Female Film Critics 24/375
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third in Rian Johnson’s whodunnit series starring Daniel Craig, is now on Netflix. Famed detective Benoit Blanc travels to upstate New York and takes up residence at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, not for confession, but to help a young priest, played by Josh O’Connor, investigate an impossible crime at this tiny church with a troubled past.
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The Netflix film Luckiest Girl Alive is secretly a drama tucked inside a mild thriller about how one woman’s traumas affect her years later. While this is a worthwhile topic, its creators seemed to think no one would pay attention without flashbacks of assault, knives dripping blood, and the soundtrack zinging in place of suspense.
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Female as victim, with emphasis on rape, has served Hollywood well. While pretending to inveigh against such violence, these films have glamorized assault and added filmic battery with fragmented images of the victim. Thankfully, Luckiest Girl Alive is not that trite trope. The title is ironic. The multi-layered plot is trussed with conflicts. The last 15 minutes of Luckiest Girl Alive tie a beautiful ribbon of retribution on this gift of a film.
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Very little about Four Good Days is easy to watch — not drug addiction, mother/daughter tension and distrust, or justifiable anger against Big Pharma. The title refers to the wait before the user can get a shot that will help her break her addiction, but those four days are horrific for her, her mother, and her mother’s husband. And the audience.
Read moreInanely scripted by Neville Kiser and flamboyantly directed by brother-and-sister Andrew and Lana Wachowski, Jupiter Ascending is a ludicrously pulpy ‘lust in space’ saga, studded with elaborately vivid, eye-popping visual effects more suited to video games. There’s even a cameo with “Brazil” director Terry Gilliam. Poor Eddie Redmayne – brilliant as Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything” – whispers his malevolence; he must be praying that Oscar voters don’t see this debacle before they cast their ballots. Read on….
Read moreOpening Feb. 6, AWFJ’s Movie of the Week is Jupiter Ascending, written and directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix, Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas). Set in the future, it stars Milan Kunis as Jupiter Jones, a seemingly ill-fated woman whose life is changed forever by the arrival of Caine (Channing Tatum), a genetically engineered hunter. Read on…
Read moreWhen Dylan (Justin Timberlake from “The Social Network”) is recruited by corporate headhunter Jamie (Mila Kunis from “Black Swan”), he
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