The huge box office success (US$ 356 million, if you’re counting) of My Big Fat Greek Wedding made Nia Vardalos one of the few women in Hollywood whose name can green light a movie. In two new movies releasing this summer–My Life In Ruins and I Hate Valentine’s Day, Vardalos emerges as a slimmed down version of the vivacious Greek-American gal with whom audiences have fallen in love. But she’s tired of discussing her weigh, and prefers to comment on her commitment to help women get ahead in moviemaking and the good cause she‘s adopted: adoption of children from foster care. Read the rest of this entry »

Filmmaker Teresa Prata discovered Mia Couto’s “Sleepwalking Land” on a library shelf in Berlin. Prata, just beginning her film studies, was a newcomer to Germany and to cinema.

“You could say I didn’t find the book, the book found me,” says Prata, indicating that Couto’s novel about wartime friendship was an immediate, stay-up-all-night reminder of her own childhood in civil war-torn Mozambique. Read the rest of this entry »

In Rod Lurie’s Nothing but the Truth, a female reporter who writes an article exposing a female CIA agent is thrown in jail for refusing to name her source. This might sound like a fictionalization of old news. It isn’t. At least, not according to Lurie. Read the rest of this entry »

Kate Beckinsale’s latest role – not as Judith Miller’s screen doppelganger but rather as a journalist/mom who happens to find herself in Miller’s lose-lose situation – follows Oscar-worthy work in the tiny indie Snow Angels, marking a departure from the blockbusters for which the actress is best known. Read the rest of this entry »

It might not be possible to review Hounddog without commenting on the controversy – Sundance screenings, committees of concerned parents, online petitions, the list could continue - but I am going to try. The film was written and directed by relative newcomer and genuine talent Deborah Kampmeier. It tells the story of Lewellen, a young girl who lives in a world where fantasy overtakes reality. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not just about the girls. Karly Meola and Virginia Madsen look beyond chick flicks to expand opportunities for women filmmakers - and tell stories that transcend Read the rest of this entry »

Under the banner of “community outreach,” Boston-based AWFJ member Jenny Halper screened “Frozen River” for her students at Emerson College’s Young Writers Program, then assigned them to review the film. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s rare to see a film that sets up a world both extremely recognizable and rarely seen, and rarer still when it turns out to ask moral questions without preaching. In her debut feature Frozen River, Courtney Hunt creates a story that serves simultaneously as a thriller and an insightful examination of the line between morality and necessity Read the rest of this entry »

On screen she�s a chameleon; in person the actress is disarmingly down-to-earth and smart enough to intimidate you even though that�s clearly not what she�s trying to do. Read more

Inspired by Peter Landesman�s NY Times article, �The Girls Next Door,� �Trade� exposes traffickers who lure young, na�ve girls to Mexico for supposedly legit jobs, only to drug and smuggle them into the US, where they are crammed into basement brothels and kept as sex slaves. Read the rest of this entry »