sharpen. “Back to Black” is far from the first biopic that smooths the edges off real people for the Hollywood treatment. But because the movie’s stated aim is to re-center Amy in her own story, it feels gross.

There are other things that feel weird in the movie, the veracity of which I can’t possibly know — Winehouse’s obsession, for instance, with having a baby, and the implication that she self-destructed because she and Fielder-Civil couldn’t conceive. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn’t.

Here’s what did happen: A vibrant, dynamic, abundantly talented woman whose life often didn’t feel much like her own has ended up at the center of a movie where her life, once again, is not her own — where the facts are manipulated to favor the men who arguably did the same at her expense when she was alive. Winehouse may someday get the biopic treatment she deserves. But I have to wonder if it’s even necessary. When she was alive, she did it all on her own, just fine. And we still have the album she called “Back to Black.”

Back to Black Rated R for drug use, language and sexual innuendo. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. In theaters.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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Her Composition
Rated: 2.5/4 Jul 25, 2018 Full Review Amyana Bartley Film Inquiry As a first-time feature for writer/director Littger though, Her Composition is ambitious and full of earnest affectivity.
HER COMPOSITION: A Sensual Journey Of Sound
HER COMPOSITION: A Sensual Journey Of Sound. July 20, 2018. Amyana Bartley. With all of the inundation of CGI filled mega messes in mainstream film, it's nice to get back to the basics of artistry. Her Composition follows Master's student Malorie Gilman ( Joslyn Jensen) through her sonorous journey to find inspiration and create her musical ...
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Her Composition (2015)
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Eye For Film >> Movies >> Her Composition (2015) Film Review ... Kermode "The film rests on an extraordinary physical performance by Jensen." Tweet. Malorie (Joslyn Jensen) is a student of composition. Her course is coming to an end; to secure a scholarship that will enable her to proceed to a pHd, she needs to produce a piece of work that will ...
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Her Composition
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Her Composition (2015)
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Currently you are able to watch "Her Composition" streaming on The Roku Channel, VUDU Free, Tubi TV, Pluto TV for free with ads or buy it as download on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google Play Movies, YouTube. It is also possible to rent "Her Composition" on Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Vudu, Apple TV online.
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Her Composition
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