CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 10/24/08

Sharp Edges, No Handles
—You're Going to Get Cut

By jason davis

Good Dick

Marianna Palka (also directed)

Writer-director Marianna Palka's debut finds an unnamed man (Jason Ritter) falling for an emotionally damaged and similarly anonymous woman (Palka) in a story that places character and intimacy front and center. The story unfolds at a measured pace, with the young man slowly infiltrating the woman's life, and much of the film's suspense is derived from the uncertainty of his intentions and the vehemence of her actions. Palka's spare characterizations strip away the descriptions that too many writers rely on and concentrate on what the two people do to reveal who they are. Only in the last third of the movie do we learn anything of the characters' back stories, but the process of bringing them together has been so engrossing that it almost seems like an excess to know anything of whom they are once the narrative has run its course.

Good Dick
Present Pictures
Rated R; 86 min.

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Jason Davis has been the DVD Manager for CS Weekly, a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Good Dick courtesy Present Pictures

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