Anna Margaret Hollyman is the one compelling reason to see “Small, Beautifully Moving Parts,” a microbudget road movie about Sarah Sparks, a callow young woman who is pregnant and in search of answers to her own questions about the mothers who preceded her and their yet-to-be-communicated secrets. The peripatetic Sarah identifies herself as a “freelance technologist,” repairing technology defunct and nearly so, puttering and muttering. Hollyman is such a fleet, charming presence, quick to react and quicker to gleam, that it’s possible to read much more into the short-story-slim quality of writer-directors Lisa Robinson and Annie J. Howell’s storytelling. It’s doubly moving: the character makes discoveries, and Hollyman sparks them to unlikely life. Her eyes alone are bright magic. With Richard Hoag, Andre Holland, Sarah Rafferty, Mary Beth Peil. 73m. Shot in twenty-one days on the Canon 7D DSLR camera. (Ray Pride)
“Small Beautifully Moving Parts” opens Friday at Facets. A trailer is below.
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
Talking Screens, December 16-22, 2022: "All The Beauty and The Bloodshed" is One of the Year's Finest | "Bardo" is a Small Story Told on an… "Avatar: The Way of Water," "All The Beauty and The Bloodshed," "The Volcano: Rescue From Whakaari" and "Bardo." PLUS: Bresson's "Au Hasard Balthazar," Andersson's "About Endlessless"; FACETS' "Holiday Detour" series; Chicago filmmaker-in-residence Daniel Nearing's "Sister Carrie" with an orchestra at Siskel; "The Thirty-Ninth Christmas Sing-A-Long & Double Feature" at the Music Box and Music Box Of Horrors and Shudder pull…
