Female Film Critics 24/375
Two new feature films mark the 50th anniversary of the still- disturbing, endlessly fascinating Tate/LaBianca murders that shook the tony enclaves of Los Angeles to the core in August, 1969. Quentin Tarantino’s star studded Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will get more attention. Mary Harron’s Charlie Says, with its focus on the women in Charles Manson’s “family” who committed the heinous murders, may be the more interesting.
Read moreDirector Mary Harron, who previously found the humanity in would-be assassin Valeria Solanas with I Shot Andy Warhol and Bret Easton Ellis’ twisted master of the universe in American Psycho tries to the same with Charles Manson acolytes and murderers Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Susan Atkins with her latest, Charlie Says. It is a mixed bag, but intriguing enough to make it a worthy addition to Harron’s oeuvre despite some glaring weaknesses.
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Canadian filmmaker Mary Harron’s bio crime drama, Charlie Says, offers a provocative new perspective on a notorious case as it examines the Manson Family women at the center of the gruesome Tate-LaBianca murders in the summer of 1969. Like many of Harron’s films, it’s definitely outside the mainstream and involves controversial characters.
Read moreIn Australia, the very words “The Family” still send tremors through those of a certain generation, associated as they are
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