This review is part of Cinepunx’s coverage of the 2025 Woods Hole Film Festival
They say, “You can’t teach an old dog news tricks.” Well, that’s never quite rang true for me. In my experience, the old dogs are generally more interested in learning and growing than the young dogs, already set in their way through an upbringing filled with participation trophies, entitlement, and the idea that they can and should do ANYTHING they want. If someone can do anything they want, they usually choose nothing much. But forget new tricks. Magic Hour isn’t about ‘new’ ones – it’s about reclaiming your old ones; it’s about doing what’s best for you and learning to prioritize yourself as much as others; and, it’s about kindness. The act of it. The practice of it. The false idea that you have to avoid it to exert control. Filmmaker Jacqueline Christy has crafted a loving ode to never giving up on your dreams.
Harriet Peterson is in a rut. She’s ‘lost her spark’, at least according to her philandering husband, who announces to her on their anniversary that he wants a divorce. Floundering after giving up her dreams as a promising filmmaker to raise a family and do the 9-to-5 thing, Harriet decides it’s time to put herself first, for a change. So, she enrolls in film school. What happens next is a confluence of events that puts Harriet right where she belongs, but gives her enough complications to showcase her innate patience and kindness, while also giving us a blueprint for how to be in charge without being an asshole.
I can’t remember another film about a middle-aged woman rediscovering her love for filmmaking, but Magic Hour was worth the wait. This is, thanks, in large part, to a tremendous performance from Miriam Shor as “Harriet”. Shor has been a hard working character actress for decades, best known as “Diana” on the television series, Younger, and as “Yitzhak” in Hedwig & the Angry Inch, a role she originated on stage and went on to play in the film version. She rarely gets the opportunity to carry the dramatic heft of a film like this, and she was clearly up to the challenge. Harriet’s sweetness and affability is front and center, but she leaves shades of gray that find interesting ways to surface throughout. Notice her patience as she helps a struggling actor with his lines (the always reliable, Austin Pendleton). It’s a patience that has come from years of dealing with children and an exhausting husband. In a small way, Harriet needed her detour into domesticity to prepare her for the work of a filmmaker.
So much of the filmmaking aspects of this narrative feel entirely authentic. Though this is Christy’s debut feature as a writer/director, she spent years behind the camera as a Second A.D., so I imagine most of these scenarios come from lived-in experience. Watching the ways in which Harriet is pushed aside in favor of the ideas of her male colleagues is telling, but the frustration we feel as the audience is nowhere close to the frustration felt by Harriet and women like her all across the industry. Christy has tapped into her well of experience and generated something like an exorcism, freeing herself, and liberating Harriet. This might be a small movie, but so was The Last Picture Show. So was Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
Don’t stop dreaming. That’s at the core of Magic Hour, and it’s a lesson worth taking.
Rating: ***1/2/***** (currently playing on the film festival circuit)
