Tag Archives: Thomas Doherty

Queen City

Dandelion

by Hope Madden

Filmmaker Nicole Riegel returns to her Southern Ohio roots, but Dandelion delivers a decidedly more lyrical look at the Buckeye state than her remarkable 2021 indie breakout, Holler.

Kiki Layne is Dandelion, a frustrated musician playing to disinterested crowds at a hotel bar in Cincinnati. Confronted by the reality of her shelf life, she heads to a biker rally in North Dakota for an audition to open for a major touring act.  The audition goes terribly, but she meets Casey (Gossip Girl’s Thomas Doherty), who rekindles her dying flame of creativity—among other things.

The film plays a bit like an American version of John Carney’s Once. Loosely plotted around songwriting sessions and picturesque sightseeing, Dandelion delivers more harmony than melody, but that’s often OK. When the script weakens—a convenient stretch of dialog, a predictable turn of the plot—cinematographer Lauren Guiteras’s camera, Layne and Doherty’s performances and the music itself strengthens.

Doherty’s all vulnerability and tenderness. Layne—in easily her best role since If Beale Street Could Talk—finds a way to hold anger, resignation, hope and joy in the same moment.

Riegel’s depiction of intimacy, in the core relationship as well as the act of creation, is tactile: fingertips, chords, a rock’s surface, veins throbbing in a throat. There’s real poetry in the direction, in the way voiceover conversation floats around landscapes and sunsets, Black Hills and backroads.

The live music is as infectious as the romance, although neither is really the point. Dandelion is a character study at heart, and Layne more than delivers on that promise. But Riegel does get a little bogged down with the beauty and atmosphere—as lovely as the film is, at a full two hours, some of the poetic meandering feels like filler.

It’s interesting to see Riegel take such a sharp turn from the grim authenticity of Holler to the poetic beauty of Dandelion, but there is a common thread of fighting to find and keep yourself that gives both films focus and life.

Family Feud

The Invitation

by George Wolf

If you thought Get Out was too nuanced, Ready or Not too wickedly funny, and what they both needed was some trusty Twilight obviousness, The Invitation is waiting for you.

Nathalie Emmanuel (Some Furious films, Game of Thrones) stars as Evie, a struggling art student in NYC who takes a DNA test and finds she has some new kin overseas.

Evie lost her dad when she was just a teen, and is still hurting from her mother’s recent passing only months ago, so this news lifts her spirits enough to accept a free trip to London for a lavish new-family wedding.

The country estate reeks of wealth, and Walter, the Lord of the Manor (Thomas Doherty) is handsome and charming. Flirtations help distract Evie from the ghostly apparitions, bumps in the night, and blood sucking.

Everyone’s very interested in Evie, giving little thought to the bride and groom who seem nowhere to be found.

Huh.

Director and co-writer Jessica M. Thompson borrows liberally from better films while leaning on tired devices such as red herring jump scares, waking from a nightmare, and handy clues that are nice enough to present themselves right when you need them.

But even those clues seem subtle next to the contrived exposition that takes liberties with vampire lore while it telegraphs the get out of jail free card that Thompson and co-writer Blair Butler (the dreadful Hell Fest) have for Evie. And by that time, all the character names taken from Stoker feel less like homages and more like desperation.

This invite promises only bargain-priced goth, watered-down frights and surface level commentary on classism and white privilege. The pivot from the Get Out setup to the Ready of Not revenge tour is much too long in coming, with a payoff that just isn’t worth the wait.

So wherever that bride and groom are, I bet they’re having more fun.