Opening December 5 – 11, 2022 – Margaret Barton-Fumo reports

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists highlights movies made by and about women. With a vigilant eye toward current releases, we maintain an interactive record of films that are pertinent to our interests. Be they female-made or female-centric productions, they are films that represent a wide range of women’s stories and present complex female characters. As such, they are movies that will most likely be reviewed on AWFJ.org and will qualify for consideration for our annual EDA Awards, celebrating exceptional women working in film behind and in front of the camera. Our members are feature writers, columnists and regular contributors to a variety of media outlets and many of us publish regularly on the festival circuit. Our critical voices are widespread and diverse. We invite you to join us in tracking weekly releases of particular interest. And we welcome information about new films that will help us to keep our records updated and our critics alert. Below is a concise list of new releases set for the week of December 5 to 11 that are of particular interest. Titles highlighted in red have links to reviews:  

Monday, December 5

• Broadway Rising – Vertical Entertainment (Cinemas) – USA – Documentary directed by Amy Rice. Follows the complex road to reopening Broadway, chronicling the hundreds of restaurant owners and staff, costume houses, designers and more.

Friday, December 9

• Confession – Vertical Entertainment (Cinemas) – USA – Thriller directed by Dayna Hanson. An up-and-coming district attorney takes on the case of a young woman who has accused three men of sexual assault. She puts her career on the line in order to uncover a deeper web of mystery, murder and deception.

 

• Divorce Bait – Samuel Goldwyn Films (Cinemas, VOD) – USA – Comedy. Alexis Laguna is a happily re-married, suburban housewife. One day she announces that she is getting divorced just to see which of her friends will try to steal her husband. Meanwhile, an old flame comes back into her life.

 

• Framing Agnes – Kino Lorber (NY Premiere) – Canada / USA – Documentary co-written and directed by Chase Joynt. FRAMING AGNES turns the talk show format inside out in response to the media’s ongoing fascination with trans people. The film breathes life into six previously unknown stories from the archives of the UCLA Gender Clinic in the 1950s.

 

• Hidden Letters – Cargo (Cinemas) – China – Drama co-written and directed by Violet Du Feng. Spanning between past and present, Hidden Letters follows two millennial Chinese women who are connected by their fascination with a secret language of sisterhood, and their desire to protect it against a perpetually patriarchal society.

 

• Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage? – Disney+ – USA – Documentary. Filmmaker Anne McCabe follows Menzel on a national tour over the course of 16 shows as she juggles the challenges of being a working mom with a grueling travel schedule, all while preparing finally to realize her dream.

 

• Matilda the Musical – Netflix (Cinemas; Netflix release December 25) – UK / USA – An adaptation of the Tony and Olivier award-winning musical. Matilda tells the story of an extraordinary girl who, armed with a sharp mind and a vivid imagination, dares to take a stand to change her story with miraculous results.

 

• Something from Tiffany’s – Amazon Prime – USA – Romantic comedy written by Tamara Chestna, based on the novel by Melissa Hill. Follows a woman as her life gets upended when an engagement ring that was for someone else leads her to the person she’s meant to be with.

 

• To the End – Roadside Attractions (Cinemas) – USA – Documentary directed by Rachel Lears, co-written by Lears and Robin Blotnick. Stopping the climate crisis is a question of political courage, and the clock is ticking. Over three years of turbulence and crisis, four young women fight for a Green New Deal, and ignite a historic shift in U.S. climate politics.

Film descriptions are adapted from press releases. Titles highlighted in red have links to reviews. Stay tuned in for next week’s releases! Contact us if we’ve overlooked anything.