Yosemite

    Yosemite
    2016

    Synopsis

    It's the fall of 1985. The intertwining tales of three 5th grade friends, Chris, Joe and Ted, unfold in the suburban paradise of Palo Alto, as the threat of a mountain lion looms over the community.

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    Cast

    • James FrancoPhil
    • Henry HopperHenry
    • Steven WiigMichael
    • Barry Del ShermanDaniel
    • George MaguireEd
    • Tony VellaBill
    • Carlisle ForresterWaitress
    • Clara AranovichNewscaster
    • James DarbyshireSteve
    • Todd Aaron BrotzeJohn

    Recommendations

    • 75

      Entertainment Weekly

      Franco gives one of his most subtle performances yet as a recovering-alcoholic father, and the three young newcomers’ performances are honest and affecting, capturing what it feels like to be adrift and on the verge of adolescence.
    • 70

      The Hollywood Reporter

      Yosemite is a contemplative drama, low-key perhaps to a fault. But Demeestere shows acute sensitivity in her understanding of boys and their growing awareness of the world, with its real and imagined menaces.
    • 70

      Variety

      Resolutely unshowy, sometimes almost too lower-case in its observations, Yosemite pays off in an authenticity that pervades both individual scene rhythms and performances.
    • 70

      Village Voice

      Like Gia Coppola's Palo Alto (2013), a lyric and biting evocation of contemporary well-to-do teendom, Gabrielle Demeestere's Yosemite mines Franco's fiction for its most vital quality: his unsentimental depiction of youthful insecurity, this time among fifth-graders.
    • 50

      The New York Times

      Ms. Demeestere’s direction winds up frustratingly splitting the difference between thoughtfully detached and just plain vague.
    • 50

      Los Angeles Times

      Although evocative and nicely observed, the coming-of-age drama Yosemite ultimately proves too low-key and elliptical to make much of an impression.
    • 38

      Movie Nation

      It never adds up to anything more than the mood Demeestere manages to translate from Franco’s fiction. Which makes Yosemite a “film festival movie,” nothing more than a promising idea or two and an interesting tone to recommend it.