ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

Author: Valerie Kalfrin

Reviews 

COYOTE VS ACME – Review by Valerie Kalfrin​

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Three years after being shelved for a tax write-off, Coyote vs. Acme screeches into theaters, as much a metaphor for perseverance as its wily protagonist. Boulder-size expectations aside, it’s delightful, a screwball, surprisingly poignant tribute to creativity, friendship, and that indefatigable super genius, Wile E. Coyote. Based on Ian Frazier’s dryly brilliant short story in ​​The New Yorker, Coyote vs. Acme​<​/em> blends live action with animation as the dogged desert dweller once again fails to trap his white whale, the ​Road Runner (scientific name: ​ ​ Fastas Hellus​<​/em>), because of some flawed Acme product.

Read more
Reviews 

OVER/UNDER – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , , , ,

Over/Under , the second feature from Sophia Silver, is a jewel box of a film. Like the glass jar its characters use to catch “morning moths” to hear their whispered wishes, it captures something precious and delicate about childhood friendships and the awkward cruelties of adolescence. You might not have ever caught morning moths or heard of such a ritual. Maybe you never spent every summer on the New England beaches, either. You’ll recognize these girls and their growing pains all the same. In its tender way, ​​Over/Under makes the case for protecting female friendships in all their vulnerability. Like those moths, good ones are rare, fragile, and something to cherish throughout life’s waves​.

Read more
Reviews 

SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , , , , ,

Spider-Man: Brand New Day truly feels like a new chapter for our favorite web-singer.
Tom Holland has always had an endearing humility and charisma that meshed well with Peter Parker and his web-slinging alter ego, Spider-Man. But Spider-Man: Brand New Day, his fourth solo outing as the superhero, gives him mature depth and a layered story about where true strength lies. Spider-Man: Brand New Day features more exhilarating web-swinging than Holland’s earlier outings, with the special effects and visual effects teams mimicking Spidey’s poses from various comics. Yet the film also feels more grounded, from the tactile appearance of his costume (noticing the outline of Holland’s features beneath the mask, for instance) to director Destin Daniel Cretton (Wonder Man) blocking shots that show off Spidey’s acrobatic fighting style as much as Holland’s emotional beats.

Read more
Reviews 

AN EYE FOR AN EYE – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , , , ,

How much is a life worth? The provocative documentary An Eye for An Eye raises that question, following one woman in Iran whose in-laws decide whether she deserves execution for killing her husband or their forgiveness for a price. As the film opens, Tahereh has already served fourteen years in prison for strangling her husband, Hossein, but her future is in limbo. Under Iranian law, her in-laws—specifically, her brother-in-law, as head of Hossein’s family—must determine an amount of “blood money” they’ll accept as restitution, or whether she’s even allowed to live.

Read more
Reviews 

WILD INSIDE – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , ,

New Yorkers are a famously jaded bunch, to the point that when an owl with a six-foot wingspan wound up on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk one night, few seemed to give a hoot. That all soon changed, as the owl—a zoo escapee named Flaco—soon captured the hearts of people around the city and the world. Director Penny Lane’s enchanting documentary Wild Inside follows Flaco through a fateful year of freedom after someone cut through his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo in February 2023. The male Eurasian eagle-owl—one of the largest types of owls in the world—had hatched in captivity and lived at the zoo for about thirteen years before he ventured through the cut mesh and into the spotlight.

Read more
Reviews 

THE ODYSSEY – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , , , , , ,

Based on Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey ticks off several captivating touchstones from this enduring work, such as the Cyclops and other perils that besiege Odysseus (Matt Damon, The Rip), the king of Ithaca who struggles to return home after the decade-long Trojan War. Yet here, his journey becomes a reckoning for men who act like gods, with hubris that comes late, if at all.

Read more
Reviews 

IN THE COMPANY OF WOVES – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , , ,

The documentary In the Company of Wolves: An American Journey is an ambitious one, hopscotching around history while noting some threats to wolves, now returning to places they haven’t been seen in decades.
Director Susan Kucera (Wild Genius) assembles some impressive footage of these animals and other storied beasts the American West such as bison and horses. Yet while some interviews prove as thought-provoking as the stunning imagery of canyons and prairies, the film ultimately is as wild as the wolves in its title, needing more focus to bring its points home.

Read more
Reviews 

BABY DOE – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , ,

Ohio grandma Gail Eastwood-Ritchey knew why the deputy wanted to talk to her. On body cam footage early in Baby Doe, she nods matter-of-factly in her garage doorway as he approaches to speak with her. “It’s about a baby,” she says. “A baby that was left.” What happens from there is both a fascinating and compassionate look at one woman’s choice made decades earlier that she still struggles to reconcile. Directed by Jessica Earnshaw, Baby Doe examines the unsolved case of a newborn baby boy left in the woods in Geauga County, Ohio, in 1993. In archive news footage, the community is so heartbroken that it holds a funeral, burying the baby with a headstone for “Geauga’s Child.”

Read more
Reviews 

MINIONS & MONSTERS – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , , , ,

Minions & Monsters is adorably meta, a loving salute not just to movies but to filmmakers, artists, and audiences. It’s easily the best of the three Minions films, packed with affectionate and funny nods to silent and Golden Age movies, from Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon to Citizen Kane. Illumination Entertainment’s typical opener of three greeting Minions becomes black-and-white rubber-hose-style animation this go-round as Minions & Monsters begins, teasing the references in store. These immortal imps soon gallop behind Eadweard Muybridge’s horse in motion and wait for the Lumière brothers’ train as a modern-day tour guide schools children and adults on their place in Hollywood history.

Read more
Reviews 

ENOLA HOLMES 3 – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , , , ,

In the sprightly entertaining Enola Holmes 3, Sherlock Holmes’s headstrong younger sister susses out not just how and why her brother vanished but what kind of Victorian-era woman she wants to be. Having made a name for herself as a sleuth in the previous Netflix films, Enola finds herself torn on her wedding day between her love for the young politician Tewkesbury and literally taking on his name as a proper Victorian lady. That she might have to give up detecting as well gives her pause enough to set out late for the ceremony, only to learn from Dr. Watson (Himesh Patel) that Sherlock (Henry Cavill) is missing. Enola Holmes 3 is an energetic whodunit, taking its older, still spirited protagonist through some slightly more mature territory.

Read more