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SOLD, SPIRITS’ HOMECOMING, ANGELS IN EXILE, MY BIG FAT GREED WEDDING 2 and More March 27 Openers– Reviews by Jennifer Merin

March 28, 2016March 28, 2016 Jennifer Merin 0 Comments

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Sold, the truth-based narrative directed by Jeffrey Dean Brown and starring Gillian Anderson, tells the story of a young Nepalese girl who is sold by her alcoholic father to a brothel in Calcutta. The harrowing tale galvanizes audience attention to the heinous crime of human trafficking. See the film and embrace the cause of girls and boys sold into sex slavery. Spirits’ Homecoming is another truth-based story of sexual slavery — this one focusing on two Korean girls kidnapped during World War II to become ‘comfort women’ for Japanese soldiers. Angels in Exile connects art and activism. While filmmaker Billy Raffery was on a surfing trip to South Africa in 2003, he met thousands of hopeless street kids living on Durban’s Point Road. Rafferty decided to help them by making this documentary and starting a foundation to lead them to better lives. Plus Killing Ed, Brave New Wild, SEVE The Movie, I Saw The Light, Born to Be Blue, April and the Extraordinary World, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, and Miss India America. Read the reviews…

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Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin is the Film Critic for Womens eNews and contributes the CINEMA CITIZEN blog for and is managing editor for Women on Film, the online magazine of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, of which she is President. She has served as a regular critic and film-related interviewer for The New York Press and About.com. She has written about entertainment for USA Today, The L.A. Times, US Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Endless Vacation Magazine, Daily News, New York Post, SoHo News and other publications. After receiving her MFA from Tisch School of the Arts (Grad Acting), Jennifer performed at the O'Neill Theater Center's Playwrights Conference, Long Wharf Theater, American Place Theatre and LaMamma, where she worked with renown Japanese director, Shuji Terayama. She subsequently joined Terayama's theater company in Tokyo, where she also acted in films. Her journalism career began when she was asked to write about Terayama for The Drama Review. She became a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor after writing an article about Marketta Kimbrell's Theater For The Forgotten, with which she was performing at the time. She was an O'Neill Theater Center National Critics' Institute Fellow, and then became the institute's Coordinator. While teaching at the Universities of Wisconsin and Rhode Island, she wrote "A Directory of Festivals of Theater, Dance and Folklore Around the World," published by the International Theater Institute. Denmark's Odin Teatret's director, Eugenio Barba, wrote his manifesto in the form of a letter to "Dear Jennifer Merin," which has been published around the world, in languages as diverse as Farsi and Romanian. Jennifer's culturally-oriented travel column began in the LA Times in 1984, then moved to The Associated Press, LA Times Syndicate, Tribune Media, Creators Syndicate and (currently) Arcamax Publishing. She's been news writer/editor for ABC Radio Networks, on-air reporter for NBC, CBS Radio and, currently, for Westwood One's America In the Morning. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association in the Film, Documentary and TV branches and a voting member of the Black Reel Awards. For her AWFJ archive, type "Jennifer Merin" in the Search Box (upper right corner of screen).