Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

david jones I am pretty generous with movie reviews. this one is pretty crappy. 55 min of a little girl not fitting in, doing boxing then randomly doing dancing and not fitting in well with no explation. then 55 min later girls start to have seizure and float for no reason, and nobody questions it. many questions and no answers, then the movie ends. pretty dumb

erika-2-160114 The acting was really bad.The fits that the girls had seemed really fake to me. For example when each girl was able to tell the grown ups what happen or when the young girl was telling the women what happen and then all of the sudden she had a fit. It was like the girls planed it out to get people to notice them or something. the plot was weak and music was not good.I really how the film was about black kids and hard things can get for them. I really like how thermal kid stood up for what she thought was right even when it meant she hurts her friends feeling. Also I like how her brother stood by her side even so he knew tiger mom would be upset when she finds out about the her kid was doing.I think people skip this film. I give it 2 out 10

Movie_Muse_Reviews A Cincinnati community center sees a sudden epidemic of incidents in which teenage girls start fainting and convulsing in Anna Rose Holmer's "The Fits," yet "science fiction" or "supernatural" are two words that belong nowhere near this film. Instead, Holmer uses this conceit as a tool in her 72-minute portrait of a tween girl finding her way socially and emotionally.So little of "The Fits" counts toward plot or action that you might wonder why Holmer "dragged out" what feels more obviously like short film material into a feature. Yet her patience and artistry pay dividends, at least for the open-minded viewer. The camera pierces a further layer of its subject's —11-year-old Toni — psychology, allowing the viewer to enter deeper into her point of view.Newcomer Royalty Hightower would obviously be a candidate to get credit for achieving such a high degree of empathy, but in actuality, it's Holmer's exceptional focus on Hightower. Her conscientious effort to tell the subtext of Toni's story more than anything else results in a film that speaks rather poetically to adolescence and self-discovery.Toni is a determined girl who understands the importance of working hard more than most. She goes with her brother to the community center each day to train and learn how to box, but she's transfixed by the girls upstairs in the Lioness dance troupe. We immediately see both the committed, tireless side of Toni and the side of her that longs to be a dancer, and so it's clear that she can dance if that's what she desires most.The premise of a girl boxer wanting to be a dancer is a refreshing subversion of gender role archetypes, and a gentle way for Holmer and co-writers Saela Davis and Lisa Kjeruiff to let viewers know that gender identity/roles are not a focal point of their story. This is a film about a girl finding herself, period.We get all these long, lingering, quiet moments alone with Toni in order to really experience how she deals with the emotional storm of her own desires, social pressure and the fear and panic induced by this outbreak of "fits." And there's nothing particular unique in how she copes, which is what makes accessing her consciousness, as the viewer, so effortless. The power of this particular film comes from that experience.All that said, it's hard not to wish that there had been just a few more external factors to add tension and drama to this story, especially with a premise that could've so easily gone that route. Kudos to Holmer committing to her cinematic portrait and not caving to more typical movie conventions, but something to hook the viewer a little more would have elevated her impressive artistry.The average moviegoer won't likely stumble upon "The Fits," so there's not a whole lot of danger in it being misunderstood and dismissed for leaning more heavily toward poetry than entertainment, but perhaps that "supernatural" premise warrants a bit of a disclaimer. Go in looking to experience what it's like to be 11 again, however, and you'll be floored by what Holmer has accomplished.~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more

Turfseer Who is Anna Rose Holmer? Well she's the writer and director of a 72 minute indie by the name of the "The Fits," which inexplicably has garnered a slew of accolades from a host of major critics. Like many fledgling indie directors, Holmer shows great promise in the technical area of filmmaking and The Fits doesn't disappoint when it comes to some great editing and cinematography. But as far as screen writing, Holmer doesn't have a clue how to develop characters or construct a plot featuring a modicum of suspense.Holmer's narrative is mainly shot in an inner city community center in Cincinnati, and her protagonist is one Toni, played by 11 year old Royalty Hightower, whom the critics have taken under their wing as cinema's next great child actor (I won't speculate as to why this has come to be—only to throw in my two cents that this is a young girl who lacks the requisite charm for placement in the pantheon of young, precocious, cinematic talent). The plot here (if there is one) concerns Toni's desire to join the Lionesses Dance Team, an all female pre-pubescent/teenage dance group that specializes in competitive dance drills. Toni finally makes the team, despite opposition from two older girls, who dislike outsiders infringing on their turf. In addition to the focus on choreography, there's the artificial intrusion of a plot point concerning some of the girls felled by seizures, fainting spells, which may or may not be blamed on contaminated drinking water inside the gym. The introduction of the "Fits"—the aforementioned seizures—does little to evoke suspense and awkwardly attempts to link the film's narrative to the horror genre.What then has captivated the critics about this very slight bauble of a film? Ty Burr, writing in the Boston Globe describes Toni's experience as a "rite of passage"—she's particularly impressed with a scene such as this one for some reason: " Toni piercing her ears in the community center's bathroom as her friends comment and help out."The NY Times critic, Mahnola Dargis, likes it because it's free of controversy: "The miracle of the movie is that, like Toni, it transcends blunt, reductive categorization partly because it's free of political sloganeering, finger wagging and force-fed lessons."Noel Murray writing in the A.V. Club feels that Toni's "awkward puberty" is a revelation: "For Toni, who practices and practices—fruitlessly—to move as gracefully and throw shade as fiercely as her peers, this new level of badass womanhood represents something else she may never be able to attain. The best she can do is to keep honing her own private, personal hybrid of fighting and stepping, while waiting for some inexplicable external force to define who she's going to be."Only Nikola Grozdanovic in IndieWire is on to something when he writes that Holmer is walking a very thin line between "special" and "disposable." Grozdanovic is perhaps the only brave enough critic to draw this damning conclusion about The Fits: " The emotional investment, fully rounded characters, and engaging events that are needed to make the film work on all fronts simply isn't there. Three writers (Holmer, Saela Davis, and Lisa Kjerluff) are credited for what turns out to be the film's Achilles' heel; and at some point on the way, it gets irreparably sprained."When all is said and done, The Fits is really a documentary masquerading as a short feature film. The subject matter is so slight that I wonder why its director was drawn to it in the first place. Director Holmer is guilty of perhaps a neophyte's hubris. With all the good scripts out there, why not work with someone who has an established track record or an exceptionally talented newcomer? Instead, it's the old indie film canard—a technical virtuoso attempting to develop a visually impressive but inert, intellectually barren script.