Free Ride | |
---|---|
![]() Film poster | |
Directed by | Shana Betz |
Written by | Shana Betz |
Produced by | Susan Dynner Cerise Hallam Larkin Anna Paquin Stephen Moyer (executive) Wendy Williams |
Starring | Anna Paquin Drea de Matteo Cam Gigandet Liana Liberato |
Cinematography | Quyen Tran |
Edited by | Danny Daneau |
Music by | Jeff Russo |
Production companies | Aberration Films Casm Films Pantry Films |
Distributed by | Phase 4 Films |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 86 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Free Ride is a 2013 American crime drama film produced by and starring Anna Paquin. It was written and directed by Shana Betz (aka Shana Sosin), and is based on her childhood in Fort Lauderdale. The film premiered at the 2013 Hamptons International Film Festival. [2]
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (March 2014) |
Set in the late 1970s, Christina (Paquin) is a single mother from Ohio who escapes her abusive partner, along with her two daughters; teenaged MJ (Liberato) and seven-year-old Shell (Acres). She moves to the Florida coast where she meets up with a friend (De Matteo) who gets her a job in drug smuggling. But Christina must meet the challenges of protecting and providing for her children, with her oldest daughter being more defiant and the hazards of her occupation. [3]
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (March 2014) |
Filming locations for the film included various sites throughout Sarasota County, Florida (including Venice and Englewood). [5]
Free Ride premiered at the 2013 Hamptons International Film Festival on 11 October 2013. [2]
Free Ride opened the 28th Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLiFF) on 18 October 2013. [6]
Free Ride had a limited theatrical release on 10 January 2014. [7]
For directing Free Ride, the inaugural Tangerine Entertainment Juice Award (honoring an outstanding female filmmaker) was given to Shana Betz at the 2013 Hamptons International Film Festival. [8] [9]
Free Ride has received negative reviews. Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 14% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 7 reviews, with an average score of 3.9/10. [1] On Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 based on reviews from critics, the film has a score of 41 based on 9 reviews, considered to be "mixed or average". [10]
Writing for The Hollywood Reporter , John DeFore said the film was "[a] loving portrait of a mother many would say deserves a much more critical eye". [11]
Stephen Holden of The New York Times writes that "[f]rom top to bottom, [the story] feels authentic, and its laid-back, nonjudgmental tone evokes the easygoing world of Jimmy Buffett songs celebrating how changes in latitude bring changes in attitude. Much of the movie seems bathed in the pink-grapefruit haze of a Florida sunset. [...] Free Ride offers an unsettling vision of a demimonde whose inhabitants live with the reality that there may be no tomorrow." [12]
Diego Costa of Slant Magazine gave the film two out of four stars, and commented that "Paquin's believable performance keeps the all-too-neat narrative from completely surrendering to cheesy melodrama, and Betz's script is refreshingly devoid of embellishment or poetic ambition. But the filmmaker's too-insistent refusal to commit to the melodramatic or to the suspenseful only makes Free Ride seem like empty dramatization in the end." [13]
Elizabeth Weitzman of New York Daily News gave the film two out of five stars, commenting that Betz was "unable to do the story justice as either a writer or director. [...] While this true-life odyssey should be the basis for a compelling drama or even a taut thriller, slack direction and a weak screenplay undermine the plot’s inherent tension." Weitzman thought Paquin was miscast and "never settles into the role." [14]
The Piano is a 1993 period drama film written and directed by Jane Campion. Starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, and Anna Paquin in her first major acting role, the film focuses on a mute Scottish woman who travels to a remote part of New Zealand with her young daughter after her arranged marriage to a frontiersman.
200 Cigarettes is a 1999 American comedy film directed by Risa Bramon Garcia and written by Shana Larsen. The film follows multiple characters in New York City on New Year's Eve 1981. The film stars an ensemble cast consisting of Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Dave Chappelle, Guillermo Díaz, Angela Featherstone, Janeane Garofalo, Gaby Hoffmann, Kate Hudson, Courtney Love, Jay Mohr, Nicole Ari Parker, Martha Plimpton, Christina Ricci and Paul Rudd. The film also features a cameo by Elvis Costello, as well as paintings by Sally Davies.
Richard Stuart Linklater is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for films that revolve mainly around suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993); the Before trilogy of romance films, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013); the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003); the animated films Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006); the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014); and the comedy film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016).
Time Out is a 2001 French drama film directed by Laurent Cantet and starring Aurélien Recoing and Karin Viard. The film is loosely based on the life story of Jean-Claude Romand, and it focuses on one of Cantet's favorite subjects: a man's relationship with his job.
The Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) is an international film festival founded in 1992, by Joyce Robinson. The festival has since taken place every year in East Hampton, New York. It is usually an annual five-day event in mid-October and is held in theatre venues located in the Long Island area of New York, United States. Approximately 18,000 visitors attend each festival and close to a hundred films are featured each year, including an annual representation of at least twenty countries and an awards package worth over $200,000. HIFF was founded as a celebration of independent film in a variety of forms, and to provide a forum for independent filmmakers with differing global perspectives. The festival places a particular emphasis upon new filmmakers with a diversity of ideas, as a means to not only provide public exposure for festival content and its creators, but to also inspire and enlighten audiences. The festival has presented films that have subsequently been considered highly successful productions; the 2008 event featured eventual winners of the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Independent Spirit Award "Best Picture" accolades, and the 2011 season consisted of 24 Academy Award nominations.
