Erika Cohn’s latest documentary is a bitter reminder of how women in public office need to be constantly excellent, and not just merely good.
The Party dir. Sally Potter
A small bathroom in a London townhouse is the site of large domestic ruptures.
Brown’s Canyon dir. John Helde
The wellness retreat becomes a grievance summit in John Helde’s latest.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool dir. Paul McGuigan
It has been observed, quite often, that there are very few good roles for Hollywood actresses of a certain age, and whether we take the fictional or real actresses, this observation holds.
Take My Nose…Please! dir. Joan Kron
Being judged for your looks is no longer a punch line.
The Unknown Girl dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
How responsible are we for our community? What are the limitations, the boundaries of helping others who are not our family or friends?
Jeanne Moreau (1928-2017)
Merci, Jeanne! Jeanne Moreau: A Real Woman Modernity and the legacy of war in Elevator to the Gallows (1958) La Notte (1961)
Landline dir. Gillian Robespierre
A well-crafted, perfectly-cast, subtle, and engaging portrait of a New York family going through some growing pains, Landline was a delight to watch. Robespierre and her team get the pertinent details of mid-nineties New York […]
The Midwife dir. Martin Provost
Claire Breton is surrounded by life. She is an old-school midwife, coaching women in the art of breathing, listening to their bodies, and making birth joyful. She owns a little patch of a vegetable garden […]
Pendular dir. Julia Murat
I couldn’t help but be reminded of Sally Potter’s 1997 The Tango Lesson. A woman, an artist, starts from a blank canvas. There is an empty, large space of floor waiting to be filled with […]
After The Storm dir. Hirozaku Kore-eda
Kore-eda is very much a filmmaker of place; he has lived and known many of the cities and towns in which his films are set. We are thus treated to an insider’s view of a […]
The Spectrum of Womanhood in Everything Else and Future Perfect
In The Future Perfect, eighteen-year old Xiaobin, recently immigrated to Buenos Aires, has her whole life ahead of her. Though she is in a foreign country and under financial and cultural obligation to her parents, […]
The World and Its Cinema: San Francisco International Film Festival 60
I’ve always appreciated the fact that this film festival, now celebrating its 60th year, has always been international in a well-curated and thoughtful way. Not that I haven’t enjoyed meeting filmmakers from previously un-represented countries […]
Frantz dir. François Ozon
Frantz Hoffmeister, a soldier, fiancé, son, and friend, is dead and thus physically absent, but you know from the first five minutes of the film that he will continue to be unnervingly present. Like memories […]
CAAMFest 35: Bachelor Girls
The “Bachelor Girls” interviewed in Shikha Makan’s brisk documentary are professional women in their 20s and 30s, educated and gainfully employed in the large, cosmopolitan Indian city of Mumbai. For some landlords, these women would […]
CAAMFest 35: The Lockpicker
Canadian filmmaker Randall Lloyd Okita (featured at CAAMFest 34) is known and admired for his oblique yet powerful narratives, even in his more abstract, short works such as Machine with Wishbone (2008) and Portrait as […]
CAAMFest 35: Leonine Films Picks
The intelligent, capable, and unmarried working women of Mumbai struggle to find decent housing in Bachelor Girls…all the world’s a Center Stage in this riveting collection of shorts (one of many in the festival)…LF favorite […]
The Salesman dir. Asghar Farhadi
I was already tense during the opening titles of Asghar Farhadi’s latest, The Salesman. Having seen several of his films, I was prepared for something akin to a thriller, or even a pastoral murder mystery, […]
Force of Nature: Tabaimo
In paying video homage to a museum’s collected works of Japanese masters, Tabaimo reminds us of how nature and landscape greatly influenced Japanese decorative art, and also reminds us of the power of time-based media […]
Women on Wall Street Take Charge
Money Monster (directed by Jodie Foster), is set in one of those shiny financial market TV shows full of exaggerated numbers and practically devoid of facts or pragmatic advice. Its king and money monster is Lee Gates, who […]
Our Little Sister dir. Hirozaku Kore-eda
Sagami Bay, blue hydrangeas, pale-pink cherry blossoms, freshly-picked plums, freshly-caught seafood, torrential rain, and four very elegant and dignified sisters who are as tough as mountains. In Our Little Sister (from the novel Umimachi Diary), […]
Frameline 40: Reconciling the Past and the Future
The mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando was very much on my mind as I watched the wide variety of films at the 40th Frameline Film Festival. It seems to me as though […]
SFIFF59: A Case for Female Documentarians
SFIFF59 made a strong case for supporting the work of female documentarians. I have been thinking a lot recently about how female documentarians are good at effacing themselves for the service of the story, and […]
Sundance Film Festival 12: Corpo Celeste by Alice Rohrwacher
Rohrwacher’s sympathetic but clear-eyed treatment of Southern Italian Catholicism is one of the most wonderful and truthful films I have seen in a long time. It has the feel of a narrative film and the […]
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