saoirse ronan – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

BLITZ – (Middleburg FF 2024) – Review by Leslie Combemale

October 23, 2024October 24, 2024 Leslie Combemale Benjamin Clémentine, Blitz, elliott heffernan, Middleburg FF 2024, Middleburg Film Festival, saoirse ronan, steve mcqueen

We’ve seen old fashioned stories of World War II folks overcoming adversity and surviving the unthinkable trauma inherent to the era. Think movies like Mrs Miniver, and more recently, Hope and Glory. While those films involved women are part of their stories, they didn’t truly center on their challenges, nor did they focus on the many people of color in the UK dealing with wartime difficulties. Now award winning British filmmaker Steve McQueen is releasing Blitz, a film he wrote, directed, and produced, starring Saoirse Ronan and featuring pre-teen actor Harris Dickinson as mother and son facing the horrors of the 1940 London blitz.

Reviews

THE OUTRUN – Review by Diane Carson

October 3, 2024October 3, 2024 Diane Carson alcoholism, Nora Fingscheidt, Orkney islands, saoirse ronan, Saskia Reeves, Stephen Dillaine, The Outrun

The life of an alcoholic is horrific. The lives of those who love them are equally bleak. What are the choices? Co-dependent, enabler, or tough love? And, given the many previous stark and sometimes sensationalized films profiling alcoholics, how can a new work dramatize this illness with an instructive, innovative insight? German director Nora Fingscheidt has found a way in The Outrun. The extraordinary, immersive performance of Saoirse Ronan as twenty-nine-year-old Rona and the intricate interweaving of crowded city and isolated country, mythic fables and animated folklore, past and present events lift this poignant look at alcoholism above the mundane.

Reviews

THE OUTRUN – Review by Thelma Adams

September 30, 2024October 3, 2024 Thelma Adams Nora Fingscheidt, Orkney islands, saoirse ronan, Saskia Reeves, Stephen Dillaine, The Outrun. alcoholism

The searing, booze-soaked drama The Outrun joins the upper echelon of alcoholic movies. In this devastating addiction drama directed and co-written by Nora Fingscheidt, Rona’s (Saoirse Ronan) battle for sobriety and self-determination is Herculean. Supported by strong performances from Paapa Essiedu, Saskia Reeves and Stephen Dillaine, Ronan takes audiences to a dark, dark place, only finding a sliver of light at the very end of her fearless performance.

News

WEEK IN WOMEN: Nora Fingscheidt’s THE OUTRUN opens in U.S. theaters – Brandy McDonnell reports

September 17, 2024September 17, 2024 Brandy McDonnell Amy Liptrot, Nora Fingscheidt, Paapa Essiedu, saoirse ronan, Saskia Reeves, sony pictures classics, Stage 6 Films, Stephen Dillane, The Outrun, the week in women, twiw

Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun is arriving in theaters nationwide Oct. 4, released by Sony Pictures Classics in partnership with Stage 6 Films. The drama stars four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn), Paapa Essiedu (I May Destroy You), Stephen Dillane (Game of Thrones) and Saskia Reeves (Slow Horses). Ronan’s transformative performance has garnered wide praise.

Festivals

Sundance FF 2024: Previewing Femme-Helmed Films, Part One – Leslie Combemale reports

January 7, 2024January 19, 2024 Leslie Combemale anna boden, FREAKY TALES, I SAW THE TV GLOW, Jane Schoenbrun, june squibb, Kristin Stewart, LOVE LIES BLEEDING, LOVE ME, Megan Park, Nora Fingscheidt, Richard Roundtree, rose glass, ryan fleck, saoirse ronan, sundance 2024 preview, Sundance Film Fest 2024, Thelma

January is generally known as the repository for the studios’ least promising releases. January is also the MONTH OF SUNDANCE, where promising film projects are introduced to the public for the first time and some go on to acclaim, winning multiple awards. The rising cost of attendance, the difficulty in getting films accepted (over 14,000 apply, about 100 get a premiere), and the ever-lowering percentage of films picked up for distribution are valid challenges for fest attendees, critics, and filmmakers. However, Sundance still one of the best games in town for female filmmakers and filmmakers of color. Of the first 82 narrative and documentary features announced by the fest, 47% were directed by filmmakers who identify as women, and 45% who identify as people of color.

Reviews

FOE – Review by Nadine Whitney

October 9, 2023October 9, 2023 Nadine Whitney Foe, Garth Davis, Ian Reid, Paul Mescal, saoirse ronan

For a film that clocks in at 110 minutes Foe feels like it is bending time and creating something that goes on interminably. Every time you think “Here is a good end point,” it just keeps going to wring out even less emotion and surprise. What Garth Davis and Ian Reid have created is a blank page that tries to say something but, in the end, says nothing. Foe reaches for commentary on the contemporary anxieties of artificial intelligence, corporations becoming governments, the inevitability of a dead planet, but lands on a story about an unhappy couple. Foe is a misfire in almost every aspect and both numbingly dull and ridiculously obvious.

Reviews

SEE HOW THEY RUN – Review by Martha K Baker

September 28, 2022 Martha K. Baker (Archived Contributor) agatha christie, Mark Chappell, mouse trap, sam rockwell, saoirse ronan, see how they run, Tom George

Some movies are just for fun. They do not educate or elucidate or elevate. They entertain. See How They Run does just that. The title refers to a nursery rhyme about mice, and that, in turn, refers to a play called The Mousetrap. The Mousetrap happens to be the world’s longest running play, having opened in 1952 for more than 28,000 performances.

Reviews

AMMONITE – Review by Susan Granger

February 10, 2021February 10, 2021 Susan Granger ammonite, kate winslett, mary anning, motw, Movie of the Week, saoirse ronan

Sometimes biographies shed new light on once-obscure historical figures – like Mary Anning, a self-taught 19th century paleontologist, renowned for her groundbreaking discoveries of extinct, Jurassic-era marine skeletons.

Movie of the Week

MOVIE OF THE WEEK November 27, 2020: AMMONITE

November 21, 2020February 10, 2021 Jennifer Merin 0 Comments ammonite, betsy bozdech, Cate Marquis, jennifer merin, kate winslett, leslie combemale, liz whittemore, loren king, mary anning, maryann johanson, motw, Movie of the Week, nell minow, nikki baughan, Pam Grady, sandie angulo chen, saoirse ronan, susan wlosczcyna

Human connection brings warmth and joy to a bleak time and place in Francis Lee’s Ammonite, which centers on renowned British paleontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) and her relationship with a woman named Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan). While its details may be more speculation than fact, there’s no denying its message about the transformative power of kinship and attraction.

Reviews

AMMONITE – Review by Loren King

November 16, 2020November 22, 2020 Loren King ammonite, kate winslett, mary anning, motw, Movie of the Week, saoirse ronan

With his stunning 2017 debut feature God’s Own Country, writer/director Francis Lee created complex gay and working class characters and put them front and center. His follow up, the romantic, historical drama Ammonite starring Kate Winslet as real-life, self-taught British paleontologist Mary Anning who lived and worked on the coast of England in the 1840s, does the same for women straightjacketed by both gender and class.

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