Just Saw It: Janet Planet
Annie Baker's directorial debut is a discomforting, intimate portrait of a struggling mother and a wide-eyed, intuitive daughter who draw difficult neighbors into their orbit.
I’ve just seen Janet Planet, and I highly recommend it — with an unusual recommendation: Be very careful in selecting where you see this movie.
I've never done this before — and I want Janet Planet to become one of 2024’s surprise success stories, so I hate saying this — but I'm tempted to recommend that you seek it out at an arthouse theater that isn’t playing other summer blockbusters. Or, perhaps you can just wait until you can see this streaming instead of seeing this in a theater. Why? If you see it in a multiplex, as I did, you’ll probably become painfully aware of any big summer action movie playing at the same time. As I watched Janet Planet at AMC Alderwood’s sixteen-screen theater, I struggled to hear the movie’s half-whispered dialogue due to the subwoofers rumbling next door like an ongoing thunderstorm. It felt like trying to appreciate a poetry reading in a tent across the street from an open-air monster truck show.
Nevertheless, the movie moved me. It’s a challenging drama that, in some ways, hits painfully close to home. Here are some first impressions:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc352712a-c700-415c-8859-36802b41d2ab_1400x849.jpeg)
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