Tribeca 2021: Giants Being Lonely Giants Being Lonely will screen during the Tribeca Film Festival this month and we have a sneak peek at what to expect. Check it out below! https://youtu.be/oY9p9vJbCeQ Bobby (Jack Irving) is the star pitcher on his high-school baseball team, a motherless dreamer whose alcoholic father
New Movies to Watch This Week: In the Earth, Beast Beast, We Broke Up, Hope
Peter Debruge, provided by
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With traditional release patterns still in turmoil as Hollywood and the world adjusts to the pandemic, it can be intimidating to keep up with when and where new films are being released but the truth is, there are more movies coming out each week now than ever before. It’s just a question of where to look.
Let
Variety help you find that next well-earned bit of escapism, whether it’s a Milla Jovovich stunt spectacular (like “The Rookies”) or a sexy Japanese manga adaptation (à la “Ride or Die” on Netflix). Here’s a rundown of those films opening this week that
Directed by Grear Patterson.
Starring Jack Irving, Ben Irving, Lily Gavin, Amalia Culp, Gabe Fazio, Alejandro Castro, Larry Miller, and Stella Schnabel.
SYNOPSIS:
A pair of players on a successful high school baseball team, the Giants, come of age in the American South.
In concept, everything about
Giants Being Lonely draws me in; it’s about people from different backgrounds (mostly poverty) with all sorts of rough edges (there is everything from teenage substance abuse to taboo affairs here), it’s a coming-of-age story that doesn’t water down the harshness of the real world, and it’s even grounded in the sport of baseball. Not major leagues mind you, but high school baseball with enough effective scenes showcasing the excitement of the game and the drive of its ambitious small-town players.
Giants Being Lonely, about two boys on a high school baseball team, shows impressive filmmaking skills from co-writer/director Grear Patterson. Familiar, even universal issues of growing up, identity, and intimacy are presented with a lyrical, dreamlike tone. Some scenes are almost a series of stills, as though we are leafing through an old-fashioned scrapbook, with snapshots pasted on black pages, long stretches with no music. The images recall the impressionistic, subjective way our memories are stored.
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The cinematography by Hunter Zimny and editing by Ismael de Diego and producer Olmo Schnabel leave much unexplained, letting our imagination fill in the gaps. This is underscored with the leafy, naturalistic North Carolina setting and the near-absence of technology, which give the story a timeless quality and allow for the kinds of missed connections that cell phones and email have all-but-eliminated from contemporary stories.