Currently Browsing: Bechdel-Wallace List
Sofia Coppola’s new film The Bling Ring is both the work of an accomplished filmmaker speaking out on important issues, and the Cri de Coeur of a mother occupied daily with raising two young daughters. The main characters in The Bling Ring are three teenagers who steal millions of dollars-worth of stuff from the homes […]
Felicity Price (who also co-wrote screenplay) stars with Joel Edgerton in this terrific drama about an Australian couple who get in way over their heads while vacationing at a Cambodian beach resort. Action cross-cuts in time to draw us into “the mystery” after we have come to care about the characters, & cinematography & sound […]
NOTE: For my “Jewish Take” on Hannah Arendt, see my Blog Post on Second City Tzivi. Barbara Sukowa stars as the German-born political philosopher best-known today for her books on 20th Century totalitarianism. Von Trotta’s film (co-written with Pam Katz) focuses on her attempts to introduce nuance into discussions of the Holocaust when she covered the trial of Nazi […]
Craig Zisk, one of my favorite cable TV directors (Weeds! Nurse Jackie!) makes the leap to feature films with this giddy delight penned by Dan & Stacy Chariton. Linda Sinclair (Julianne Moore) is the eponymous high school English Teacher who must wrestle with the “omniscient narrator” in her head (hilariously voiced by Fiona Shaw) to […]
Last chapter in the Celine/Jesse trilogy after BEFORE SUNRISE (1995) & BEFORE SUNSET (2004), does not stand alone, but all together these three films prove that a whole really can be greater than the sum of its parts. Putting the son from his first marriage on a plane at the end of a summer together, Jesse […]
6/14/13: Click here to read my “Jewish Take” on Fill The Void (posted on the JUF website). Imagine: An Israeli woman filmmaker garners worldwide awards & nominations but I am not rooting for her? Despite beautiful technique and deep anthropological detail, this story of a young woman pressured into marrying her dead sister’s husband is like […]
Greta Gerwig (who co-wrote the screenplay with director Noah Baumbach) stars–yet-again–as a young Manhattan woman in her late 20s who is used to sailing thru life but suddenly finds herself in choppy water. Alas, we found it all a bit too self-conscious (with B&W visuals referencing Woody Allen & George Delerue music borrowed from Francois […]
Sarah Polley is an incredibly talented actress turned filmmaker, and we have literally watched her grow up on screen since adolescence, so we wanted to love this acclaimed doc but found it a bit of a muddle that ultimately delivers less insight than promised. People create narratives about their lives & those narratives often differ […]
7/11/15 UPDATE: Huge congratulations to always amazing Serena Williams for winning her 6th Wimbledon Championship 🙂 Click here to read all the details of the match in the UK Independent’s article “Serena Williams defeats Garbine Muguruza 6-4, 6-4 to clinch a sixth Wimbledon title of her career” Per comments below, I knew very few details of either […]
Well-intentioned doc co-directed by Lori Silverbush & Kristi Jacobson explores the problem of hunger in America. It looks like such a paradox: obesity yet starvation? But the experts assembled by Silverbush & Kristi Jacobson unpack it for us: too many Americans–way too many American children–are fed junk food because junk food is cheap whereas veggies are way more […]
Filmmaker Ann Hui (well-known in the East for her long & distinguished career but almost unknown in the West) hits a bull’s eye with A Simple Life, winner of film festival awards last year in Tallinn (Estonia) & Venice (Italy) as well as more predictable wins in China & Hong Kong. A Simple Life is the story […]
Completing her National Guard service in Iraq, “Kelli” has only one goal: get home & make life as normal as possible again for her husband & daughters. But it’s not so simple. Kelli can’t quite settle in & the family has new routines that don’t include her anymore. Linda Cardellini’s performance as Kelli is deeply moving. If […]
Like a long TV caper episode, but fun for all that. Katherine Heigl stars as a Jersey girl who starts working for her cousin the bail-bondsman after she loses her fancy sales job. Knowing nothing but her need for cash, “Stephanie” quickly learns how to shoot straight, keep her cool, & track down perps on the lam. And her […]
Phyllida Lloyd’s new film The Iron Lady is a bio-pic about Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1979 until November 1990. A million historical details, large and small, make Baroness Thatcher a unique individual, yet Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan choose to minimize the episodes that make their subject’s life specific […]
One evening Ajla (Zana Marjanovic) & Danijel (Goran Kostic) are two young people dancing in a trendy club in Sarajevo, the next they are enemies as Bosnia descends into ruthless civil war. Brilliant debut from Angelina Jolie who wrote screenplay & directed authentic cast members speaking their own languages. Click HERE for our FF2 haiku. […]
Sincere adaptation of memoir by Carolyn Briggs, Higher Ground is directed by & stars Vera Farmiga. “Corrine” (played as a teen by Farmiga’s sister Taissa) marries her rock musican boyfriend, but disappointment eventually drives them to seek consolation in religion. Longer review coming after I see this a 2nd time with RB.
