Pam Grady – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

THERE’S STILL TOMORROW – Review by Pam Grady

February 24, 2025March 1, 2025 Pam Grady Paola Cortelessi, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Valerio Mastandrea

A huge hit in Italy where it ruled the box office and won eight David di Donatello Awards, Paola Cortelessi’s feature directing debut is a sharply observed slice of domestic life embroidered with flourishes, particularly on the soundtrack, that lift it out of the ordinary. As the film’s star, Cortelessi is stunning as woman whose apparent acquiescence to her situation hides her steely determination to better the situation, if not for herself, at least for her children. Shot in luminous black and white to mirror the Italian neorealism of the era, There’s Still Tomorrow speaks to the toxic misogyny and its attendant violence that is as prevalent now as it was then.

Reviews

PARTHENOPE – Review by Pam Grady

February 7, 2025February 7, 2025 Pam Grady Celeste Dalla Porta, Daria D’Antonio, gary oldman, Paolo Sorrentino, Parthenope

A coach fit for Cinderella’s ball, floating on a barge across the Bay of Naples, is the first image in Paolo Sorrentino’s latest absurd jewel box. It is 1950 and the coach is to serve as a bed for the baby to be named Parthenope. But while Cinderella is the clear reference, Sleeping Beauty might be more to the point for when the drama jumps ahead 18 years to the Swinging ‘60s, the gorgeous young creature desired my men and women alike resembles nothing so much as a sleepwalker through life. Perhaps the moral of the story is that Sorrentino, whose previous work includes The Great Beauty, The Hand of God and the miniseries “The Young Pope, shouldn’t write for women.

Reviews

LOVE HURTS – Review by Pam Grady

February 5, 2025February 8, 2025 Pam Grady Ariana DeBose, Ke Huy Quan, Love Hurts, Marshawn Lynch

The paychecks must have been massive. Too many zeroes to resist. Nothing else quite explains what Oscar winners Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose are doing in a movie as devoid of entertainment value as Love Hurts. It is only February but it seems that we can already call the stupidest movie of 2025. At least it’s short, but those are going to be among the longest 83 minutes of your life.

Interviews

Marianne Jean-Baptiste talks HARD TRUTHS, Angry Pansy and Mike Leigh – Pam Grady interviews

January 10, 2025January 11, 2025 Pam Grady Hard Truths, improvised storytelling, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, mike leigh

In 1996, Marianne Jean-Baptiste broke through in a big way in Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies. She received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role as Hortense, a London optometrist and adoptee, who finds her birth mother, a working-class factory worker played by Brenda Blethyn. The actor soon embarked on a busy career in television with roles in such shows as Without a Trace, Broadchurch, Blindspot, and Training Day. But now she’s reunited with Leigh for Hard Truths, playing Pansy, a chaotic woman who expresses her fears and frustrations in the anger that she unleashes on family and strangers alike. To date, she has garnered a slew of nominations and awards, including winning the Best Lead Performance British Independent Film Award. A second Oscar nomination appears to be in her future as lightning strikes twice in her alliance with Leigh, the master of improvisational cinema.

Interviews

Adam Elliot on MEMOIR OF A SNAIL and Stop Motion Animation – Pam Grady interviews

November 4, 2024November 10, 2024 Pam Grady Adam Elliot, australian films, ifc, Jacki Weaver, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Memoir of a Snail, Mill Valley Film Festival, Sarah Snook, stop motion

Adam Elliot, whose latest animation, Memoir of a Snail, is currently in theaters, can’t imagine spending his days attached to a computer. That distaste for a life spent perpetually engaged with technology altered the course of his life when he became interested in animation while in film school in his native Australia. Instead of pursuing computer graphics like so many of his classmates, he forged his own path with stop-motion animation, joining a select group that embraces the retro form that includes Tim Burton, Henry Sellick, Guillermo Del Toro, and the folks at England’s Aardman Animation and Oregon’s LAIKA Studios.

Interviews

THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT – Pam Grady interviews H.P. Mendoza, Grant Rosenmeyer and Paul Raci (exclusive)

July 2, 2024July 7, 2024 Pam Grady Grant Rosenmeyer, H.P. Mendoza, Jesse Orenshein, Level 33 Entertainment, Paul Raci, The Secret Art of Human Flight

A work for hire turns personal as director H.P. Mendoza and actors Grant Rosenmeyer and Paul Raci unlock the secrets behind The Secret Art of Human Flight. There are special effects in The Secret Art of Human Flight, but when pigeons land on star (and lead producer) Grant Rosenmeyer’s head, it is the real deal. The actor laughs and shudders at the same time, remembering his up close and personal encounter with rats with wings.

Reviews

GHOSTLIGHT – Review by Pam Grady

June 5, 2024June 8, 2024 Pam Grady Alex Thompson, Dolly De Leon, Ghostlight, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Keith Kupferer, Kelly O’Sullivan, Tara Mallen

A distinguished Chicago theater family and The Triangle of Sadness’ Dolly De Leon unite in this cinematic tour de force in which grief finds an outlet in the mounting of a play. Construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) copes with the loss of a family member by not really coping at all. He’s barely hanging on at his job, is increasingly remote from his wife Sharon (played by Kupferer’s real-life partner Tara Mallen), and at odds with his troubled teen daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer, who is the real life daughter of Keith and Tara). What remains of his energy is reserved for a long-odds wrongful death lawsuit that will never make him whole again even if it succeeds.

Reviews

THE IRON CLAW – Review by Pam Grady

December 22, 2023December 24, 2023 Pam Grady Championship Wrestling, Fritz Von Erich, Holt McCallany, jeremy allen white, Lily James, Maura Tierney, sean durkin, Stanley Simons, The Iron Claw, zac efron

As a title, The Iron Claw is both literal and a metaphor. It is the signature move of wrestler Fritz Von Erich when he is about to decimate an opponent in the ring. It also symbolizes the tight grip he holds on the sons who have no real choice except to follow him as the next generation of battling Von Erichs. Writer/director Sean Durkin’s first film since 2020’s The Nest is all at once a sports drama, a family’s biopic, and one of the best depictions of the effects of toxic masculinity ever committed to the screen and a haunting evocation of family dysfunction.

Reviews

SUBJECT – Review by Pam Grady

October 24, 2023October 29, 2023 Pam Grady Camilla Hall, Capturing the Friedmans, documentary filmmaking, Hoop Dreams, Jennifer Tiexiera, Subject, The Staircase, the wolfpack, true crime

There is a built-in irony in this provocative documentary. Its subject, as the title so baldly states, is the subjects of documentaries and how these films continue to impact their lives long after the circus of filmmaking has moved on and a curious public has had an intimate glimpse into their lives. The doc is a fascinating film, creating more questions about the ethics of documentary filmmaking even as it attempts to find answers to one of documentary makers’ most basic quandaries and becoming part of that ethical argument itself.

Reviews

ORCA – Review by Pam Grady

August 22, 2023October 25, 2023 Pam Grady blue fox entertainment, Elham Asghari, Guinness Book of World Records, iranian films, Mahtab Keramati, motw, Orca, Sahar Mosayebi, Taraneh Alidoosti

Just like any typical sports movie, Orca is an uplifting story of an athlete striving for excellence. But there is nothing typical about Elham Asghari’s (Taraneh Alidoosti) journey as an endurance swimmer in Iran that is typical. A domestic abuse survivor, she recovers her sense of self in the water. But when she reaches out to Iran’s sports federation for its blessing in a swimming competition, the organization denies her. (This is, after all, a government body that won’t allow women to participate in kickboxing or Muay Thai because it might damage their reproductive organs – say what?)

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