juliawgriffin

'We Were the Lucy Ones' is beautifully made and couldn't have arrive at a more timely moment. It explores the lives of a Polish family and their friends in the run-up of the German occupation of Poland and through the war. It does a superb job of helping us to understand 'How could something like this happen? How did they not understand what was coming?' Well, we don't see regimes like this coming because it's so evil as to be unthinkable. Like the proverbial frog slowly boiling in a pot the well drawn, relatable characters illustrate how, step by step, little by little, we can accept the most inhumane behavior while believing it won't get any worse. We should all be thinking about how these atrocities happen now. Watch it.

The Tender Bar is sweet slice of American life, redolent of and perfectly capturing a specific time and place. This is not a flashy, catchy, fast film, but a deliciously slow look at a life. My only complaint is that I want more.