Everything in Ham on Rye seems to occur between the lighting of the firecracker at the start of the film and its explosion in the final seconds. The first half of the film, which follows the teens on their pilgrimage to the deli, is a love letter to youth and suburbia in … Aesthetically, Ham on Rye is difficult to place, combining a sense of the 70s, 80s, 90s and early 2000s to present a weird conglomerate of nostalgia that at once feels alien and yet so achingly familiar. ‘Ham on Rye’: Film Review . Read full review As someone who is a beloved fan of the teen genre film, you’d think that I would find this idea refreshing and entertaining, but ‘Ham On Rye’ comes off as pointlessly meandering and posturing to make itself seem different. Others watch in anticipation, and when the fuse is finally lit, so is the film’s story, bursting into a colorful, abrupt, and raw take on the coming of age picture. T yler Taormina’s Ham on Rye, in which high school children come of age while moseying around the San Fernando Valley in anticipation of an undefined formal event, sets the audience up for a lark.Conflicting details give the impression that the film is divorced from time, with the children’s clothes—long and flowing dresses, gaudily ill-fitting suits—suggesting … What We Think: The opening scene for Ham on Rye is a simple yet incredibly important one: a person tries to light a firework, but his lighter just isn’t working. Taormina has made a movie about our love-hate relationships with the small towns we grow up in and our desire to escape to something better. Costumes, locations and set pieces are all reminiscent, as opposed to defining, of specific eras and it’s only towards the end of the film that we realise this is a story … Reviewed by: Jennie Kermode "The score draws on the kind of timeless English melodies one might expect to hear in a Ben Wheatley or Robin Hardy film, and those white dresses begin to take on overtones of sacrifice." Carson Lund‘s superb cinematography, apparently influenced by photographers like William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, picks out boys riding skateboards, borrowing Dad’s Volvo, and … Eye For Film >> Movies >> Ham On Rye (2019) Film Review Ham On Rye. When Haley tries to reconnect with her friends, who seem to have vanished, the central metaphor of Ham on Rye kicks in. Ham On Rye (2021) Perhaps the unmoored feeling of Ham on Rye is down to the use of mood to guide narrative and character, rather than vice versa. And that seems to be this movie’s modus operandi; to subvert the expectations of what a teen movie can and should be. That’s as misleading as calling Eraserhead a … Ham on Rye is not obviously political, but it is also deeply political, pointing out, in lazy, absurdist, carelessly clever frames a deep-set American wrongness that was quietly murmuring away long before the current blowhard moment, and that will continue long after. Filled with images both lyrical and eerie, Tyler Taormina’s debut feature, Ham on Rye offers a cinematic meal of solid calories made fancy through some impressive presentation. Though the story, itself, may be minimal, it resonates long afterwards, its implications universal beyond the borders of … This vague description traces out some of the strange outlines of the movie, but it only becomes stranger in the way in which Taormina has crafted the film; not for nothing was Ham on Rye’s most visible festival screening at the typically ardently experimental Filmmakers of the Present section at the Locarno Film Festival.Perhaps the most notable is the use of young actors that … Film poster: “Ham on Rye” Ham on Rye (Tyler Taormina, 2019) 3 out of 4 stars.. In the beginning, and just for a little while, Tyler Taormina‘s “Ham on Rye” seems like every other no-budget suburban coming-of-ager you’ve ever seen, if maybe better shot. 22 October 2020; The Hollywood Reporter ; Promotional materials bill Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye as a “coming-of-age comedy,” comparing it to Dazed and Confused and John Hughes films.