ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

Author: Cate Marquis

Reviews 

FREEFALL: A RECKONING FOR BOEING – Review by Cate Marquis

Cate Marquis , , , , , , , , ,

Following up on her 2022 documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, in this documentary, director Rory Kennedy focuses on lawsuits related to those deadly crashes and another lawsuit brought by a whistleblower within the company, as it takes a deep, evidence-based look at what has gone wrong at this once-admired American company, after it shifted, under a series of CEOs with no experience in the aviation industry, away from a quality focus to a “profits above all else” business approach.

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Reviews 

COOKIE QUEENS – Review by Cate Marquis

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Cookie Queens is charming, even inspiring, but focuses strongly on the girls’ cookie selling. At times, the experienced parents’ own ambitions seem to come forward, even causing one girl to remark on it. It is all very entrepreneurial but sometimes the reason for the cookies gets a bit lost. While it does give us a nice glimpse of each girl’s selling style and their personalities and goals, the documentary falls a bit short on showing us why the girls love Scouting and what they get out of it, such as the sense of self-reliance and team work in the outdoors, although they do talk a little about the friendships that they have formed and there are a few campfire shots. Still, Cookie Queens is a warm, uplifting peek at some hard-working, imaginative – and winning (in both senses) – girls who charm us as they tempt us with those delicious cookies.

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Reviews 

THE KIDNAPPING OF ARABELLA – Review by Cate Marquis

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Italian writer/director Carolina Cavalli’s The Kidnapping of Arabella is a delightful, creative film that could be called an absurdist comedy but it is more complicated than that. It is an intriguing, marvelously-acted mix of magical realism and psychological drama wrapped up in an absurdist buddy road trip. It all starts with Arabella, a precocious 8-year-old who is a holy terror to her father, a successful but mournful novelist Orest,, and a chance meeting with a sad, deluded (but very smart) young woman named Holly outside a fast food joint called Taco King. What happens isn’t really a kidnapping, more an escape engineered by clever Arabella, an “assisted” running away in which Arabella essentially tricks mentally-fragile Holly into taking her along, by playing along with a delusion that the little girl is a younger version of Holly herself, magically transported back from the past. This fantastical idea launches the pair on a great adventure across northeastern Italy.

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Reviews 

GOAT GIRL (LA NINA DE LA CALABRA) – Review by Cate Marquis

Cate Marquis , , , , ,

Spanish actress-turned-director Ana Asensio’s insightful look at childhood in 1988 Madrid, as told through an eight-year old child’s eyes who is mourning her recently deceased Grandma and preparing for her First Communion. When a family of traveling Roma performers, shows up in the courtyard of the apartment complex where she lives, Elena befriends free-spirited Serezade, a Roma girl of the same age. Elena is drawn to Serezade’s lifestyle, but her religious, conservative mother forbids her daughter to go near the Romas.

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Reviews 

SILENT FRIEND – Review by Cate Marquis

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A centuries-old, towering ginkgo tree in the botanical garden near the campus of a German university is the common thread connecting the stories of three scientists at that university, in Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi’s intriguing, visually-thrilling drama Silent Friend. Painterly photography of the lovely, tree-filled campus, supplemented by striking, artistic micro nature photography, gives this drama spanning three time periods a dreamy, ethereal quality. The film tells the stories of three scientists on the same campus, in different time periods but all doing experiments to advance the understanding of plants and communication between plant and humans.

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Reviews 

STEAL THIS STORY, PLEASE! – Review by Cate Marquis

Cate Marquis , , , , , ,

The documentary shows how Goodman’s early life in a family of activists and those committed to truth-telling, led her to the kind of journalism that gives readers and listeners the whole story instead of half-truths or incomplete stories, as mainstream corporate media so often does, as well as highlighting Goodman’s tireless efforts to give voice to the voiceless, downtrodden and overlooked. The documentary highlights a host of under-reported stories that Goodman helped break, such as toxic air pollution after 9/11, stories which eventually were picked up by mainstream media, in part due to her relentless coverage.

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Uncategorized 

THE BLUE TRAIL – Review by Cate Marquis

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The Blue Trail is a future-fantasy film that starts grim but then takes an unexpected turn. In a near future, dystopian Brazil, an authoritarian government flies planes overhead proclaiming that, for the good of families and the economy, all people reaching mandatory retirement age will lose their jobs and be transported to a retiree colony, where “they can relax” and families do not have to take care of them. It is all phrased as if it is being done out of respect and kindness, but 77-year-old Tereza (Denise Weinberg) isn’t buying that happy talk – nor are many others around her.

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Reviews 

BEAM ME UP, SULU – Review by Cate Marquis

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The affectionate, insightful documentary Beam Me Up, Sulu is indeed, in part, about George Takei, who played Sulu in the TV series Star Trek, and about the long-running Star Trek popular cultural phenomenon, but it also takes a larger view, at the societal impact of the 1960s science fiction TV series, with its ground-breaking diverse casting, and depiction of equality and a hopeful view of the future.

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Reviews 

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER – Review by Cate Marquis

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In the action/comedy/thriller One Battle After Another director Paul Thomas Anderson gives us a paragon of top-notch film-making, outstanding from a technical viewpoint and electrifying as cinema to boot. But what really won me over is the “dad” story at the center of it all. Fellow revolutionaries and lovers Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are committed to changing the world through acts of sabotage that disrupt the flow of money to the top while not hurting people. But when Perfidia becomes pregnant and gives birth, everything changes

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