Although this is a strong ensemble piece about three generations of women, it felt like it came in a long line of films that I had seen over the last few weeks about women who are essentially damaged.
Continue readingMalu (2024)
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Matt and Mara (2024)
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Matt Johnson is like Mark Duplass’s goofy cousin. This gently diverting, stream of consciousness, white middle class angst movie reminded me a bit of films like Lynn Shelton’s Hump Day (2009) or an early Kelly Reichardt film but without the social weight.
Continue readingI Saw the TV Glow (2024)
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I really didn’t enjoy this film. It felt like a drama camp improv piece with funding. Having spoken to a queer friend afterward though, they have given me lots of links to articles on how it is a trans metaphor and groundbreaking in a lot of ways.
Continue readingMoving (1993)
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Perhaps my emotional engagement, or struggle with it, with this film about a young girl coming to terms with her parents divorce says something about the distance I have from childhood compared to motherhood.
Continue readingThe Rye Horn (2023)
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I feel like there should be a single word or term for films like this, that provoke intense emotion and are beautiful but are telling you something fundamentally tragic and melancholic about the world. I’ve seen a few MIFF films that would fit this. Maybe bittersweet, but it feels more profound than that. Tristesse. Dolorous.
Continue readingArmand (2024)
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Armand starts out with a good and interesting premise. A single mother, Elizabeth (Renate Reinsve who was in The Worst Person in the World which has a similar vibe to this film) is called into her six-year-old son Armand’s primary school for a meeting.
Continue readingFlathead (2024)
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If you like a documentary that is about giving the subjects agency in how their story is told, then Flathead is not for you.
Continue readingToll (2023)
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Like Crossing, Toll looks at queerness through the eyes of the non-queer family members who alienate and marginalise them.
Continue readingGaucho Gaucho (2024)
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Directors Micheal Dweek and Gregory Kershaw take us into the sparse remote world of Argentine gauchos (and one gaucha).
Continue readingCidade; Campo (2024)
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Juliana Rojas likes to blend contemporary Brazilian social critique with the surreal and supernatural, as evidenced by her queer werewolf musical (Good Manners (2018)).
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