Female Film Critics 24/375
Where the Crawdads Sing includes sex, shells, and snots and the Piggly Wiggly. It’s the story of a determined woman, shot and written by same. Director Olivia Newman handily flips the plots, back and forth, through the Sixties in the South, placing nature front and center to tell this story of Kya, a natural naturalist.
Read more
It’s a courtroom drama/murder mystery/ coming-of-age saga/ romance. Unfortunately, as adapted by Luci Alibar, directed by Olivia Newman, photographed by Polly Morgan and produced by Reese Witherspoon, it’s become disappointingly banal, evoking memories of sappy Nicholas Sparks’ novels – with an original song “Carolina,” written and performed by Taylor Swift.
Read more
Where the Crawdads Sing is based on the wildly popular novel set in the 1950’s and 60’s that tells the story of Kya, an abandoned girl who raised herself in the rural swampland of North Carolina. Known as the Marsh Girl around the nearby town, she haunts the community in more ways than one. This largely female helmed production has all the elements of a fulfilling summer fling.
Read more
The extremely intense, seven-episode mini-series centers on the 1984 murders of a mother and child, killed within the closed wold of the Mormons. Director/co-writer, Duston Lance Black folds into the narrative concepts of polygamy, blood atonement, evil, misogyny, and racism. He also fiddled all the pieces of this puzzle into a well-seamed production.
Read more
Do you like psycho-thrillers? What about horror comedies? If so, dark, devious Fresh might whet your appetite. The titles and cast credits don’t appear until 33 minutes into the story, just before the leading lady, awakening, from a drug-induced slumber, finds herself chained to a bed and is calmly told by her sociopathic captor, “I’m going to sell your meat.”
Read more
Sally Rooney’s novel, Normal People, makes an impressive transition to film. Rooney created the characters of Connell and Marianne, teens in a small town in Ireland, Through the acting of Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal on film, the two characters magnetize and engage and instruct.
Read more