Empowering movies about women don’t have to tell stories about women overcoming circumstances, oppression, or violence; the most empowering narrative is often about overcoming ourselves. Queen of Katwe was one of the most effective feminist films of the year, recounting the true story of Phiona Mutesi, a Read More …
Scathing without being scandalous, Women Talking keeps the gaze on the titular women and avoids any attention to the men who have victimized them. The women of a small enclosed religious community are the victims of repeated sexual assaults, while the men who commit these crimes go Read More …
The Israeli film Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem is the rare work of craft that takes a single location conceit and morphs it from filmed theater to something purely cinematic. Director-writer siblings Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz are sure-handed in how they tell the story of Viviane’s Read More …
The festering of grief and the frightening ways such grief manifests itself is at the heart of The Babadook, director Jennifer Kent’s horror film about the relationship between a mother and her son. Amelia (Essie Davis) has never really accepted her husband’s death, which occurred Read More …
The “Disney Renaissance” of the late 1980s and early 1990s pushed the boundaries of animation by taking the formulas of Broadway musicals, applying them to fairy tales, and selling the results to grown-ups who might never have considered going to a Disney cartoon. So when Read More …
“The rich exist for the sake of the poor,” said St. John Chrysostom, “but the poor exist for the salvation of the rich.” Watching Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow—a tale of survival and friendship about a pioneer and cook (John Magaro) and the Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee) with Read More …
Tender, empathetic, and visually rich, Chloé Zhao’s contemporary neo-Western both affirms and subverts its generic roots, deconstructing and reconstructing the masculinity, violence, and individualism of the American myth of the Cowboy. The titular rider here is Brady (Brady Jandreau), a rodeo cowboy and horse trainer Read More …
Leave No Trace is a cinematic gem that you must treat yourself to! Ben Foster stars as Will, a traumatized war veteran who is trying to live off the grid due to his lack of trust in the government. His daughter, Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), is his Read More …
Tom Hanks turned down the role of Fred Rogers three times before he finally accepted it. Director Marielle Heller finally had to convince him – according to an interview published in Deadline – with assurances that her film would not be a traditional biopic. In Read More …
Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, according to its opening titles, is “based on an actual lie.” Billi’s Nai Nai (grandmother) has been diagnosed with Stage Four lung cancer, but the rest of Billi’s family has chosen to hide this diagnosis from Nai Nai. They tell Nai Nai Read More …