From today’s Washington Post:

“ALL THE LIGHT IN THE SKY” becomes a funny, touching and intimate meditation on aging and acceptance — the perfect at-home bookend to Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” which is in theaters.

Appropriately enough for Swanberg, who has carved out an impressive career in the super-independent space of micro-budget film, “ALL THE LIGHT IN THE SKY” is also about how to keep oneself sustainable within a constantly changing and often cruel media landscape.

Put another way, Swanberg is addressing how we live and love within our means — environmental, emotional and biological. “ALL THE LIGHT IN THE SKY” poses deep questions with the lightest of touches (the funniest of which is co-star Larry Fessenden’s impromptu Jack Nicholson impersonation).

Read the full writeup below or on the Washington Post website!

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ALL THE LIGHT IN THE SKY

“All the Light in the Sky,” a 2012 movie by Joe Swanberg (“Drinking Buddies,” “Happy Christmas”), stars Jane Adams as Marie, an actress living by the beach in Los Angeles, her career stalled as she hits middle age.

At 45, Marie is still fit, getting up early every morning to don a wet suit and ride the Malibu surf. She auditions, but keeps losing roles to Kristen Wiig. Trying to buck her up, a friend gives her a mantra to repeat at tryouts: “I have 45 years of experience, 45 years worth of color to be in this moment.”

As Marie shakily tries to apply that wisdom, she’s joined by Faye (Sophia Takal), her 25-year-old niece who’s coming to California to maybe break into the biz herself. While taking pains to make the young and beautiful girl feel welcome, Marie embarks on researching a role with a solar engineer, striking up a possible romance with a younger suitor and trying to navigate the feelings of insecurity, competition and faltering self-worth that ebb and flow like the waves underneath her precariously perched apartment.

In any other filmmaker’s hands, “All the Light in the Sky” would devolve into catty fights and life-isn’t-fair breakdowns, but Swanberg and Adams never make Marie a pathetic creature. Rather, she’s vulnerable, and even in her most mortifying moments (a hilariously foiled swift and silent getaway after a sexual encounter), they’re never anything but tender. Against the stunning backdrop of Malibu and the sonic stylings of the Orange Mighty Trio, “All the Light in the Sky” becomes a funny, touching and intimate meditation on aging and acceptance — the perfect at-home bookend to Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” which is in theaters.

Appropriately enough for Swanberg, who has carved out an impressive career in the super-independent space of micro-budget film, “All the Light in the Sky” is also about how to keep oneself sustainable within a constantly changing and often cruel media landscape.

Put another way, Swanberg is addressing how we live and love within our means — environmental, emotional and biological. “All the Light in the Sky” poses deep questions with the lightest of touches (the funniest of which is co-star Larry Fessenden’s impromptu Jack Nicholson impersonation). It wafts in and out like an ocean breeze, with just the right soothing undernote of optimism beneath the salty tang. — A.H.