Little Woods

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🎙️ EPISODE 649: 02.21.23 Rarely are my suspicions that most big-budget and/or mega-franchise movies complete garbage confirmed in such a concrete, if oblique way. The fact that the writer-director of Little Woods was able to parlay this mess into a gig directing the much-maligned but moderately successful 2021 Candyman remake and then use that clout to snatch up a Marvel movie (literally The Marvels! coming this summer! **vomits**) says everything you need to know. It's not my intention to personally shit on this person (Nia DaCosta) but the simple truth remains that this movie isn't good. It lacks style, cohesive writing and is generally the kind of paint-by-number, Hulu-ass thriller I try to avoid. But it was on my stupid watchlist (for SOME reason), ergo: here we are. Starring the HOT young talents of Tessa Thompson (also of the MCU) and Lily James, this film can't decide whether it wants to be a society-skewering think piece or a gritty crime story and it ends up pretty much failing at both.

Tessa Thompson plays the most benevolent drug dealer of all-time, someone who only dealt oxy because she also needed to smuggle life-saving drugs across the Canadian border for her insurance-less mother? She's got eight days left on her probation but she needs $3,000 immediately. Hmm. I wonder if she gets back in the drug game. Narrator voice: she does.

The audience is constantly reminded about just how good of a person she is, and that the only reason she's in this mess is because: U.S. healthcare system. The virtue signaling isn't really a signal. It's the entire transmission. It's not that this isn't a real and pressing and important issue; it's that the film has so little to say about it beyond simply making said fact known and then goes a step further by framing the problem within a story that lacks simple logic.

For example: She makes 1K pushing drugs in about five minutes, but then is assaulted by a rival dealer who wants a cut the next day. Why doesn't she sell her whole supply for cheap — which seems ample! — and get out of the game? Instead she gives her dumb sister (James) the drugs and cash to stash in the RV she's been living in which was illegally parked in a store parking lot and it gets towed and the sister doesn't have the paperwork (she was just squatting when someone left it there) so now its stuck in the impound and they can't get it out so she gets wasted and gets in a bar fight and then breaks into the impound at night but the money and pills aren't there and she wakes up in her car having drunk-driven it off the road. At least we got some drama in this sequence, even if it's bad, and made totally worse by a horrendous rock song soundtracking it. Oh, also her sister needs an abortion but can't get one because: U.S. healthcare system. At one point she even goes looking for a back alley one at a strip club to no avail. You have that one on your fucked up, depressed, poor person movie trope bingo card?

I give the film a tiny bit of credit for ending on a slightly ambiguous note and not the uber-tragic one you might be expecting. It's too easy to say that movies like this are plainly "not for me" without pointing out the greater (and grating) flaws. Hey, but at least we know The Marvels (whatever the hell that is) is in good hands. And by "good" I mean "exactly what you dummies are looking for."

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 648 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 650 ⫸

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Little Woods is a 2018 crime thriller film, written and directed by Nia DaCosta in her feature directorial debut. The film stars Tessa Thompson, Lily James, Luke Kirby, James Badge Dale and Lance Reddick. It was released on April 19, 2019.