{"id":397946,"date":"2022-01-23T07:00:20","date_gmt":"2022-01-23T04:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-sharp-stick-review-lena-dunhams-first-disappointment\/"},"modified":"2022-01-23T07:00:20","modified_gmt":"2022-01-23T04:00:20","slug":"watch-sharp-stick-review-lena-dunhams-first-disappointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-sharp-stick-review-lena-dunhams-first-disappointment\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch &#8216;Sharp Stick&#8217; Review: Lena Dunham&#8217;s First Disappointment"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2b35e49d79d\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2b35e49d79d\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-sharp-stick-review-lena-dunhams-first-disappointment\/#%E2%80%9CWatch_Online_%E2%80%98Sharp_Stick_Review_Lena_Dunhams_First_Disappointment%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Watch Online &#8216;Sharp Stick&#8217; Review: Lena Dunham&#8217;s First Disappointment&#8221;<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-sharp-stick-review-lena-dunhams-first-disappointment\/#%E2%80%9C%E2%80%98Sharp_Stick_Review_Lena_Dunhams_First_Disappointment%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;&#8216;Sharp Stick&#8217; Review: Lena Dunham&#8217;s First Disappointment&#8221;<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-sharp-stick-review-lena-dunhams-first-disappointment\/#optional_screen_reader\" >optional screen reader<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-4' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-4'><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-4' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-4'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-sharp-stick-review-lena-dunhams-first-disappointment\/#Read_More_About\" >Read More About:<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CWatch_Online_%E2%80%98Sharp_Stick_Review_Lena_Dunhams_First_Disappointment%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Watch Online &#8216;Sharp Stick&#8217; Review: Lena Dunham&#8217;s First Disappointment&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9C%E2%80%98Sharp_Stick_Review_Lena_Dunhams_First_Disappointment%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;&#8216;Sharp Stick&#8217; Review: Lena Dunham&#8217;s First Disappointment&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<div>\n                        For a decade, Lena Dunham has kept more than busy, executive producing <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TV series<\/a> like \u201cCamping\u201d and \u201cGeneration\u201d and putting out her memoir. Yet she\u2019s been notably selective about her main slate of projects, and \u201cSharp Stick,\u201d which premiered tonight at the Sundance Film Festival, is her third major act. The first was \u201cTiny Furniture,\u201d the 2010 movie that launched her, and it was a gem: the portrait of a wayward young New York striver, played by Dunham, told on an unusual level of lacerating honesty. When I saw it I thought: There\u2019s something about how this filmmaker views her lead character \u2014 with open eyes, showing us her dreams but also, in close-up, all her flaws \u2014 that cuts against the grain not just of Hollywood but of so much indie-film piety.<\/p>\n<p>Dunham\u2019s second act was \u201cGirls,\u201d and that was a one-series revolution: not the first HBO show to feel \u201clike a movie,\u201d but the first to feel like it was beating the independent-film world at its own <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">game<\/a>. By shifting her allegiance, so early in her career, from big screen to small, Dunham anticipated the streaming paradigm we\u2019re in now \u2014 and \u201cGirls\u201d was also, of course, just a fantastic series, disarmingly funny and microscopically observant about the knowing self-delusions of the millennial state of mind. Even if you weren\u2019t in the demo, the show was chock-full of characters who felt like projections of so many of us.<\/p>\n<p>All of which is to say that the bar for \u201cSharp Stick\u201d is high, because that\u2019s where Lena Dunham\u2019s track record of artistry has put it. It\u2019s the first movie she has written and directed since \u201cTiny Furniture\u201d (as an actor, she gives herself a supporting role this time), and with all the clout she now has in the entertainment industry, you might expect it to be an ambitious statement, made on a major budget with an oversize dream cast.