Canvas is a 2006 drama film written and directed by Joseph Greco about a Florida family dealing with a mother who has schizophrenia. The film premiered October 2006 at the Hamptons International Film Festival in New York.
Tanner Hall is a 2009 drama film about four girls coming of age in boarding school. It was written and directed by Tatiana von Fürstenberg and Francesca Gregorini. It stars Rooney Mara, Georgia King, Brie Larson, Amy Ferguson, Tom Everett Scott, Amy Sedaris.
Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is a 2009 American independent black-and-white romantic musical film directed, written, produced, shot, and co-edited by Damien Chazelle in his feature directorial debut, and it recasts the MGM musical tradition in a gritty, vérité style. It stars Jason Palmer, Desiree Garcia and Sandha Khin. The film features a unique mixture of live jazz performances and choreographed tap dancing, as well as several more traditional musical numbers.
Erased is a 2012 Canadian-Belgian action thriller film directed by Philipp Stölzl, starring Aaron Eckhart and Olga Kurylenko. The story centers on Ben Logan an ex-CIA agent and Amy, his estranged daughter who are forced on the run when his employers erase all records of his existence, and mark them both for termination as part of a wide-reaching international conspiracy. It was released in the US on 17 May 2013, following its acquisition by RaDiUS-TWC, the multiplatform distribution label of The Weinstein Company. It was retitled Erased for the US market.
A Promise is a 2013 English-language French drama romance film directed by Patrice Leconte and written by Patrice Leconte and Jérôme Tonnerre. The story is based on Stefan Zweig's novel Journey into the Past and stars Rebecca Hall, Alan Rickman, Richard Madden, and Maggie Steed. It was screened in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
Girl on a Bicycle is a 2013 English-language independent romantic comedy directed and written by Jeremy Leven, produced by Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann, and starring Vincenzo Amato, Nora Tschirner, Paddy Considine, Louise Monot, and Stéphane Debac. Girl on a Bicycle was filmed in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, and Paris, France.
The Best of Me is a 2014 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Hoffman and written by Will Fetters and J. Mills Goodloe, based on Nicholas Sparks' 2011 novel of the same name. The film stars James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan with Luke Bracey and Liana Liberato.
The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden is a 2013 feature-length documentary directed by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine. It is about a series of unsolved disappearances on the Galapagos island of Floreana in the 1930s among the largely European expatriate residents at the time. The voice cast includes Cate Blanchett, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Josh Radnor and Gustaf Skarsgård.
Noble is a 2014 film written and directed by Stephen Bradley about the true life story of Christina Noble, a children's rights campaigner, charity worker and writer, who founded the Christina Noble Children's Foundation in 1989. It stars Deirdre O'Kane, Sarah Greene, Brendan Coyle, Mark Huberman and Ruth Negga.
The Duke of Burgundy is a 2014 British erotic drama film written and directed by Peter Strickland, and starring Sidse Babett Knudsen as Cynthia and Chiara D'Anna as Evelyn.
The Damned, also known as Gallows Hill, is a 2013 American horror film directed by Víctor García. The film stars Peter Facinelli, Sophia Myles, Nathalia Ramos, and Carolina Guerra. The film features a family and group of friends stranded in a storm and looking to seek refuge in a house inhabited by an ancient evil presence. The film was produced by Peter Block, Andrea Chung, and David Higgins, and is a joint Colombian and American production. The film had its world premiere at the Sitges Film Festival on October 17, 2014. and was released on video on demand on July 25, 2014, before a limited release by IFC Midnight on August 29, 2014.
Refuge is a 2012 American drama film written and directed by Jessica Goldberg, based on her play of the same name. It stars Krysten Ritter, Brian Geraghty, Logan Huffman, and Madeleine Martin.
The Preppie Connection is a 2015 crime drama film co-written and directed by Joseph Castelo, based on the infamous 1984 incident where Choate Rosemary Hall student Derek Oatis, along with a handful of friends, ran a cocaine smuggling operation on the school's campus. The film stars Thomas Mann, Lucy Fry, Logan Huffman, Sam Page, Jessica Rothe, and Bill Sage. It had world premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival on October 10, 2015. It was released in the United States on March 18, 2016, in select theaters and through video on demand by IFC Films.
Mountain is a 2017 Australian documentary film, co-written, co-produced and directed by Jennifer Peedom. It premiered at the Sydney Opera House in June 2017. Mountain follows Peedom's 2015 documentary film Sherpa.
Banana Split is a 2018 American comedy film directed by Benjamin Kasulke and starring Hannah Marks, Liana Liberato and Dylan Sprouse. It is Kasulke's feature-length directorial debut.