In the time of COVID, we all need cathartic relief, comfort, and distraction. Without question, director Peter Cattaneo’s Military Wives, offers all that, and in spades, as the cliché says. That being said, I am someone who is tasked with identifying the bad, good, better, and best of film. As great as this film’s lead actresses …
If there is such a genre as ‘Mystical Femme,’ and there really should be, French writer/director Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire belongs in it, placed at the top. Winner of the Queer Palm and Best Screenplay at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the film features magnetic lead actresses whose chemistry with each other is …
Complicated, multi-dimensional female characters are rarely portrayed onscreen. It is even less common to see one that leaves the audience conflicted. Those making decisions in Hollywood think surprises in the form of complicated women can be bad for business. The result is that the 51% of filmgoers, aka WOMEN, are mostly treated to some version …
Sparkle alert! If you’ve seen any of the trailers for the highly-publicized cinematic rendering of Madeline L’Engle’s classic 1962 children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, you know sparkle figures prominently. Director Ava DuVernay, who has the distinction of being the first women of color to direct of live action film with a budget over 100 …
The movie Annihilation is a strange, gloriously ambiguous visual wonder. It is writer/director Alex Garland’s interpretation of Jeff VanderMeer’s Nebula-award-winning first novel in the Southern Reach Trilogy. There are elements of the story that recall a wide variety of what has come before, from Predator, Sunshine (for which Garland was the screenwriter), Apocalypse Now, and …
This weekend, Call Me By Your Name, the spellbinding meditation on coming-of-age as a gay young man in 80s rural Italy lands in art houses around the country. It is a lyrical, mesmerizing, experience at the cinema that numbers among the best movies of the year. It is also one of the most moving portrayals …
You know when those genre movies that you can’t imagine fans not liking? Despite what will likely be some displeasure of critics saying, on the one side, that it is too much like the original and therefore lacks invention, and the other side saying it expands the mythology of the franchise too much, this review …
Opening in wide release around the country is the highly anticipated feature documentary based on Pulitzer prize winner Ron Suskind’s book Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism. If you haven’t heard about this bestseller, it recounts the Suskind family’s experience with their younger son Owen’s autism, and their discovery of how to …
transcript: Captain America Civil War opens too wide release this weekend. Have we finally reached superhero saturation or will civil War directors the Russo Brothers keep audiences Crazy and clamoring for more? Cinema Siren has the answer for you! Let me start with not so much a warning, as a tease. CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR …
This weekend sees the highly anticipated release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. After all the initial fuss about casting, will audiences finally embrace Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman? Will the Man of Steel get the cinematic respect he so deserves? With some much pretty, and so much over-the-top Snyder-fied action, will it matter?