<\/p>\n<p>Yet maybe to deflect that demon of expectation, Dunham has made \u201cSharp Stick\u201d as a scaled-down venture, a tossed-off sketch of a movie, shot during the pandemic with the same kind of utilitarian aesthetic that marks any number of much lower-profile Sundance entries. Her breezy craft as a filmmaker is on display; so are her impulses as a provocateur. For this is a movie that, in just 86 minutes, drops in on such topics as youthful hysterectomy (Dunham underwent one in 2018 due to her ongoing battle with endometriosis), mothers who bombard their children with the sexualized oversharing of someone in a bad therapy session, and the ins and outs (in every sense) of online pornography. Toss in a heroine who\u2019s a 26-year-old virgin with the personality of someone 12 years her junior, who goes on a rapid-fire bender of experience that feels like it\u2019s out of some A24 version of \u201cBreaking Amish,\u201d and you\u2019ve got the recipe for\u2026well, a conversation piece.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSharp Stick,\u201d in its quick verbal exchanges, its naked sexuality, its <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a> air of busting taboos as if they were oversize balloons, is recognizably a Lena Dunham movie. But it\u2019s the first one of her projects in which the parts don\u2019t quite add up, because it seems as if what we\u2019re watching hasn\u2019t been so much created as contrived. Dunham, at various points, seems to be asking: What if I made a movie about <em>this<\/em>? And <em>this??!!<\/em> And <em>THIS??!! <\/em>The answer is that she has made a movie in which you feel her desire to get a rise out of you more than you actually feel connected to anything onscreen.<\/p>\n<p>The heroine, Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), may be in her mid-20s, but in spirit she\u2019s very much a <em>girl<\/em>, with a MacBook decorated by stars and kitty-cat faces, a voice of sugary flower-child innocence, and a tentative manner that marks her as the very quintessence of a waif. She has grown up on the outskirts of Hollywood along with her temperamentally opposite sister, Trey (Taylour Paige), an aspiring influencer whose booty dancing in the opening scene announces that this is not going to be a demure movie; and their mother, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, laying on the L.A. jadedness with a poison-tongued comedy as wry as it is theatrical. This wreck of a matriarch, who manages their gray-stucco apartment complex with the scrubby plants on the outside, has been married and divorced five times. But she\u2019s also a New Age flake who has fused her failure at relationships with her leftover \u201970s \u201cphilosophy\u201d to create a toxic brew of advice for her daughters. Namely: Go out, have your kicks, do whatever you want, but don\u2019t ever expect those men to stick around.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s part of why Sarah Jo is so withdrawn. The other reason, as we learn, is that she underwent a life-saving radical hysterectomy when she was 15, and it has literally scarred her; she scratches the marks from the procedure on her lower abdomen as if they were itches from hell. Sarah is working as a special-needs caregiver for Zach (Liam Michel Saux), whose parents are about to have another child. They\u2019re played by Dunham, as an overworked real-estate broker who takes out her frustrations on her husband, and Jon Bernthal, who plays Josh, the husband, as a stay-at-home slacker who\u2019s like Paul Rudd\u2019s Valley Dude brother. He\u2019s a harmless goof, but we can see that he\u2019s sexy enough to be trouble.<\/p>\n<p>Sarah Jo is drawn to him with a purpose \u2014\u00a0she wants, at last, to lose her virginity. But also because it sets up the kind of reckless situation that Dunham thrives on. Their sizzling affair is the best part of the movie, because it flows like life. It\u2019s people making bad decisions in a recognizable and entertaining way. And the joke, of course, is that all the erotic energy Sarah Jo has been tamping down comes busting out of her. Once she sleeps with Josh, she can\u2019t get enough.<\/p>\n<p>Jon Bernthal is a captivating chameleon of an actor (I had to remind myself that this past year alone he has played the ruthless Johnny Soprano and the genial tennis coach Rick Macci), and he makes Josh a well-realized doofus-scoundrel, maybe a bit in the tradition of Adam Driver\u2019s neurotic stud on \u201cGirls.\u201d And Kristine Froseth, whose <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>le-cheeked elegance suggests the young Joni Mitchell playing Dorothy in \u201cThe Wizard of Oz,\u201d enacts Sarah Jo\u2019s painful shyness and subsequent erotic awakening with uncorny conviction.