The hype has been enormous, but does Barbie, the movie, live up to expectations? Well, some elements do and others not so much. The film is populated by the Barbies and Kens of Barbieland, where women rule the roost and men trail in their wake. The chief Ken (bleach blonde Ryan Gosling, with a six-pack…
I’m a big fan of Greta Gerwig. Along with the likes of Brit Marling and Natalie Portman, she’s part of the vanguard of women filmmakers who can literally do it all. As well as 40 acting credits, she has 10 writing credits under her belt. Now she makes her solo directorial debut with Lady Bird. This…
A melancholic coming-of-age drama, there is much to enjoy from 20th Century Women. The film is set in Santa Barbara in the summer of 1979. Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening – The Kids Are All Right) is a determined single mother in her mid-50s, raising her adolescent son, Jamie (newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann), at a time of cultural…
Chilean director Pablo Larraín (No) takes on the enigmatic figure of Jacqueline Kennedy (neé Bouvier; later Onassis) and the mythos of the “Camelot” years in Jackie. This visually stunning and finely textured film is a kind of elegy to a lost time and lost hope, while simultaneously providing an intimate portrait of the former First…
Take a base of screwball comedy, add a dash of French New Wave, stir in some 1970s Woody Allen sensibility and top with a dollop of Clueless – now if you can wrap your head around all that, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect from Mistress America. This is director Noah…
