Tag: Film
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Girls Aloud: What I Watched, September-October 2020
As I wrote earlier this year: “The role of third-wave feminism certainly took its hold in the cinema of the 2010s. Women in the 21st century are allowed, more than ever, to be imperfectly perfect creatures: kind and compassionate, cold and calculating, badass…or just plain bad.” Nowhere has this been more evident than in film…
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Netflix’s ‘Rebecca’ Resurrects the Gothic Romance for a New Generation
“Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again…” As someone once said: you can’t go home again—but with a new adaptation of Rebecca, now streaming on Netflix, it seems that once again finds itself within our cinematic purview in the form of Manderley. And if the walls of this modern take on the grand…
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On the Rise: Jessie Buckley’s Star-Making Turn in ‘Wild Rose’
There are star-making turns, and then there are star-making turns. And as much as I loved Lady Gaga in that other movie, nothing beats Jessie Buckley’s unforgettable, BAFTA Scotland-winning performance as Rose-Lynn Harlan in the Tom Harper-helmed Wild Rose (2018). A decade into a post-Millennial boom in movie-musicals (one which arguably started with Baz Luhrmann’s…
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Best of the Decade: Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Black Swan’ (2010)
What gave Black Swan its most enduring legacy (aside from the seemingly endless font of memes it inspired that year) was its unique twist on the psychological thriller. A nod to the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger classic, The Red Shoes, Darren Aronofsky’s film tells the story of Nina Sayres, a corps dancer who dreams of becoming…
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Best of the Decade: Mark Romanek’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ (2010)
In great contrast to fellow best-of entrant Inception and others of its ilk released the same year, Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go, his adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s eponymous novel, subverts the usual expectations of a science-fiction narrative, taking the dystopian plot from its usual dreamscape futurama and placing it into a time more familiar…
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Best of the Decade: David Fincher’s ‘The Social Network’ (2010)
“Creation myths need a devil.” At the risk of subsequently praising nearly every film released that year (and sounding like a cheap imitation of a sommelier), it must be said that, yes, 2010 was a very good year for film. Kicking off the decade in a major way was none other than David Fincher’s The…
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Rebel Yell: ‘Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl’ at DOCNYCFest 2019
Over the last decade or so, singer-songwriter-actress Kate Nash has developed a reputation (and obvious penchant) for defying others’ expectations. Filmed over five years as the British singer moved to Los Angeles and began writing and recording new music, Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl (which had its Stateside premiere last week at the DOC NYC…
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Music to Move the Stars: Damien Chazelle’s ‘La La Land’ is a Dizzying Confection of Dreamy Nostalgia
For nearly the past twenty years or so, movie-musicals have seen a resurgence in the public consciousness. One such film that has done so, and with as much fanfare (or perhaps even more so), is none other than Damien Chazelle’s own ambitious take, La La Land (2016). Chazelle’s second attempt at a musical (after his…
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Twee and Twang: Stuart Murdoch’s ‘God Help the Girl’ is a Delightful Burst of Quirk
Some of you already know how much I love my movie-musicals — and recently, I’ve become very much obsessed with one in particular that I’ve been meaning to see for a while now: God Help the Girl (2014). The brainchild of Belle & Sebastian musician Stuart Murdoch, the film also happens to be the offshoot…
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Stranger Than Fiction: Director-Auteurs Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal Pay Tribute to the Written Word by Weaving Their Own Tale of Intrigue and Ambition
One of the many reasons I write about drama — or write at all, period — is not just because of the films and Broadway shows that I was lucky enough to be exposed to as a young girl living in New York. Yes, I live for costume dramas and shows with spectacle, but it’s…
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