ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

(Sundance FF 2025)

Festivals Reviews 

ZODIAC KILLER PROJECT (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Cortland Jacoby

Cortland Jacoby , , , ,

Documentarian Charlie Shackleton first came at Zodiac Killer Project as any true crime director would. Fascinated by the infamous Zodiac Killer case, he planned to adapt California policeman Lydon Lafferty’s book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge into a documentary of some kind. This is a film for the true crime aficionados. The ones who fall asleep to murder podcasts and can quote Forensic Files by heart. It’s also for the skeptics, who call out the exploitation and manipulation of the genre.

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Festivals Reviews 

SPEAK. (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Leslie Combemale

Leslie Combemale , , , , ,

If all the craziness happening in the world is making you feel hopeless, let me recommend an hour and half reprieve with the Sundance documentary Speak. Co-directors Jennifer Tiexiera and Guy Mossman (who also acts as DP) have brought what feels like a nerd-celebrating doc-version of your favorite sports flick. You know, the kind where you want to get up and cheer. Go team! Speak. follows five high school students from across the US as they prepare for and compete in the Original Oratory category of the National Speech and Debate Association championships. Participants, who come from all over the country, include Esther, Noor, Mfaz, Noah, and Tim. Two-time national champion Esther is an oratory superstar, Sunday school teacher, preacher’s daughter, and the child of Nigerian immigrants. These kids are truly amazing.

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Festivals Reviews 

SEEDS (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Leslie Combemale

Leslie Combemale , , , , ,

Documentarian Brittany Shyne chronicles the experiences of several southern Black farming families, from their work in the fields and harvests, to their family and community gatherings and their entreaties to local and national representatives for financial help equal to that being given to the White farmers next door. All this is done with great patience and care, and without, it certainly seems, any interruptions or much subjectivity on her part. Moments unfold as they will, as audiences watch often older farmers speak in their own time, unhurried, about whatever’s on their minds. That might be worry, or joy about a new child in the family, or what animal or field needs tending they don’t have enough hours in the day or equipment to get to. Funerals, car rides, eye exams, cow feeding time, all get equal attention, and are shown in every permutation of what black and white filming can do in partnership with good Southern exposure.

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Festivals Reviews 

SALLY (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Leslie Combemale

Leslie Combemale , , , , , , , , ,

With so much in the news every day right now on LGBTQ Americans having their rights stripped away, Cristina Costantini’s new documentary Sally, about pioneering female astronaut Sally Ride, feels both perfectly timed and all too timely. Costantini, who won Sundance’s Audience Award for her film Science Fair in 2018, uses a mix of archival footage, voice recordings from Ride herself, and interviews with those closest to her to build the story of her complicated life. The fact that she was gay and in a longtime relationship with a woman was only revealed to the public via Ride’s obituary, after she died of cancer in 2012. Chief among those sharing memories in this revealing documentary is Ride’s partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy. Ride was a trailblazer for women and girls interested in STEM, but also a woman who struggled with balancing her public and private personas. She gave everything to her career, which often meant compromising her personal life by staying in the closet.

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Festivals Reviews 

PRIME MINISTER (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Cortland Jacoby

Cortland Jacoby , , , , , ,

Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is probably the most well-known PM New Zealand has ever had. A new documentary by first-time directors Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe chronicles her time as the country’s leader and what exactly about her tenure made her so remarkable. As an American, watching Prime Minister is an experience unto itself. Knowing the reverence our country and the rest of the world have for Ardern and seeing the dissonance and hatred towards her in her own country is jarring. On one hand, much of it is systemic sexism and some of it is valid criticism that is never given a thorough examination. Every time Ardern triumphs you wonder if the United States will ever see a woman in a similar position. But more importantly, you wonder if they will ever get a chance to fail and make dire mistakes, just like the men in power do.

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Festivals Reviews 

OPUS (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Cortland Jacoby

Cortland Jacoby , , , , ,

Cult and celebrity have been intertwined for decades, long before the Manson family ever terrorized Hollywood. First-time director Mark Anthony Green explores this connection further in Opus, a lavish and opulent spectacle that lacks the political substance it thinks it has. Current comedy ‘it’ girl Ayo Edebiri plays Ariel Ecton, a twenty-something journalist who, despite working at a reputable music magazine, isn’t getting the chances she believes she should be getting. This changes when Moretti (John Malkovich), a David Bowie-Madonna-like popstar, comes out of obscurity to announce a new album and a prize of a lifetime for a select few. If the setup for Opus sounds familiar, it’s because it is. While it is by no means a shot-by-shot remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the parallels between the films can’t be ignored.

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Festivals Reviews 

MIDDLETOWN (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Leslie Combemale

Leslie Combemale , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When done well, there’s little better than a documentary that features footage of folks in both the present and as they were decades ago. These stories are like time capsules, with multiple and often diverse perspectives and memories of the same experience. Such a movie requires a deft hand at both interviewing the subjects and editing compelling and pertinent scenes from the past. Middletown has all that, while telling a story of corporate greed, dangers to the environment and community, that is just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. The film profiles the story of a group of teens in the early 1990s, who uncovered and documented the issues happening around toxic waste sites near Middletown New York. While in retrospect their film may look amateurish, and original filmmakers didn’t get the results they’d hoped for, it has left important and historic documentation of what can only be called “bad shit going down and intrepid idealistic kids trying to put an end to it”. Hurray for them!

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Festivals Reviews 

MARLEE MATLIN NOT ALONE ANYMORE (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Leslie Combemale

Leslie Combemale , , , , , , ,

There are so few Deaf directors working in Hollywood, it’s a joy to encounter a film helmed by one. Made for the PBS series American Masters, director Shoshannah Stern makes the perspective of the documentary very clear. She shifts back and forth between spoken word used with hearing subjects, and subtitles and no oral interpretation with Deaf subjects as well as in scenes where she’s interviewing Marlee Matlin. That alone requires a shift in hearing viewers that creates empathy and understanding some might not have before watching the film. And Not Alone Anymore is a necessary and valuable film, because it tells the story of a groundbreaking trailblazer who has shifted American culture permanently and in dramatic ways.

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Festivals Reviews 

LOVE, BROOKLYN (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Leslie Combemale

Leslie Combemale , , , , , , ,

Anytime is a good time to see Nicole Beharie onscreen. She elevates every project she’s in, but in veteran TV director Rachael Holder’s feature narrative directorial debut, she’s in great company. Love, Brooklyn, released at Sundance 2025, also stars André Holland and DeWanda Wise, and all three are acting up such a storm, they almost make the film’s scant script irrelevant. Almost. Holland plays a bicycle wielding writer not only vacillating between relationships, but also procrastinating on an essay assignment about the magic of an evolving Brooklyn, New York. He’s hanging with ex-girlfriend and gallery owner Casey (Beharie) while in an as-yet-to-be-defined relationship with Nicole (Wise).

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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.

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