Revenge movie review: better served unhot
This rape-revenge action horror is solid as pure grindhouse exploitation. But the rendering of its rage-fueled female protagonist is too salacious for this to ever be considered feminist.
girls/women
Breaking In movie review: setting her house in order
This perfunctory home-invasion flick can’t whip up much suspense, and it strains for a feminism that it doesn’t know how to engage. But Gabrielle Union’s movie-star charisma shines through.
Life of the Party movie review: cut this class
The complete lack of conflict overshadows even the cringeworthy attempts at physical comedy. Where’s the story in a woman who positively sails through her midlife crisis? The endearing McCarthy deserves so much better.
The Judge documentary review: social (and legal) justice warrior
A portrait as delightful as its subject: Kholoud Al-Faqih, a pioneer of Islamic jurisprudence and as fiery as any Western feminist. Essential viewing for its smashing of stereotypes.
Tully movie review: thou shalt be nicer to yourself
A movie unlike any we’ve seen before, one deeply, intimately sympathetic to modern motherhood — to modern womanhood. Brilliantly wise and funny, and profoundly moving.
RBG documentary review: though she be but little she is fierce
A marvelous, funny, deeply moving biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg from her rise as a legal champion of women’s rights in the 1970s to her ascension as a Supreme Court justice and social-media hero “Notorious RBG.”
Beast movie review: a monstrous love
Electrifying and genre-busting, this romantic mystery thriller toys with our expectations and plays with ambiguity. Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn are mesmerizing separately and explosive together.
Mercury 13 documentary review: the even righter stuff
An essential documentary look at yet another example of historical feminism that should never have been forgotten: the first American in space might have and probably should have been a woman.
Let the Sunshine In (Un beau soleil intérieur) movie review: her own worst enemy
Juliette Binoche’s search for midlife love is drenched in ennui and punctuated by weary philosophizing. There’s not a lot of satisfaction in it, nor much by way of resolution. Very French.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society movie review: the stories too painful to tell
A wonderfully old-fashioned tearjerker, with a thoroughly delightful cast, where cosy quaint Englishness is leavened by a harsh reality of World War II that pop culture has ignored.
