Personal Shopper movie review: shadows of sorrow
Strange and melancholy, this genre-defying portrait of grief and loneliness puts Kristen Stewart’s onscreen persona of restive reluctance to very effective use.
girls/women
Beauty and the Beast (2017) movie review: ever just the same, never a surprise
Like a theme-park mounting of the 1991 cartoon, or the blandified pop version of an enchanting signature character tune. A watered-down pastiche of itself.
The Ottoman Lieutenant movie review: erasing the past with sleight of cinematic hand
Odious propagandistic attempt to enshrine Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide of World War I into cinematic history via a tepid and unconvincing romance.
Catfight movie review: punches not pulled
Takes women’s hostility out of the realm of the passive-aggressive and gives it free comedic rein physically in a way that is hilarious, disturbing, and pointed.
Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts (89th Academy Awards) review
My favorite of the nominees is “Sing,” a movie for right-now with its pushback against a bullying authority figure and its gently effective defiance.
Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts (89th Academy Awards) review
My pick: “Pearl,” blending new VR tech with old-fashioned characters and emotions, demonstrating storytelling possibilities that are beginning to open up.
XX movie review: women filmmakers bring a feminine bent to horror
My anger that women filmmakers doing a horror anthology is seen as a novelty almost overshadows my disappointment that these short films aren’t very scary.
Fifty Shades Darker movie review: where is the fantasy?
Thank god this insult of a movie doesn’t try to fool us into believing that the controlling Christian Grey is appealing. That would be even more horrific…
Prevenge movie review: baby bump off
Fresh feminist horror of a very welcome taboo-smashing kind. Nasty, hilarious, outraged and outrageous, and as poignant as it is blackly funny.
20th Century Women movie review: sometimes it’s hard to be a woman
Poignant and hilarious and wise, a melancholy ode to a moment when when the world was changing for women (and men)… and how it still and always is.
