The Alliance of Women Film Journalists wishes to congratulate all the winners of our 2006 EDA Awards, including Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro) for Best Film, Little Children (Todd Field) for Best Drama By Or About Women and Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris) for Best Comedy By Or About Women. Read more

WE’RE ALL PROFESSIONAL ILLUSIONISTS

Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddleduck and Beatrix Potter’s other characters are familiar to most people, but few know about the life of the surprisingly feisty Victorian lady who created them. Read more

It’s almost astonishing two men (director Richard Eyre and screenwriter Patrick Marber) could translate Zoe Heller’s titillating novel, What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal, into such a wise film portrait about women. Read more

With The Queen, British director Stephen Frears sheds light on one of England’s most misunderstood public figures. The film, set during the week after Princess Di’s death in 1997, offers a glimpse into what might have happened behind palace doors, when Queen Elizabeth II was caught between a relentless media frenzy and her desire to protect the royal family. Read more

FOR THE LUST OF “VENUS“

There’s temptation to spend this review’s entire budget of words defending “Venus” from viewers who, filtering their vision of this fine film through their own prejudices and intolerance, will see it as a dirty-old-man-groping-a-young-girl exploitation story that’s scantily clad in whatever respectability Peter O‘Toole and a supporting cast of classically qualified actors can bring to it. Read more

ALMODOVAR FROM LA MANCHA

Already designated as Spain’s official selection for Oscars consideration, Pedro Almodovar‘s “Volver” is arguably this year’s most haunting and inspiring film about women. Read more

Reunited with Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodovar for the third time, Penelope Cruz delivers a volatile, earthy, uncompromising performance in this loosely autobiographical surrealistic black comedy about an extended family of women in Madrid. Read more

DON’T MISTAKE “JESUS CAMP” FOR “GODSPELL

“Jesus Camp” is one of 2006’s most terrifying films– even though it’s not a thriller.
In fact, it‘s a purely observational documentary– one that serves as a galvanizing cautionary revelation about Evangelical indoctrination of children in heartland America. Read more

DAVID FRANKEL’S DEVILISHLY SERIOUS ABOUT PRADA SATIRE

HBO’s “Sex and The City,” director David Frankel leaps from little box to big screen with “The Devil Wears Prada,” based on the same-title novel about the fashionistic world of editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) and her fresh-from-school assistant Andy (Anne Hathaway). Read more

Telling a comic tale of a young woman’s career ambitions—a subject reserved almost exclusively for comedy in the Hollywood influenced media—The Devil Wears Prada adapts for the screen Lauren Weisberger’s novel of the same name about the forced detour of Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) into the world of high-fashion publishing. Read more