Director Sam Greene’s emotional and experimental documentary 32 Sounds makes the viewer or listener feel gloriously bathed in sound for over an hour and a half. It is a meditation on its power. The film allows and invites you to consider sound in ways perhaps, unless you’re a sound technician or sound artist, you haven’t considered it …
Movie Reviews
Gabby Giffords: Won’t Back Down SXSW AWFJ.org review
Whenever filmmaking team of Betsy West and Julie Cohen are slated to release a new documentary, I get excited. They have a way of being sensitive and hard-hitting in equal measure. What is most striking about their new documentary Gabby Giffords: Won’t Back Down is how, for most of the duration of the film, viewers will likely …
Skate Dreams SXSW AWFJ.org review
Anyone who thinks women have equality can look to continued the lawsuits and struggles for acceptance for equal pay in the sports world. It can be really depressing. Those who need a jolt of positivity can watch the new documentary Skate Dreams, the first film ever made about the rise of women’s skateboarding. It features profiles …
Sissy SXSW AWFJ.org review
Australian writer/directors Hanna Barlow and Kane Senes bring mean girls, social media savagery, fear of being cancelled, the repercussions of childhood trauma, and gore, gore, gore to their comedy horror mashup Sissy. Aisha Dee is both luminescent and looney tunes as the title character Sissy, or as she has calls herself to her 200,000 IG followers, …
Sell/Buy/Date SXSW AWFJ.org review
As a hybrid documentary, Sell/Buy/Date is one freaky little non-movie, or what ‘I-can-do-it-all’ poster gal, writer/director/producer/performer Sarah Jones calls an ‘unorthodoc’. Sell/Buy/Date considers how the sex industry is at the intersection of race, feminism, power, and money, through the lens of one Black woman with many voices seeking to better understand sex work. The Tony Award-winning playwright and performer …
Sheryl SXSW AWFJ.org review
By all accounts, Sheryl Crow is one of the most successful female singer/songwriters alive today. The superstar has won 9 Grammys, can pick up the phone and call Bob Dylan for advice, and Mick Jagger calls her “little sister”. Now filmmaker Amy Scott’s new biographical documentary Sheryl reveals the musician’s tumultuous personal experience becoming the icon she …
Mama Bears SXSW AWFJ.org review
If you’ve ever been to a Pride march, a rally for Human Rights Watch, or some other LGBTQ-centered public gathering, you’ve probably seen them: women of a certain age with tees that say “Free Mom Hugs”. If you’re gay, there’s a good chance at some point they actively tried to restrict your rights. They are …
Queen of Diamonds AWFJ.org Review
It’s not easy living in a transactional world without losing hope. That seems to be one of the many truths that become evident to viewers of the 1991 film Queen of Diamonds. Newly restored by The Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, the film is written, produced, directed, and shot by feminist auteur Nina Menkes. She …
Family Squares AWFJ.org Review
Did you know there is a cult of Margot Martindale and Ann Dowd fans? I mean, people who want nothing more than to see the two of them in a movie together? Mind you, these are fans who can tell the difference between the two actors, and don’t constantly confuse them, which is a problem …
My Best Part (Garçon Chiffon) AWFJ.org Review
Shown first at the Angoulême Film Festival in 2020, My Best Part (Garçon Chiffon in French) is finally opening in New York, LA, and on streaming services on February 25th. This film, which toured the fest circuit including TIFF, Newfest, and OUTshine, is the directorial debut of actor Nicolas Maury, best known in the US for his role …