Female Film Critics 24/375
Inspiring and intimate, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am is a revealing portrait of a true American icon. The Nobel Prize-winning author shares details of her life and work honestly and openly, while fellow luminaries — and enthusiastic fans — like Oprah Winfrey, Fran Lebowitz, Walter Mosley, and many more wax rhapsodic about Morrison’s talent and significance as a writer.
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Even when you have a pretty strong sense of how it’s going to end, there’s something immensely appealing about a good, old-fashioned romantic comedy; they’re the comfort food of movies. And while Nahnatchka Khan’s “Always Be My Maybe” is, thankfully, refreshingly NEW-fashioned in terms of representation — and has some genuinely surprising comic elements — it’s exactly the kind of romcom that’s perfect to curl up in front of on a Saturday night. (Plus, it has a subplot all about actual comfort food, so there’s that.)
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Movies don’t get much more timely than Ask for Jane, director Rachel Carey’s earnest, fact-based feature film debut about a group of young college women in pre-Roe v. Wade Chicago who formed the Jane Collective, an underground organization that defied current laws and risked criminal prosecution to help women with unwanted pregnancies secure safe medical abortions.
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With her twinkling eyes, mischievous grin, and clear zest for talking about all things intimate, Dr. Ruth Westheimer — the public version of her, anyway — has always been an easy woman to like. Happily, Ryan White’s engaging documentary about America’s pre-eminent sex therapist, Ask Dr. Ruth, provides ample evidence that she’s just as appealing once you get to know her better.
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If you can’t get to wine country with your own girlfriends anytime soon, you could do far worse than tagging along with Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, and their crew as they celebrate female friendship in all its messy glory. Blending crisp whites and robust reds with both humor and introspection, Wine Country is like a cross between a buddy comedy and a midlife-crisis therapy session.
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Bringing a female gaze to one of the 20th century’s most notorious criminals and the influence he exerted over his zealous followers Mary Harron’s Charlie Says is a compelling look at the power of community and the need to belong. By focusing her film on the women around Charles Manson, rather than directly on Manson himself, Harron shows us how that need can lead to delusion, denial, and destruction.
Stories about stand-offish/lonely/workaholic adults being transformed by their relationship with precocious/charming/offbeat kids aren’t hard to find in Hollywood, but — until Family — none have hinged on the transformative power of acceptance by the Juggalos. And that helps make Laura Steinel’s quirky, poignant comedy about a reluctant aunt and her awkward niece stand out from the crowd.
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Few films have made the kind of impact on feminist-minded moviegoers as Thelma & Louise did when it hit theaters in 1991. Ridley Scott’s story of female friendship and empowerment struck a powerful chord with women (yes, men, too, but let’s let the ladies own this one) — one that still resonates almost three decades later. In the compelling documentary Catching Sight of Thelma & Louise, director Jennifer Townsend, helming her first film at age 80, digs into exactly why the movie had — and continues to have — such an impact.
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Briskly paced and packed with fascinating information about one of film’s true pioneers, Pamela B. Green‘s Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache is a crash course in film history — or, more accurately, film herstory. Because, as it turns out, the roots of cinematic storytelling are as feminine as they can be.
A determined mother prepares to battle an extremist regime in desperate hopes of finding and rescuing her young son, who was torn from her by the same oppressors who turned her into a sex slave. No, it’s not The Handmaid’s Tale — it’s director Eva Husson’s powerful Girls of the Sun, which is based on all-too-real circumstances in present-day Kurdistan.