In the year 2021, films have been influenced by so many things, not least of which are a pandemic and a worldwide grief from loss of life, the climate change crisis, the continued erasure of Black history from American education, the demand for an acceptance of a wider diversity onscreen to reflect societal diversity, a …
The current state of the world suggests we’d be ill advised to watch a documentary about the loss of yet another majestic animal to extinction. The Velvet Queen, or La Panthère des Neiges, as it’s called in its country of origin, France, is absolutely nothing like that. This documentary is really a celebration of the grandeur and …
So much of what shapes the narrative and tone of Clara Sola is unspoken. Writer/director Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s first feature balances the story between protagonist Clara (dancer Wendy Chinchilla Araya, in her acting debut) and nature itself, which exists as almost as another character. The cast moves through the story like choreographed dancers in an often wordless …
I’ve never wanted so badly for a character to be hit by an asteroid as the lead character played by Lea Seydoux in auteur writer/director Bruno Dumont’s France. The film is meant to be a satire on fame, celebrity, and the blind adulation of news personalities and their takes on the news, and as such, it’s …
A lot of people are going to leave the cinema or turn away from their home theater after seeing The Lost Daughter feeling unsettled. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s screenwriting and directorial feature debut elicits visceral feelings, some of them unpleasant. She would probably say that’s one of the points of her psychological drama, which she adapted from …
Though Cat Daddies sounds like the name of either a rockabilly band or a group you’d find in a kink dungeon, it’s actually the hashtag used online to describe feline-loving dudes, and as such is the perfect title for a new documentary from writer/director Mye Hoang, Cat Daddies. This joyful movie profiles a collection of 9 men, proud …
Are plants aware, and what does that even mean? Is it true using psilocybin in a controlled environment can actually alter understanding of self permanently? What is left of us, of our consciousness, when we die? These are just a few of the universal subjects being examined in the documentary Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness, from filmmaking …
Can you remember the first time you really knew you were going to die? You know, when you learned that every human and living being on the planet has an expiration date, including you? What if that date was Christmas, and everyone else was going to die, too? That’s the premise for writer/director Camille Griffin’s …
If you have cats in your home, if they are part of your family, it is Louis Wain you have to thank for it. He was the 19th century illustrator of many cat images you’d recognize but might not attribute to him, and he introduced Victorian London to the wonder and joy of cats. A …
One of my most powerful cinematic memories is from 1948’s The Snake Pit, starring Olivia de Havilland, who was nominated for an Oscar for playing Virginia Cunningham. That movie, and the book it was based on, literally changed mental health in the United States. In it, Virginia has been sent to a state mental hospital after …
