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With: Allison Williams, Logan Browning, Steven Weber, Alaina Huffman
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Written by: Eric C. Charmelo, Richard Shepard, Nicole Snyder
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Directed by: Richard Shepard
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MPAA Rating: NR
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Running Time: 90
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Date: 05/24/2019
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Cello Fever
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
I can think of few filmmakers around today as dependable as Richard Shepard. His films are always brisk, smart, and agile, and he moves easily between gripping suspense and bright comedy in a way that's almost Hawksian. (See Oxygen, The Matador, The Hunting Party, Dom Hemingway, and his touching tribute documentary I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale.) He's criminally underappreciated, but it's worth the effort to hunt down his movies on DVD, Blu-ray, or streaming. His latest, The Perfection, is a Netflix original movie, so it'll be easy for curious cinephiles to find, and it's just as good as any of his films. A kind of horror-thriller with humorous elements and a playful structure, The Perfection is centered on two brilliant cellists, Charlotte (Allison Williams, from Get Out) and Lizzie (Logan Browning, from the Netflix series Dear White People). When the older Charlotte was forced to quit her training to look after her sick mother, the younger Lizzie became the new star. But after Charlotte's mother dies, she returns to the fold, thus leading to a twisty symphony of passion and revenge, told through clever, time-twisting measures. Steven Weber plays their teacher who has a room so acoustically perfect that only the most special students are invited there.
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