ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

jennifer lopez

Reviews 

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN – Review by Susan Granger

Susan Granger , , , , , , , ,

Winner of seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman, based on Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, delves into the complex relationship between two prisoners incarcerated in a cellblock in Buenos Aires, Argentina, circa 1983. Adaptors Eli Roth & Joe Crombie with director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Gods and Monsters) have discarded much of the deliberate calculation between the two disparate inmates in favor of sentimentality – skewing the focus on sultry, slinky Jennifer Lopez who vamps it up in full ‘diva’ mode in exuberant, elaborately staged musical numbers.

Read more
Festivals Reviews 

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMEN (Sundance FF 2025 ) – Review by Cortland Jacoby

Cortland Jacoby , , , , , ,

Two men, one gay and obsessed with an old Hollywood actress and the other a revolutionary, are locked in the same cell in an Argentinian prison during the country’s military dictatorship. If you knew nothing of the source material, you would never know that this story of unlikely friendships, love, and understanding is a musical until 20 minutes in. Kiss of the Spider Woman has a big legacy. The smartest choices director Bill Condon made, besides casting relative newcomer Tonatiuh as Molina, were the updates he made to the script. He cuts most of the songs set in the prison so the musical elements are all in the fantasy sequences. This grounds the prison scenes and takes away the gloss a Kander and Ebb musical can bring. In the original film and stage musical, Molina’s journey focused mainly on his sexuality. This time, it’s the character’s gender identity that gets fully fleshed out. Now is the perfect time to tell this story, not only because queer terminology has pierced mainstream media and culture, but because we can fully embrace and celebrate these characters because we know others like them, not just because we were fascinated by them like in past adaptions.

Read more
Commentaries 

Portrayal of Latinas in HIT MAN and ATLAS – Commentary by Jennifer Green

Jennifer Green , , , , , ,

Two new, high-profile releases are offering very different representations of Latinas in roles played by Jennifer Lopez and Adria Arjona. In the sci-fi actioner Atlas, Lopez saves the world, fighting off robots intent on destroying humanity, battling them from inside an AI mech suit and outwitting both them and her male colleagues. She’s buff and smart but also vulnerable, grappling with trust issues left over from childhood trauma. Compare this to Arjona’s role in Hit Man. Arjona plays a woman who considers hiring a hit man to kill her abusive husband, but the hit man is actually an undercover police contractor who convinces her not to. Instead, she leaves her husband and embarks on a steamy affair with the hit man.

Read more
Reviews 

ATLAS – Review by Nadine Whitney

Nadine Whitney , , , , , , , ,

Whatever Jennifer Lopez is doing in Atlas is enough to make you doubt she’s ever been in a movie before. Lopez isn’t given a stellar script to work with but that doesn’t excuse her abominable performance. Simu Liu is easy to believe as an AI synthetic because he has precisely one emotional state. Sterling K. Brown is solid as the heroic ranger who probably should have listened to Atlas, but he isn’t in the film enough to make enough of an impact. The fact that the most relatable character is the AI running the ARC is more than likely deliberate but speaks to how badly written and acted Atlas Shepard is.

Read more
Reviews 

THE MOTHER – Review by Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin , , , , , , , , ,

The Mother is a high velocity action thriller with a feminist filmmaker pedigree. Niki Caro directs the fast paced screenplay by Andrea Berloff, Misha Green and Peter Craig, based on a story by Misha Green. Jennifer Lopez, who coproduced the movie, stars as ‘The Mother,’ a former super spy and military assassin whose life is threatened by a very bad man who is seeking revenge for a high stakes deal that went south. The Mother (the character’s mane is never revealed) is determined to save the teenage girl she birthed years ago and reluctantly gave over to a foster family for the child’s protection from the evil revengeful gangster who is determined to kill both mother and daughter.

Read more
Reviews 

THE MOTHER – Review by Nikki Fowler

Nikki Fowler , , , , , , , , ,

The Mother tries repeatedly but somewhat fails at being a strong dramatic action movie despite having many action sequences and some scenic US snow filled mountainous and colorful Cuban landscapes, alongside some great production and popular music tracks. The start of the story is a bit traumatizing with Jennifer Lopez as ‘The Mother’ being stabbed in the stomach while she’s pregnant. From there, we follow her emotionally traumatizing journey in having to give up her child to foster care for the baby girls safety, only to step back into the child’s life 12 years later when her own past life as an assassin catches up with her and puts her, and her estranged daughter, at risk.

Read more
Movie of the Week 

MOVIE OF THE WEEK May 12, 2013: THE MOTHER

Jennifer Merin , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jennifer Lopez takes the concept of the “mama bear” and ratchets it up several notches to “raging grizzly mom” in Niki Caro’s tense action thriller The Mother. Lopez’s unnamed sniper/assassin mows down bad guys without flinching — or remorse — as she puts everything on the line to save the daughter she reluctantly gave up at birth to protect her from the evildoers who will stop at nothing to wreak their revenge.

Read more
Festivals Reviews 

HALFTIME (Tribeca 2022) – Review by Valerie Kafrin

Valerie Kalfrin , , , , , ,

The Netflix documentary Halftime peeks into the whirlwind life of global superstar Jennifer Lopez—but don’t expect to get too close. “One of the things that I’m proud of is that I’m able to hold it together in front of everybody without anybody knowing how I feel,” she tells the filmmakers. Earlier, she says that she doesn’t even let on when she’s sick. Lopez is an undeniably charismatic performer, yet in exploring her drive, Halftime shows us only half the picture. “My whole life, I’ve been battling and battling to be heard, to be seen,” she says. If only we’d seen more of that.

Read more
News 

WEEK IN WOMEN: Tribeca FF 2022 opens with JLo docu HALFTIME – Brandy McDonnell reports

Brandy McDonnell , , , , , , ,

New York’s 2022 Tribeca Film Festival will launch June 8 with the world premiere of Halftime at the United Palace in Washington Heights. Halftime is a new Netflix documentary film by director Amanda Micheli that follows global superstar Jennifer Lopez as she reflects on her milestones and evolution as an artist and navigates the second half of her career continuing to entertain, empower and inspire

Read more
Reviews 

MARRY ME – Review by Brandy McDonnell

Brandy McDonnell , , , ,

As sparkling and sweet as a glass of bubbly, the new romantic comedy Marry Me pours out an entertaining – if not earth-shattering – cinematic experience perfect for a lightweight date night or girls’ night. In an art-reflects-life role, J.Lo plays a self-made music superstar and mogul who has practically every waking moment sponsored, filmed and posted to social media. To go with their new hit duet “Marry Me,” she and her fellow pop luminary beau are planning to get married onstage during a sold-out New York City concert that will be live-streamed to millions worldwide.

Read more