<\/p>\n<p>But where is all this going? The affair turns out to be merely the setup for the rest of the film, in which Josh introduces Sarah Jo to the universe of online porn, and she becomes an instant convert. This is clearly a good subject for a movie; Dunham should have made a full-fledged drama about it. But the last half hour of \u201cSharp Stick\u201d plays, more than anything else, like a cooked-up episode. Turned on to porn, Sarah tries to dunk herself, almost literally overnight, in hardcore experience. She connects with strangers online, she makes an alphabetical list of all the outrageous activities she wants to try (A for anal, B for bukkake, C for creampie\u2026), and she forms an attachment to an adult-film star, Vince (Scott Speedman), covered in bad-boy tattoos. She seeks him out, and he responds and turns out to be\u2026an aggro porn stud with a feminist heart of gold.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t buy any of this. Not really. And I think that\u2019s because it\u2019s all a vehicle for what Dunham presents as her Big Message: a well-meaning but overly facile manifesto about sex positivity and the importance of cutting down on sexual anxiety in the age of online exhibitionism, all delivered in the movie by the most ironically wrong messenger you could imagine. Dunham, by the end of \u201cSharp Stick,\u201d seems to be trying to speak directly to her fans \u2014 to help them, to give them the advice they need. But that\u2019s not what a good movie does. A good movies leads us through an experience authentic enough to take us out of ourselves. \u201cSharp Stick\u201d winds up coming off like Lena Dunham\u2019s version of a late-period Todd Solondz film. It pokes and prods the audience with the showoff naughtiness of its \u201cincorrect\u201d conceits, and then, in the guise of liberation, it strands you.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-tags \/\/ a-children-icon-bullet lrv-u-font-family-primary u-letter-spacing-012 lrv-u-line-height-large lrv-u-color-brand-primary\">\n<h2 id=\"optional-screen-reader\" class=\"lrv-a-screen-reader-only\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"optional_screen_reader\"><\/span>\n        optional screen reader  <span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<nav class=\"o-nav  o-nav lrv-u-border-b-1 u-border-color-brand-secondary-40 lrv-u-border-t-1 lrv-u-text-align-center lrv-u-padding-b-025 u-padding-t-050@desktop u-padding-t-050@tablet u-padding-t-050@mobile-max lrv-u-margin-t-2 lrv-u-margin-b-2\" data-dropdown=\"\">\n<h4 id=\"\" class=\"o-nav__title lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-font-family-secondary o-nav__title a-content-ignore u-line-height-140 u-letter-spacing-0002\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Read_More_About\"><\/span>Read More About:<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<\/nav>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/plain\" class=\"optanon-category-C0004\">\n  !function(f, b, e, v, n, t, s) {\n    if (f.fbq) return;\n    n = f.fbq = function() {\n      n.callMethod ?\n          n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments);\n    };\n    if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n;\n    n.push = n;\n    n.loaded = !0;\n    n.version = '2.0';\n    n.queue = [];\n    t = b.createElement(e);\n    t.async = !0;\n    t.src = v;\n    s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n    s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s);\n  }(window, document, 'script',\n      'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n  fbq('init', '586935388485447');\n  fbq('init', '315552255725686');\n  fbq('track', 'PageView');\n<\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-movies-tv-series\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch Movies &#038; TV Series <\/a><\/span>category<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2022\/film\/reviews\/sharp-stick-review-lena-dunham-1235160743\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Watch Online &#8216;Sharp Stick&#8217; Review: Lena Dunham&#8217;s First Disappointment&#8221; &#8220;&#8216;Sharp Stick&#8217; Review: Lena Dunham&#8217;s First Disappointment&#8221; For a decade, Lena Dunham has kept more than busy, executive producing TV series like \u201cCamping\u201d and \u201cGeneration\u201d and putting out her memoir. Yet she\u2019s been notably selective about her main slate of projects, and \u201cSharp Stick,\u201d which premiered&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":397947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Sharp-Stick-Sundance.jpg?w=1000","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-watch-movies-tv-seriess"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}