Courtesy of Netflix
The Half of It (Netflix, streaming May 1)
The only Chinese-American high school student in her small town, Lonely Ellie (Leah Lewis) earns extra money writing essays for fellow students. Life with her single father (Collin Chou) is trying. Then Ellie’s routine is thrown for a twist when inarticulate jock Paul (Daniel Diemer) hires her to write love letters to the girl of his dreams, Aster (Alexxis Lemire). Ellie is surprised when she and Paul and, soon Aster, all become friends because Ellie too is secretly smitten with Aster. Leah Lewis anchors the film with her finely calibrated performance that conveys Ellie’s conflicted agenda. Written and directed by Alice Wu from her blacklist script submission in 2018, this coming-of-age tale benefits from Wu’s winsome voice.
The Infiltrators (Amazon, streaming May 1)
This docu-drama uses actors to portray two real-life immigrants who set themselves up to be captured and held in the 700-bed Broward Transitional Center in South Florida, a detention facility for potential deportees. Their reason for doing so was an attempt to free others they believed were wrongly held. Claiming detainees spent months or even years there with no due process, or legal help, this film is set in 2012. Politics aside, thriller fans will appreciate the tense and twisty action required to sneak sensitive legal documents in or out of the center. Likewise, the prison-tale trope illustrating those with the power to make one's stay difficult or relatively pain-free, and at what price?
