Women in Trouble (review)

Apparently, in Gutierrez’s mind, expanding the range of humanity available to women on film means they can be porn stars or prostitutes, they can be neurotic and indecisive, they’re all almost certainly suvivors of physical and emotional abuse, and they can be catastrophically dumb…

Coco Before Chanel (review)

Audrey Tautou looks *amazing,* surrounded by women who flounce around like fluffy Edwardian fruit cups. But moments like that — in which you really feel the impact of Chanel’s legacy — are, *tant pis,* all too rare…

Amelia (review)

This *Amelia* is a quiet, reflective film, and Earhart is not an icon or a symbol: she’s a human being, and the fantasy comes in how the film depicts her life and her achievements and everything about her not as something a *woman* did but something a *person* did.

An Education movie review: A-plus

Someone once said that perfect movies are boring and only flawed movies intriguing, and then along comes a movie like An Education, about which the number of things that are absolutely perfect is impossible to measure… and it’s thrilling and captivating anyway.

Whip It (review)

I always knew Drew Barrymore could be this cool: her directorial debut is a simultaneously sweet and kickass story about one girl’s finding her bliss, a movie that works within Hollywood conventions of storytelling to handily demonstrate that just because a tale is familiar doesn’t mean it can’t be fresh and funny and edgy, too.