A Good Person (2023)
Directed by Zach Braff
Allison's life falls apart following her involvement in a fatal accident. The unlikely relationship she forms with her would-be father-in-law helps her live a life worth living.
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17 films that influenced A Good Person
What critics say influenced A Good Person
It isn’t the familiarity of what transpires, even great addiction dramas like The Lost Weekend , The Days of Wine and Roses , The Man with the Golden Arm , Clean & Sober , and 28 Days can only play variations on a similar theme as far as their central components are concerned, it’s the direction Braff takes his characters that’s so gosh darn insulting.
It isn’t the familiarity of what transpires, even great addiction dramas like The Lost Weekend , The Days of Wine and Roses , The Man with the Golden Arm , Clean & Sober , and 28 Days can only play variations on a similar theme as far as their central components are concerned, it’s the direction Braff takes his characters that’s so gosh darn insulting.
As soon as we meet Allison, she’s grating, delivering a smarmy rendition of the Velvet Underground ballad “After Hours.”
Ali had a bright future ahead of her before the accident, as shown in a blissful engagement party capped off with her earnest performance of The Velvet Underground’s “After Hours.”
But when compared to movies like Half Nelson and Shame , Braff’s truisms feel better suited for a middle or high school screening than for anyone smashing little blue pills and snorting them to get high.
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“A Good Person” isn’t an easy ride but, like such disparate, if similarly themed, movies as “Rabbit Hole,” “Waves” and “Four Good Days,” it’s a haunting slice of real life that will make you think, feel and maybe even want to reach out to your loved ones.
Outside of “Love, Actually,” I can’t think of another movie whose mere mention inspires a more viscerally negative reaction than “Garden State.”
It is more formally conventional than his first film, "Garden State," and thankfully less self-indulgent than his second film, "Wish I Was Here." "A Good Person" benefits from the same shrewd sense of detail and character evident in both, taking on ambitious themes of addiction, abuse, abandonment, overwhelming grief, and finding a way to forgive the unforgivable, even when it means forgiving yourself.
Since then, Braff has stepped behind the camera several times, including on 2014’s Wish I Was Here and an early episode of Ted Lasso (which earned him an Emmy nod).
Braff, whose 2004 debut film "Garden State" was awash in self-conscious navel gazing (which is to say nothing of his crowdsourced 2014 effort "Wish I Was Here," a misstep all around), mines honesty from his characters and doesn't go for cheap workarounds to their many problems.
Following 2014’s Wish I Was Here , a crowdfunded “spiritual sequel” to Garden State that failed to garner positive critical or box office attention, Braff disappeared from the public eye.
His follow-ups, Wish I Was Here in 2014 and Going In Style in 2017, didn’t do much to boost his approval rating as an auteur.
Six years after his last directorial feature – 2017’s “Going in Style” – Zach Braff has taken his place behind the camera once more, additionally helming the first film he’s written as well since 2014’s “Wish I Was Here,” making this year’s “A Good Person” feel like a true return to form for the multi-hyphenate, as he seeks to show that he’s “still got it.”
It also sacrifices the pep and mordant wit of Postcards from the Edge, another addiction film, and ends up being ponderous.
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A Good Person is Zach Braff’s syrupy rendition of films like Ordinary People and The Sweet Hereafter.
A Good Person is Zach Braff’s syrupy rendition of films like Ordinary People and The Sweet Hereafter.
A Good Person is Zach Braff’s syrupy rendition of films like Ordinary People and The Sweet Hereafter.