ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

scarlett johansson

Festivals Reviews 

NORTH STAR (TIFF 2023) – Review by Liz Braun

Liz Braun , , , , , ,

Dame Kristin Scott Thomas makes her feature directorial debut with North Star, a family tale about love and loss with a great cast. A lesser cast and better writing would have improved matters, but never mind. The plot revolves around the reunion of three sisters who are gathering at the family home for their mother’s third marriage. Mom (Scott Thomas) has been twice married and twice widowed, a detail from Scott Thomas’ own life. As a child, the filmmaker lost her father and her stepfather — both armed forces pilots — within six years.

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Reviews 

MARRIAGE STORY – Review by Brandy McDonnell

Brandy McDonnell 0 Comments , , , ,

It’s also one of those films that never lets you forget you’re watching a film, with a stagy quality that feels like you’ve been invited to see Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta and Alan Alda one-up each other in an exclusive acting workshop with Baumbach providing slightly outlandish material liberally sourced from his own life.

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Reviews 

MARRIAGE STORY – Review by Susan Granger

Susan Granger 0 Comments , , , ,

You know the feeling when you have a very painful scab on your knee and you keep picking at it? That’s what writer/director Noah Baumbach has created in this bitter, corrosive tale about the dissolution of a marriage. Beginning as ‘cinema verite,’ recalling the 1960s French film movement which featured natural actions and authentic dialogue, it inexplicably then morphs into near-farce and melodic metaphors.

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Reviews 

MARRIAGE STORY – Review by Diane Carson

Diane Carson 0 Comments , , ,

Writer/director Noah Baumbach tackles one of everyone’s most difficult experiences in Marriage Story, that is, the dissolution of an intimate relationship that also includes a cherished, young son. Adam Driver as husband Charlie and Scarlett Johansson as wife Nicole delve deep into painful emotional territory in a narrative alternately sweet, even amusing, tender, and, ultimately, agonizing.

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Interviews 

Noah Baumbach on MARRIAGE STORY, Perspectives and Writing Women – Jennifer Merin interviews

Jennifer Merin 0 Comments , , , , ,

Noah Baumbach’s films are all about the tangles and untangling of relationships and, while they aren’t written entirely from a female perspective, they always present complex and compelling female characters with strong and well-defined objectives. From his own male perspective, Baumbach writes female characters with convincing authenticity.

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Reviews 

JO JO RABBIT – Review by Susan Granger

Susan Granger 0 Comments , , , , ,

Director Taika Waititi’s approach to ridiculing Hitler is unique. Set in the fictional town of Falkenheim in Germany during the closing months of W.W.II, he focuses on plucky 10 year-old Johannes Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), who is “massively into swastikas” and besotted with his imaginary friend, buffoonish Adolf Hitler (Waititi).

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Reviews 

JOJO RABBIT – Review by Brandy McDonnell

Brandy McDonnell 0 Comments , , , , ,

Set in Germany during the waning days of WWII, the New Zealand filmmaker’s adaptation of Christine Leunen’s novel “Caging Skies” follows 10-year-old Jojo (wonderful newcomer Roman Griffin Davis), a new Hitler Youth recruit who so fancies himself a Nazi zealot that his imaginary friend is a clownish version of Adolf Hitler (Waititi, brilliantly eccentric).

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Reviews 

JOJO RABBIT – Review by Diane Carson

Diane Carson 0 Comments , , ,

Some people consider satirizing the bigoted high and mighty unproductive. Others feel satire offers an effective way to bare and undermine evil, knowing laughter may be both therapeutic and effective, even politically empowering. Based on director Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, I’m in the latter camp, and all for more ridicule of depraved individuals.

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