hulu – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

LOVE STORY: JOHN F. KENNEDY JR. AND CAROLYN BESSETTE – Review by Abby Perkins (Mentorship Program Critic)

February 25, 2026February 26, 2026 Guest Post AWFJ/UNCSA MENTORSHIP PROGRAM, Carolyn Bessette, hulu, John F. Kennedy Jr., Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, Paul Anthony Kelly, ryan murphy, Sarah Pidgeon, series

Spanning over seven years, Love Story follows John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly) and Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon) from their first meeting to the day they tragically lost their lives. Kelly has come out of nowhere, quickly making a name for himself with an emotionally grounded performance and electrifying chemistry with Pidgeon – you may recognize her from last year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot and her Tony-nominated performance in Stereophonic in 2024.

Reviews

PREDATOR: BADLANDS – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

November 13, 2025November 17, 2025 Valerie Kalfrin Dan Trachtenberg, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, elle fanning, hulu, Michael Homik, Patrick Aison, Predator: Badlands

This is director Dan Trachtenberg’s third Predator-related film after Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers. Predator: Badlands deserves its theatrical release, especially in IMAX, where viewers can appreciate the special effects team’s impressive work and intricate fight choreography. The planet is rich with color and texture, deceptively inviting with glass that glistens like ice and slices like razors, vines with teeth and minds of their own, and maimed creatures that somehow regenerate.

Festivals Reviews

SWIPED (TIFF) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

September 29, 2025June 11, 2026 Valerie Kalfrin Ben Schnetzer, biopic, Bumble, dan stevens, disney, hulu, Jackson White, Kim Carmele, Lily James, Rachel Lee Goldenberg, sexual harassment, Swiped, TIFF 2025, Tinder, Whitney Wolfe, workplace toxicity

The drama Swiped peeks behind the scenes of the dating app Tinder, where a bright young woman who helped launch its success finds she can’t “swipe left” on the misogyny and sexism. Unfortunately, viewers might want to “swipe left” on this film. In portraying the career of Whitney Wolfe Herd, who weathered a scandal after Tinder to become the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, the film skims over a lot. It feels like flipping through several browser windows without reading them.

Festivals Reviews

SWIPED (TIFF 2025) – Review by Rachel West

September 16, 2025September 15, 2025 Rachel West Ben Schnetzer, biopic, Bumble, dan stevens, disney, hulu, Jackson White, Kim Carmele, Lily James, Rachel Lee Goldenberg, sexual harassment, Swiped, TIFF 2025, Tinder, Whitney Wolfe, workplace toxicity

Whitney Wolfe appeared to have it all. A smart, business-savvy young woman full of ideas who knew how to work a room full of tech bros to earn herself a place as Tinder’s lone female co-founder. It seems like a tech fairytale come true, full of female empowerment and triumph. But for Wolfe, it was more akin to a nightmare full of misogyny, toxic men, harassment, and sexism. Her story is the basis for the new film Swiped, directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg and starring Lily James as the real-life Wolfe.

Festivals Reviews

BARBARA WALTERS TELL ME EVERYTHING (Tribeca 2025) – Review by Leslie Combemale

June 16, 2025June 16, 2025 Leslie Combemale Anwar Sadat, Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything, bette midler, Bob Iger, Connie Chung, Diana Ross, Diane Sawyer, documentary, hulu, Jackie Jesko, Katie Couric, Monica Lewinsky, oprah winfrey, roy cohn, Tribeca 2025

Barbara Walters died in 2022, so it was time for a good survey of her importance to forwarding the path for working women, and her historic place in journalism. In Tell Me Everything, there are no deep insights, and the documentary isn’t breaking any new ground, unlike the woman herself. Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything still makes for compelling tv, and will likely inspire audiences who didn’t know just how important she was and is to American history. It’s a good thing it will stream on Hulu, where a wide audience will have access to it.

Reviews

SALLY – Review by April Neale

June 13, 2025June 12, 2025 April Neale Cristina Costantini, disney, documentary, hulu, Judith Reznik, lesbian, nasa, National Geographic Documentary Films, Sally, Sally Ride, STEM, Steve Hawley, Tam O’Shaughnessy

Equal parts moving and informative, the documentary Sally takes us inside the very private life of the late Sally Ride, our fearless Norwegian-American trailblazer who eschewed attention and fanfare. She died far too young, at age 61, from pancreatic cancer. Yet, she left a legacy of STEM nonprofit work tied to UC San Diego (Sally Ride Science), where the girls of today and tomorrow can achieve the stratosphere in engineering, science, and mathematics, and maybe someday become astronauts like Sally had achieved. Her work in STEM education and her groundbreaking achievements as the first American woman in space continue to inspire and pave the way for future generations of women in these fields.

Reviews

THE GOOD AMERICAN FAMILY – Review by Susan Granger

April 30, 2025May 1, 2025 Susan Granger Christina Hendricks, Ellen Pompeo, Good American Family, hulu, Imogen Faith Reid, mark duplass

Autism and Adoption are two ’trigger’ words in today’s culture – and Hulu’s Good American Family delivers a double-whammy on both. “There are three sides to every story,” actress Ellen Pompeo explains. “Or six sides. Or nine. This is why art keeps us alive. Because everybody gets to see things their way – to make sense of them.” Branching out from her surgeon character Meredith Grey on ABC’s hit medical show Grey’s Anatomy, Pompeo tackles suburban supermom Kristine Barnett in Good American Family.

Reviews

PARADISE – Review by Susan Granger

March 11, 2025 Susan Granger dan fogelman, disney, hulu, James Marsden, julianne nicholson, Nicole Brydon Bloom, Paradise, series, Sterling k brown

This action-packed political thriller combines a sci-fi apocalyptic theme with a compelling whodunnit. The plot follows Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown), assigned to guard U.S. President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), a smarmy Southern Democrat from a wealthy family. Problem is: When Collins reports for work one morning, he discovers that Bradford has been brutally murdered in his bedroom and the President’s personal tablet, containing highly classified state secrets, is missing.

Reviews

ANORA – Review by Susan Granger

February 7, 2025February 9, 2025 Susan Granger Anora, hulu, Mark Eydelshteyn, Mikey Madison, sean Baker, Yuri Borisov

Winner at the Directors’ Guild, Producers’ Guild, Critics’ Choice, Cannes Film Festival and Best Picture Oscar nominee Anora may have a similar concept to Pretty Woman but with one helluva difference. Oscar nominee Sean Baker’s raucous, raunchy rom-com revolves around Anora – a.k.a. Ani (Oscar nominee Mikey Madison) – a tough-talking 23-year-old stripper from Brighton Beach in South Brooklyn, who hooks up with 21-year-old Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the obscenely spoiled son of a Russian oligarch.

Reviews

HOLD YOUR BREATH – Review by Susan Granger

October 18, 2024January 8, 2026 Susan Granger Alona Jane Robbins, Amiah Miller, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Hold Your Breath, hulu, Sarah Paulson

Set in 1933 in the Oklahoma Panhandle at the height of the dust storm season, Hold Your Breath revolves around Margaret Bellum (Sarah Paulson) and her two young daughters. Margaret’s husband has been gone for quite a while, looking for construction work, leaving her wearied of assuming all the responsibilities of maintaining their homestead amid the constantly encroaching dust. Margaret must repeatedly reassure the girls that the ghostly Gray Man, a mysteriously villainous character in one of their storybooks, is mythical and will not harm them. While Sarah Paulson’s distraught performance grounds the family drama, it’s not enough to evoke the implied terror.

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