Female Film Critics 24/375
Like Mean Girls by way of Heathers, Jawbreaker, and The Craft, Meredith Alloway’s stylish, buzzy dark horror comedy Forbidden Fruits takes a critical look at the power dynamics of female friendship — with healthy doses of witchcraft and gore tossed in for good measure. Taking place almost entirely in a Texas mall, it also skewers the impact of influencer culture on everything from fashion trends to slang to coffee orders.
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Imagine a decidedly adult comedy horror feature that is equal parts Mean Girls, Heathers, and The Craft, and you’ll have a pretty good sense of what’s in store for audiences when they sit down to watch Forbidden Fruits. The film, which is destined to become this generation’s cult classic, is directed by Meredith Alloway, who partnered on the screenplay with playwright and writer/producer Lily Houghton, as adapted from her play Of the Women. Right from the beginning, that sets it apart from its influences.
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Meredith Alloway’s deliciously campy horror comedy Forbidden Fruits follows three witchy retail queen bees and the new co-worker who dares to defy the clique and its hierarchy. Alloway and co-writer Lily Houghton deliver a cheeky mashup of Mean Girls and The Craft. In the Forbiden Fruits story, Cherry, Fig, and newcomer Pumpkin are dominated by Apple, but Pumpkin suspects that something rotten is in their shopping mall coven.
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In subtitling this documentary A Film For Pina, filmmaker Wim Wenders clearly announces his intention to deliver a cinematic tribute to the brilliant German dancer and choreographer, Pina Bausch, who is its leading subject and character. Wenders and Bausch were in pre-production for the film in 2009 when Bausch died of cancer, just five days after she’d been diagnosed with the disease. Wenders continued to work on the production of the film, and eventually shot it using members of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, the dance company that Bausch helmed since 1974. Wenders shot the dances in 3D, and the effect is gorgeous.
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Does any part of you still doubt that the United States’ relationship with the Indigenous people who called North America home long before anyone ever thought of naming it “America” in the first place is based in duplicity, theft, and genocide? If so, then watching Laura Tomaselli and Jesse Short Bull’s compelling Lakota Nation Vs. United States will make it crystal clear that, as one interviewee eloquently puts it, “Fundamentally, the intent of the United States is to gain access to native land.” Lakota Nation Vs. United States is an ardent call for justice.
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Lakota Nation Vs. United States is a compelling advocacy documentary that chronicles the United States’ government’s ongoing land grab of Lakota territory in Northeastern Wyoming in violation of the Black Hills Treaty of 1868. At this moment in US history, when the Constitution — our government’s essential treaty with our nation’s citizens — is being challenged and our civil rights are being eroded, Lakota Nation Vs. United States is an effective cry for justice. It is an essential watch.
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Directors Jesse Short Bull, Laura Tomaselli and writer Layli Long Soldier give an exquisite and accurate account of how land treaties have been broken and Native Americans have been physically and verbally bullied and belittled and met with horrific stereotyping and lies promoted by colonizing attitudes and greed. Whether seen in the context of the struggle to retain rights to the Black Hills region that that rightfully belongs to the Lakota people, it’s clear that the influx of settlers from the east looking to strike it rich with gold in the west had no compunction about violating land treaties, sending kids to dehumanizing boarding schools, disrupting tribal culture. This documentary is a must watch.
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With the year more than half over, I will say now that Lakota Nation vs. United States should be among the nominees for the best documentary Oscar next year. It’s not only a superbly crafted, richly textured film with a fresh point of view, it masterfully blends past and present to serve as both historical corrective and gut-check for the very moment we are in when so many are eager to censor and erase history.
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“Life finds a way.” This classic line from Jurassic Park is referenced more than once in director Mel Eslyn’s Biosphere, and there couldn’t be a more apt way to summarize the story of this quirky, unexpected dramedy about two lifelong best friends (Mark Duplass, who co-wrote the film with Eslyn, and Sterling K. Brown) who may be the last people left alive on Earth after an unspecified planet-ending disaster.
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Monica is a profoundly moving film about identity, acceptance, and forgiveness. It’s a film that exists in what is left unspoken. Monica rarely says what she feels, in fact, it takes a lot of courage for her to tell her truth to anyone, including her ex-boyfriend Jimmy who abandoned her, using the “We need space” line to avoid confrontation. Abandonment has been in staple in Monica’s life since the day her mother drove her to a bus stop when she was sixteen and told her, “I cannot be your mother anymore.”
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