What Maisie Knew
Screening Dates:
Sun 8 September 5:00pm
Tue 10 September 2:30pm
Tue 10 September 6:15pm
Thu 12 September 8:30pm
The screening on Tue 10 September at 2.30pm is Silver Screen
The screening on Tue 10 September at 6.15pm is Food Free
Director: Scott Mcgehee, David Siegel
Starring: Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan
More battle of wills than tug of love, Henry James’s 1897 novel What Maisie Knew is here updated to present-day Manhattan.
Ageing rock star Susanna (Moore, never better) and permanently distracted art dealer Beale (Coogan, ditto) are the neglectful parents, the magnetic Onata Aprile their six-year-old daughter, and Joanna Vanderham the nanny who evidently cares more for her than they do. Once divorced, Beale swiftly marries Joanna as a custody gambit; Susanna responds spitefully by marrying Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård), a somewhat gullible barman, and Joanna and Lincoln are increasingly obliged to do the parenting for the knowing but still fragile Maisie.
McGehee and Siegel’s film is a powerfully executed, deftly observed meditation on an all-too-familiar domestic tragedy.
***** New York Times
“THIS MODERN-DAY ADAPTATION OF HENRY JAMES’S NOVEL ABOUT A CHILD SHUTTLED BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN HER DIVORCED PARENTS FEATURES AN EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE FROM NEWCOMER ONATA APRILE.” **** The Guardian
Critic: Cath Clarke
Date: 2013-08-21
Publication: Time Out
Quote: Sensitive and almost unwatchably perceptive about dysfunctional families -- and it's acted with knife-sharp precision.
Critic: David Thomson
Date: 2013-06-12
Publication: The New Republic
Quote: The film is touching, filled with taste and care, but not enough to avoid being coy and sentimental.
Critic: Randy Myers
Date: 2013-06-04
Publication: San Jose Mercury News
Quote: On the surface, this indie does sound like standard-issue material, but its dynamics are far more complex than its simple exterior.
Critic: Ann Hornaday
Date: 2013-06-03
Publication: Washington Post
Quote: What Maisie Knew gives the audience a ground-eye view of its mesmerizing title character, a plucky, charismatic New Yorker who navigates downtown bars and building lobbies with the street savvy of a pro.
Critic: Carrie Rickey
Date: 2013-06-03
Publication: Philadelphia Inquirer
Quote: The result is a film that deeply engages us on multiple levels. Not only do we wonder what Maisie knows and how she knows it, we want to get this seedling to a place where she won't have to be transplanted every day.
Critic: Mick LaSalle
Date: 2013-06-03
Publication: Hearst Newspapers
Quote: It's a study of human nature, not at its worst, but at its most typically pathetic, and it goes to show that the more things don't change, the more they stay lousy.
Critic: Andrew O'Hehir
Date: 2013-06-03
Publication: Salon.com
Quote: Intimate, unnerving and entirely addictive.
Critic: Joe Neumaier
Date: 2013-06-03
Publication: New York Daily News
Quote: The aggravatingly manipulative What Maisie Knew feels, perhaps deliberately, as if its emotions were drawn in brightly colored crayon.
Critic: David Edelstein
Date: 2013-06-03
Publication: New York Magazine
Quote: As Maisie, Aprile seems lit from within; a more vividly natural child actress I have trouble imagining.
Critic: Colin Covert
Date: 2013-06-03
Publication: Minneapolis Star Tribune
Quote: The story is sad, but the talent involved in its telling is elating.
Critic: Moira MacDonald
Date: 2013-05-30
Publication: Seattle Times
Quote: "What Maisie Knew" packs a surprising emotional punch, one that stays with you for a while when the movie's over.
Critic: John Anderson
Date: 2013-05-30
Publication: Newsday
Quote: Mischievous updating of the Henry James novel, made especially moving by young Onata Aprile.
Critic: Ty Burr
Date: 2013-05-24
Publication: Boston Globe
Quote: What Maisie Knew" is about the erosion of innocence in the midst of plenty, yet it rarely feels heavy-handed, so serene is its own faith in its tiny heroine's strength.
Critic: J. R. Jones
Date: 2013-05-23
Publication: Chicago Reader
Quote: Selfishness and cruelty never go out of style, which might explain why this millennial update of Henry James's 1897 novel works so well.
Critic: Claudia Puig
Date: 2013-05-23
Publication: USA Today
Quote: The camera is often at Maisie's eye level, emphasizing how adults are seen by the perceptive Maisie. The sad-eyed Aprile's honest portrayal is heart-wrenching.
Critic: Barbara VanDenburgh
Date: 2013-05-23
Publication: Arizona Republic
Quote: A raw, uncomfortable examination of a family torn apart by two parents who love their daughter only half as much as they love themselves.
Critic: Betsy Sharkey
Date: 2013-05-16
Publication: Los Angeles Times
Quote: Without losing the 19th century author's sensibility, screenwriters Carroll Cartwright and Nancy Doyne have brought into the modern age James' unforgiving examination of the effect of a messy divorce on a child.
Critic: Ian Buckwalter
Date: 2013-05-03
Publication: NPR
Quote: The film raises more uncomfortable questions about Maisie's uncertain future than it ever answers, but that's in keeping with the emotional honesty the filmmakers are striving for.
Critic: Peter Rainer
Date: 2013-05-03
Publication: Christian Science Monitor
Quote: We experience her upsets without the leavening of outside interferences. And because Aprile is such an intuitive performer, we are always searching her face for the imprint of her suffering.
Critic: Mary F. Pols
Date: 2013-05-03
Publication: TIME Magazine
Quote: Some moviegoers may opt for an easier cinematic pleasure than this carefully crafted, discomforting look at familial misery in hyper drive, but it is the most provocative movie about parenting I've seen since The Kids Are All Right.
