Obvious Child

Here are the best movies of 2014 so far! (Note: These movies have all been released in theaters and I am not including movies that I saw at film festivals that have not been yet released to the public.)

If there's a way to emote both overwhelming exhaustion and unadulterated joy on one's face, somehow, Gillian Robespierre has pulled off that unique distinction. Shortly after meeting the first time director of the critically acclaimed 'Obvious Child,' she shows me a thick packet, which is just today's schedule...

This week a very different kind of romantic comedy hits theaters -- combining the sort of incredibly human relatability we've come to expect from independent films with the classic tropes of the rom-com genre, 'Obvious Child' comes from the mind of writer/director Gillian Robespierre and tells the late coming of age story of Donna, a stand-up comedian played by real-life comedian Jenny Slate... Re

When I met with Jenny Slate, she's sitting alone in a giant conference room in the basement of a Soho hotel, a room that is pretty much devoid of anything except for two chairs. Slate certainly isn't "on message" during this interview and speaks from the heart, which makes what's she's saying extremely appealing. And her face is constantly full of emotions; even though, as I find out, she's battling a cold.

From 'Knocked Up' to 'Juno,' we've seen how women cope with unplanned parenthood, though they always seem to end with the birth of a child. 'Obvious Child,' however, from writer-director Gillian Robespierre, gives us another and totally relatable option: what if our fumbling heroine decided to get an abortion? And what if that was just totally OK?