Day: December 2, 2019

Female Characters, Female Filmmaker, Film Reviews, Reviews

Review: Judy and Punch

ometimes you see a film that encapsulates something so enraging and freeing and vindicating it’s like a punch in the face and you want to run up to your fellow cinemagoers and shout “wasn’t that amazing!!”

“Judy and Punch” (2019) is one such film. It’s darkly funny and a rallying call to a radical revolution of open-mindedness and inclusivity. These things are not the realm of wishy-washy millennial snowflakes as social media trolls would have us believe, but strong people willing to risk their lives standing up to tyranny and braying mobs who are choosing which rocks to stone them to death with. Continue reading Review: Judy and Punch

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Female Filmmakers, Film Reviews, Reviews

Review: Knives and Skin

There is a strangeness to “Knives and Skin” (2019) that makes it difficult to put into words precisely what it’s about and how it made me feel. Jenifer Reeder’s film is eerie, bright but dark, funny but upsetting. It puts you on edge but also has you really feeling for the people on screen.

If you like films by Peter Strickland or David Lynch you’ll love it. If not, I recommend pushing your cinematic comfort zone.

Fifteen year old Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) has an encounter with sexually aggressive Andy (Ty Olwin) which ends badly. She goes missing and the town is shaken. Her mother Lisa (Marika Engelhardt) slowly loses her mind but others in the community have just as tenuous a grip on reality. Continue reading Review: Knives and Skin

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Female Characters, Female Filmmakers, Film Reviews, Top 50 of the Decade

ITOL Top 50 Films of the Decade, Entry No 19: Captain Marvel

Despite arguably being the most powerful character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Captain Marvel still had a lot of heavy lifting to do in terms of expectations. It was the 21st film in the MCU, and the precursor to the event that was “Avengers: Endgame”, which came out roughly 7 weeks after Captain Marvel’s debut. It was the first to be a solo outing for a female character in the MCU, being the titular Captain Marvel (Brie Larson). It also felt like an eleventh-hour decision to have our first introduction to the character, and it was heavily hinted that she was going to play a significant role in Endgame.

Fortunately, for the better part of the movie, Larson manages to shoulder the expectations set on her and uses them to launch herself into the MCU. Her extensive acting talents are sublimely on display when she rotates effortlessly between her two distinct personas. The first being Vers, battling with memory loss and the echoes of who she once was, while desperately trying to fight her emotional nature and to try and appear stoic in a foreign environment. Secondly, as the stone-cold badass Air Force pilot Carol Danvers that we witness in flashbacks. Continue reading ITOL Top 50 Films of the Decade, Entry No 19: Captain Marvel

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