“Mia” (Katie Jarvis) lives in an East London housing project with her mother “Joanne” (Kierston Wareing) and her younger sister “Tyler” (Rebecca Griffiths). Joanne is an arrested adolescent more comfortable in her frilly pink bedroom than her own kitchen, so Mia and Tyler are both growing up wild. Then a handsome man named “Connor” (Michael […]
The Lovely Bones is the story of a teenager named Susie who is brutally murdered by an innocuous-looking neighbor. While Mr. Harvey fastidiously covers his tracks, Susie is trapped in a parallel universe called the Inbetween (not yet Heaven but no longer Earth), where she watches as her loved ones struggle to go on living […]
Lone Scherfig’s terrific new film “An Education” opens in a classroom in an English suburb in the early 60s. The subject under discussion is Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. Written over one hundred years before scene one, Jane Eyre still maintains its curious hold on the female imagination. Must we be forever reminded that Mr. […]
Starts as a The Devil Wears Prada wannabee with Sandra Bullock in the “Meryl-Streep-as-Devil” role, but quickly becomes Ryan Reynolds’ film. Bullock just needs to be game & she is here. But Reynolds is surprisingly good as an Alaskan scion who wants to create his own destiny. I found Anne Fletcher’s film enjoyable albeit totally […]
Bright Star is the story of a woman named Fanny Brawne who falls deeply and hopelessly in love with a frail young poet. After he’s dead, this man becomes the famous John Keats, but when she first meets him, John is a lonely, solitary fellow with sad eyes and thin shoulders. John dedicates poems to […]
Brick Lane is a beautiful film that could have been even better. Based on a well-regarded novel of the same name by Monica Ali, Sarah Gavron’s film is about a young Bangladeshi woman named “Nazneen,” who is sent to London as a teenager to marry a man she has never met… (JLH: 4/5) Click here […]
After a week of exciting Chicago events, Adi & I flew to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. Thursday, she relaxed with family and friends in the AM while I went to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Even tho I’d been a member from afar for years, this was my very first visit. […]
Probably sensing that this was her one shot as a lead, Julie Kavner (beloved for her TV roles as “Brenda Morgenstern” & “Marge Simpson”) hits a homerun in this dramedy about a divorced mother of two who wants to be a stand-up comedienne. Samantha Mathis also shines as her teenage daughter. Writer/Director Nora Ephron makes […]
Based on Terry (“Tuff”) Ryan’s best-selling 2001 memoir The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less, Prize Winner is an Eisenhower-era haunted house movie in which the monsters are bankers, milkmen, priests, and policemen, while the damsel-in-distress is a tenacious Catholic housewife. Evelyn Lehman was a budding young journalist when […]
Screenwriter Suzannah Grant does for Cameron Diaz what she did for Julia Roberts in ERIN BROCKOVICH: creates a flawed but multi-dimensional woman & then helps her grow. (Based on the best-selling 2003 novel by Jennifer Weiner.) Get past the fact that these characters are all supposed to be Jewish (Shirely MacLaine plays “Bubbe”) & enjoy […]
BLUE CRUSH Directed by John Stockwell/Screenplay by Stockwell & Lizzy Weiss Key Performances: Kate Bosworth with Matthew Davis & Michelle Rodriguez Set-Up: Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth), Eden (Michelle Rodriguez) and Lena (Sanoe Lake) live to surf. They share a small house on Oahu and work as housekeepers in one of the local luxury hotels so that […]
