Ann Lewinson – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

THE FRIEND – Review by Ann Lewinson

March 18, 2025March 19, 2025 Ann Lewinson Bill Murray, Carla Gugino, constance wu, David Siegel, Naomi Watts, Noma Dumezweni, Scott McGehee, Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Friend is an adaptation of Sigrid Nuñez’s 2018 National Book Award winner. Set in a literary Greenwich Village that seems like a mirage from an earlier era, the world that Iris (Naomi Watts) inhabits feels lived in and wholly believable. She’s a blocked novelist teaching uninspired creative writing students and living in her late father’s rent-controlled apartment off Washington Square Park. And suddenly, with the suicide of her best friend and mentor, Walter (Bill Murray), she’s saddled with his Great Dane, Apollo. And her building doesn’t allow dogs.

Reviews

REZ BALL – Review by Ann Lewinson

September 19, 2024September 25, 2024 Ann Lewinson basketball, Chuska, Ernest Tsosie III, Jessica Matten, Julia Jones, Kauchani Bratt, Kusem Goodwind, Michael Powell, Native American, Navajo Nation, netflix, New Mexico, Rez Ball, Sterlin Harjo, Sydney Freeland

Much like Friday Night Lights, high school basketball is everything in sparsely populated, remote Chuska, New Mexico. But for the Chuska Warriors, expectations are lowered after the team loses its star player Nataanii Jackson (Kusem Goodwind). It falls on his best friend, Jimmy Holiday (Kauchani Bratt, a former high school basketball player making a solid acting debut) and the team’s coach, retired WNBA player Heather Hobbs (Jessica Matten) to rally the team. But the low morale Jimmy and his teammates struggle with isn’t just situational—it’s systemic. Movies like this aren’t called “inspirational” for nothing. So while Rez Ball may not be a slam dunk, it gets the job done.

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THE BEAST – Review by Ann Lewinson

March 27, 2024March 16, 2025 Ann Lewinson A.I., Benjamin Charbit, bertrand bonello, gaspard ulliel, George MacKay, Guillaume Bréaud, Guslagie Malanda, lea seydoux, The Beast

It’s not every day that a turn-of-the-century tale gets a gender-swap, but that’s what Bertrand Bonello and his co-screenwriters Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit
have done in The Beast, based on Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle. In James’ novella, man-about-town John Marcher worries that a terrible catastrophe will befall him (the titular beast), and embarks on a decade-long platonic relationship with the wealthy May Bartram, which almost singularly consists of going to the opera and speculating on the nature of what may befall him. May falls in unrequited love with John, who is often read as a stand-in for the author, a closeted homosexual who is believed to have never had sex with anyone.

Reviews