WE GROWN NOW @ Film Forum (Wednesday)
This week I’m seeing WE GROWN NOW at the Film Forum. I can’t do a Tuesday screening this week so I’ll be going to the 8:15pm screening on Wednesday instead! The film has a 93 minute runtime so it should finish before 10pm. Since this is the Film Forum, we don’t need to coordinate buying tickets ahead of time.
WE GROWN NOW is a coming-of-age story set in Chicago’s infamous (and now demolished) Cabrini-Green housing project. It follows two very close 12-year-old friends as their families deal with the impact of a shooting that hits a little too close to home.
This is yet another film that I saw previews for at a previous screening and felt I absolutely had to see it. And reading reviews is making me feel even more excited. According to Tomris Laffly (Variety), “even in its quietest moments, WE GROWN NOW feels alive through the kids’ joint triumphant spirit and Baig’s discernible love and care for them.”
I think this is going to be a beautiful film.
Last week’s Sweet Sixteen was probably my favorite film I’d seen in a few weeks (wow I see a lot of movies…)! It started off exactly as I thought it would, with the kind of youthful chaotic energy I’d been hoping to be exposed to. But the second scene dashed those expectations quite expertly and I realized I’d signed up for something much more involved. It ultimately lent such humanity to its characters that (spoilers) the lack of resolution in its ending felt just as natural as the fact that our lives are not fully episodic and the consequences of our impactful stories are never fully contained within their narrations.