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To the Stars

2019

Martha Stephens

Kara Hayward, Liana Liberato, Jordana Spiro, Shea Whigham ...

5.8

31

Drama In a god-fearing small town in 1960s Oklahoma, bespectacled and reclusive teen Iris endures the booze-induced antics of her mother and daily doses of bullying from her classmates. She finds solace in Maggie, the charismatic and enigmatic new girl at school, who hones in on Iris’s untapped potential and coaxes her out of her shell. When Maggie’s mysterious past can no longer be suppressed, the tiny community is thrown into a state of ... [+]

	Media	Author	Review
		Tim Grierson Screendaily	"A delicate black-and-white film about two Oklahoma outsiders which is quietly moving (...) Stephens’ observant film illustrates what can be beautiful and also wrenching about being vulnerable and open"
		Jordan Raup The Film Stage	"Stephens and writer Shannon Bradley-Colleary excel in building fully-formed characters (...) Each scene has a resonating vitality"
		Sheri Linden The Hollywood Reporter	"The screenplay by Shannon Bradley-Colleary veers between the incisive and the overwritten, and Stephens' direction can lapse into self-consciousness (...) [It] has an undeniable emotional pull"
		Manohla Dargis The New York Times	"[Stephens[ handles this material smoothly, creating a solid, tangible sense of place with landscapes, gusts of wind and a blue sky that feels more confining than sheltering."
		Dennis Harvey Variety	"[It] is modern in an on-the-nose, finger-waggling way that feels condescendingly trite and artificial (...) A pretentiously overblown yet undercooked Amerindie soap opera."
		Leslie Felperin The Guardian	"The period trappings (...) are lush and smartly deployed without being heavy-handed, and the two young leads are very watchable (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"
		Ryan Lattanzio IndieWire	"'To the Stars' is a dream place fleshed out with real world details by production designer Jonathan Guggenheim"
		Tomris Laffly rogerebert.com	"[It] doesn’t reinvent the coming-of-age wheel (...) But there is still an undeniable earnestness to this modest period effort (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"

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