Loren King – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

BARBARA FOREVER – Review by Loren King

August 28, 2026 Loren King Barbara Hammer, Brydie O’Connor, Dyketactics, Florrie Burke, lesbian life, Nitrate Kisses

Brydie O’Connor’s captivating and comprehensive Barbara Forever gives pioneering avant-garde filmmaker Barbara Hammer the documentary she deserves. You don’t have to be a fan of avant-garde cinema to appreciate the brilliance of Hammer’s vision or her audacious style. For this singular filmmaker, who considered herself a visual poet, her life and art were one and the same. Hammer created some 100 groundbreaking experimental films from 1970 up to her death from cancer in 2019.

Reviews

FREEFALL: A RECKONING FOR BOEING – Review by Loren King

August 13, 2026August 18, 2026 Loren King 737 MAX, aviation, Boeing Corporation, Dreamliner, Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, John Barnett, Mark Bailey, motw, Rory Kennedy, whistleblower

Another infuriating expose about corporate malfeasance and greed, Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing is prolific investigative documentarian Rory Kennedy‘s must-see follow-up to her 2022 film, “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing.” While that film exposed Boeing’s complicity in the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people, Kennedy’s latest examines the corporation’s systemic and obscene retaliation against whistleblowers who tried to warn about shoddy work and safety negligence.

Reviews

WILD INSIDE – Review by Loren King

July 22, 2026July 26, 2026 Loren King central park zoo, eurasian eagle-owl, flaco, motw, Movie of the Week, Penny Lane, wild inside

One of the best documentaries so far this year, Wild Inside is as layered and textured as the thick wrap of feathers enveloping Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl whose year of living free albiet dangerously in New York City earned him a rightful place in urban lore. Director Penny Lane charts how Falco seduced the city after he escaped from captivity in the Central Park Zoo in 2023. As is true of most stellar documentaries about animals and birds, Wild Inside is ultimately about human beings. Besides Falco, the stars of this film are a small band of avid birders and photographers who followed Falco’s journey from the first day he appeared free — standing on the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue, just outside of Central Park — to when he spread his wings and set out to explore the rest of Manhattan.

Reviews

A LIFE ILLUMINATED – Review by Loren King

July 15, 2026July 19, 2026 Loren King A Life Illuminated, bioluminescence, documentary, Edith Widder, oceanography, Tasha Van Zandt

To sink into the dark depths of the ocean with pioneering marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder is nothing less than a transformative experience. Watching the documentary A Life Illuminated, we witness Widder’s decades-long research into bioluminescence — the dazzling phenomenon of ocean creatures, far from sunlight, that produce illumination and turn the pitch-black undersea into a galaxy that rivals the cosmos. Widder and her crew capture this breathtaking footage that is itself illuminating: it opens the eyes and the mind to life in a place we would never see were it not for the tenacious work of scientists like Widder.

Reviews

MARY OLIVER: SAVED BY THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD – Review by Loren King

June 21, 2026July 11, 2026 Loren King John Waters, kino lorber, Mary Oliver: Saved By the Beauty of the World, Molly Malone Cook, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Sasha Waters, Stephen Colbert

Mary Oliver: Saved By the Beauty of the World follows Oliver’s life and career from her childhood in Ohio to her death in 2019 at age 83 after she’d moved to Florida. In between, there’s rich original and archival footage; rare photographs from Oliver’s estate; and interviews about Oliver’s decades in Provincetown and her life with her longtime partner, photographer Molly Malone Cook, who died in 2005. The film chronicles Oliver’s years of struggle as a writer and her resiliency in pursing her craft.

Uncategorized

COUTURE – Review by Loren King

June 18, 2026June 20, 2026 Loren King Alice Winocour, angelina jolie, Anyier Anei, couture, louis garrel

Fashion is high minded art and serious business to some; frivolous to others. The always interesting French screenwriter and director Alice Winocour’s drama Couture balances both. Much like life, the story ambles from ordinary, even mundane travails, to matters of life and death. Couture follows three women from different cultures who converge in Paris for fashion week. Nearly all the film’s substantial scenes take place between the women. Their disparate lives may intersect only briefly but Couture is most effective when subtly revealing a world where survival often depends on fleeting connections and unspoken understandings.

Reviews

ASK E. JEAN – Review by Loren King

May 12, 2026May 16, 2026 Loren King Ask E. Jean, donald trump, E. Jean Carroll, ivy meeropol

Ask E. Jean exceeded even those high expectations. I thought I knew E. Jean Carroll thanks to her landmark 2019 defamation lawsuit again Donald Trump but this comprehensive film delivers so much more. Elegantly edited by Leah Goudsmit and Ferne Pearlstein, Ask E. Jean follows Carroll’s early life and fascinating career as a prolific writer and advice columnist during the glory days of high end magazines. Through its archival footage of Carroll in the 80s and 90s and interviews with her today, the film puts sexual abuse, rape, harassment and the repercussions for women who report the crime into social and cultural context.

Reviews

AMERICAN DREAM – Review by Loren King

April 21, 2026April 26, 2026 Loren King academy award best documentary, American dream, barbara kopple, hormel, Lewie Anderson, Ray Rogers, United Food and Commercial Workers

Director Barbara Kopple’s Oscar winning 1990 documentary “The American Dream” remains sobering, infuriating evidence of how we got in the mess we’re now in. Thanks to Kopple and Janus Films, this 4K restoration, supervised by Kopple and including a remastered soundtrack (Kopple recorded the film’s dynamic sound, just as she did for her 1976 masterpiece “Harlan County, USA”) will bring new audiences to this stunning, relevant work.

Reviews

THE CHAPLAIN AND THE DOCTOR – Review by Loren King

April 13, 2026April 19, 2026 Loren King Betty Clark, documentary, end of life, Highland Hospital, Jessica Zitter, palliative care, The Chaplain and the Doctor

Jessica Zitter, a Pulmonary and Critical Care doctor on the Palliative Care unit of Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif., is also an accomplished author and documentary filmmaker. For her remarkable and inspiring film “The Chaplain & The Doctor,” Zitter turns the camera on herself and her colleague Betty Clark, an 80-year-old chaplain and grief counselor, as they perform their duties for the diverse population in the large public hospital.

← Previous