It’s a hard movie to love, but one whose methodology and frame of reference are consistently fascinating.

| Aug 23, 2024

Hammel has a distinct voice that comes through in her script, direction, and performance.

| Original Score: B | Jul 24, 2024

Writer/director Theda Hammel's newest Sundance feature, Stress Positions is a sharp and layered satire about love in the time of the pandemic.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jul 8, 2024

It’s as if New York City itself is a fever that settles in like a fog: manic, oppressive, diverse, anxiety-ridden, intermittently hilarious. And claustrophobic. So claustrophobic. And in the end? Chaotic.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 4, 2024

Stress Positions feels like a movie that is orchestrated as much as directed and Hammel’s intuitive grasp on the rhythms of everyday conversation are a thing of wonder, granting the film an extraordinary energy and almost palpable freshness

| Jun 11, 2024

Theda Hammel’s debut feature Stress Positions is a darkly tinted comedy of errors that will push the viewer to their exhausted breaking point.

| Original Score: 4/10 | May 22, 2024

The prevailing sense of imbalance and frenzy is by design, but that doesn’t mean the artistic drive will be to everyone’s taste.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 13, 2024

“Stress Positions” is the cinematic equivalent of literature. It feels as if it is an adaptation of a novel with narrators who understand others more than they understand themselves.

| May 11, 2024

At turns laugh-out-loud funny, deeply melancholic, and downright radical, it arrives as the most invigorating and challenging film likely to be slotted under LGBT Voices on a streaming service one day.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 30, 2024

A remarkable COVID-set flick that throws ripe tomatoes at American liberal millennials in all their blunt performative mindsets.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 29, 2024

Nerves become frayed, but there’s a support system of friends, allies and collaborators that is so distinct and mostly reliable—until you throw a hot new male model into the mix; then all bets are off.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 27, 2024

Stress Positions is the type of aimless and smug indie comedy that exists so the movie's characters can aggravate each other and annoy viewers. The movie's diverse LGBTQ representation deserves better than this incoherent story.

| Apr 26, 2024

The cast is enthusiastic and often very funny, and, as a filmmaker, Hammel is one to watch.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 26, 2024

Creator/co-star Theda Hammel brings hilarious Marx Brothers style to a gay “party house” Brooklyn brownstone during the 2020 COVID Pandemic with many satirical barbs, including self-deprecating jokes.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 25, 2024

The film's a hoot. It makes Woody Allen's neurotic New Yorker look like an out-of-towner.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 24, 2024

The effortless diversity on hand gives the movie a blithe, even careless New York feel.

| Apr 22, 2024

In her zeal to capture pandemic anxiety accurately, Theda Hammel pushed for a level of realism that is downright unpleasant to revisit.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Apr 22, 2024

It will probably make a lot of people laugh in recognition (of themselves, or people they know.)

| Apr 21, 2024

If the film concentrated more on this and less on the increasingly chaotic proceedings on display, it might have become more than an endless litany of smug obnoxiousness.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 19, 2024

It’s like having a conversation with people you care about even as their respective egos increasingly suck up all the oxygen in the room, leaving you gasping for air just so you can get out one more laugh.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 19, 2024