ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

Author: April Neale

Reviews 

PRETTY BABY: BROOKE SHIELDS – Review by April Neale

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Is someone born with the lion’s mane of hair, perfect features, and length of limb as Brooke was, suffering imposter syndrome? Tale as old as time: Girls are under pressure to be physically perfect. What is perfect and how cultural shifts decide these markers are the only fluctuation, as it was for Shields, who comic Eddie Murphy described as the “most Caucasian” of women when making light of her friendship with Michael Jackson. Shields had a symmetry and arresting presence that she never had to grow into. She was born with it from day one, unlike many who weather the ugly duckling years until a swan is born. Shields was and is a showstopper in every regard.

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Reviews 

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MRS. WU – Review by April Neale

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The Disappearance of Mrs. Wu is director Anna Chi’s lighthearted look at intergenerational grandmother-daughter-granddaughter love punctuated by sly shenanigans, aided and abetted by the matriarch’s caretaker from Ireland, a should-have-been chanteuse who loves her employer like family. In contrast, the rest of the Wu family is consumed by time-wasting guilt and misplaced worry. So it goes in “=Mrs. Wu, where culture, sexuality, and shame are wrapped in a thin dumpling skin and served with a side of often ignored dim sum wisdom from the titular nana, enlightened by the reality that she has little time left to get things in order before life’s final curtain call.

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Reviews 

MY HAPPY ENDING – Review by April Neale

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Once again, the incredibly gifted acting of Andie MacDowell gives the new Roadside film, My Happy Ending, the gravitas and heart to give us all a contemplative look at how we choose to live and end our lives. The new movie is a clear-eyed, poignant, endearing study of how one woman, a famous actress, accepts her closing call in more ways than just her career.

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Reviews 

THE GOOD HOUSE – Review by April Neale

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Sometimes, the illusion of having it all together is an art in survivor subterfuge, especially when you are a kingfisher in a small Massachusetts coastal town where the prime properties are the big catch. The Good House is a bittersweet dramedy starring Sigourney Weaver as Hildy Good, a well-educated local New England real estate agent whose story shows us how the ignored loose ends of our lives can be the undoing of the fabric that holds us together, and that the value of old and real friendships that stand the test of time is a priceless commodity to preserve at all costs.

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Reviews 

SHARP STICK – Review by April Neale

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Sharp Stick is one of the films you watch and glean very little from unless you act like “some schmoe off the bus from Idaho,” which the lead character, Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), does with alacrity. Sarah Jo is a fantastic caregiver, and has a way with challenged kids that would make her a star for any family dealing with a child with issues.

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Reviews 

DON’T MAKE ME GO – Review by April Neale

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Don’t Make Me Go is an emotionally charged example of a conflicted “buddy film” between a father (John Cho) and his teenage daughter (Mia Isaac). Their poignantly packed road trip brings unshared truths, undiagnosed medical calamity, and feelings of abandonment hemmed by moments of fun, life lessons, and a shared love of Iggy Pop’s The Passenger, a portentous upbeat song that serves as the running theme of this film.

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Reviews 

OLGA – Review by April Neale

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The Ukrainian gymnast drama Olga is timely and highly resonates in the portrayal of complicated mother-daughter relationships and female friendships overall. Director Elie Grappe has perfectly encapsulated major themes around a young Ukrainian woman whose ambition and talent have propelled her into the elite strata of European gymnasts. The 2013 Ukrainian uprising serves as the heartbeat backdrop to her journey, ending in 2020 by the final scene.

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Reviews 

18½ – Review by April Neale

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Looking backward and rewriting actual historical events are the order for director Dan Mirvish’s 18½. This film is a thriller laced with enough comedy to keep it off-kilter, as the premise toys with what might have happened back in 1974 when a White House transcriber named Connie (Willa Fitzgerald) with a GS2 clearance finds herself in the middle of the Watergate scandal. She has access to the “missing tape,” an 18½ minute gap in Nixon’s recorded tapes, but it conveniently disappeared. Co-writers Daniel Moya and Mirvish’s rendering of Watergate events manages to be both a fun watch, food for thought, and subtly comedically brilliant effort in its alt-historical premise.

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OUR FATHER – Review by April Neale

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Nazi Germany had Dr. Mengele, and Indiana had Dr. Donald Cline, not as evil as Mengele, but he was a corrupt genetic technician like the Nazi. He experimentally used his sperm to impregnate unsuspecting women looking for fertility and conception. A lot of women. The film gives a platform for the doctor’s now adult progeny to tell their stories of discovery and their process of reconciliation and acceptance in the documentary film Our Father, premiering on Netflix on May 11.

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AS THEY MADE US – Review by April Neale

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As They Made Us is an emotionally resonating and deeply piercing film about learning to forgive, accepting that your parents are flawed human beings just as anyone else, and becoming more strengthened and wiser as you make your way in life, a finite journey for us all. Director Mayim Bialik’s intimate dramedy is a filmed snapshot of a dysfunctional family’s journey at the end of life. Bialik’s film underscores that time will heal, that having an adult understanding of the hurts we bury deep in our psyche is not our fault. And that letting go and forgetting past injuries to the heart and soul sometimes can be the best medicine anyone will take.

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