Enough Said “It’s hard to pin down what is so great about Holofcener’s work,” said a review of Enough Said in The New Yorker. It’s true. Like Nora Ephron before her and perhaps Lynn Shelton after her, Holofcener’s five films are easy to watch and put you into a world you may not necessarily know but somehow feels familiar. Holofcener makes her female characters not likable, exactly, but relatable. They are nice enough people but we also recognize and relate to their flaws. As The New Yorker...

Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton LOVINGWritten and directed by Jeff NicholsOut November 4Rating: 3/5 Almost 50 years after the Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia made interracial marriage legal across the U.S., a biopic has arrived. Writer/director Jeff Nichols (Mud) tells the story of the Lovings’ case as an intimate family drama, spending far more time in homes and cars than in courtrooms. The film opens in 1958, as Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton), who is white, and his pregnant girlfriend Mildred (Ruth Negga), who is black, travel...

Anna Biller's The Love Witch is nothing like your classic chick flick. When Elaine, played by Samantha Robinson, decides to use witchcraft to find true love, she ends up creating love spells so powerful that she's left a string of dead lovers. With its lush color palette and vibrant costume and set design, The Love Witch has all of the makings of a 60's melodramatic sexploitation film but Biller decides to bring sharp, contemporary feminist criticism into the mix, turning a simple tale of love, witchcraft and revenge into...

Over the course of the year 2016, I’ve seen a good fair few movies and ended up liking most of them (Luke Scott’s Morgan excluded). I’ve delighted in the blithe comedy of manners of Whit Stillman’s Love and Friendship, embarrassed everyone around me in the movie theater by laughing/crying too loudly at Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (directed by Jake Szymanski), cheered on the butt-kicking friendship of the ladies of Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (directed by Paul Feig), and enjoyed Batman v. Superman: Dawn of...

Melanie Lynskey and Linas Phillips. Photo by Nathan M. Miller The new movie Rainbow Time is uncategorizable — part romance, part drama, part dark comedy. Written, directed, and starring Linas Phillips, it originated with a character Phillips developed years ago after working with mentally disabled children. Phillips plays “Shawnzi,” a 40-year-old man with an unnamed mental disability who is prone to inappropriate sexual comments, is obsessed with Fonzie from Happy Days, and has intense sibling rivalry with his neurotypical brother, Todd (Timm Sharp). Melanie Lynskey gives...

Screenshot via Youtube Mila Kunis has been a part of the Hollywood industry for nearly 22 years. As a Hollywood starlet, she's been on the cover of numerous fashion magazines and appeared on Red Carpets every award season. Does this mean that the Hollywood veteran is exempt from the same kind of sexism  non-celebrity women face on a daily basis? Fuck no. Kunis recently published an open letter on Ashton Kutcher's website, Aplus, criticizing an unnamed producer for telling her that she would either pose "semi-naked" in a...

Girlhood Not having seen Boyhood, it’s difficult to compare Celine Sciamma’s Girlhood to Richard Linklater’s much talked about film, one he spent 12 years making. Both are coming of age stories and while Sciamma’s film didn’t take a dozen years to make, it still has a strong artist’s vision behind it. “I picked the title Girlhood not knowing Boyhood existed, but I was so glad,” Sciamma told The Independent. “I think the movies have a strong dialogue. They were mirroring [each other] and it’s really interesting...

A still from the Tightly Wound teaser When I tried using a tampon it felt like I was trying to force it into a hole that wasn’t there, causing excruciating, stabbing pain. I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to do it. Years passed by. I visited countless doctors who couldn’t tell me what I had or how to fix it. The mean, nasty voice inside my head often told me, “I’ll never have sex. I’ll never fall in love. I’ll never get married or...

American Honey (2016) Much like Mia, the young protagonist in Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold finds peace in dancing. “Apparently, there was a Cambridge professor who did a study on happiness—it took him five years—and he came back and said dancing made people happy. I could have told him that in ten seconds! I’ve always loved dancing, but my New Year’s resolution is to dance every day. I don’t dance as much as I used to and I miss it, and I was thinking, why do you have...

Erika Lust, sacred goddess of the modern cinematic sexual arts, destroyer of taboos, master of the Female Gaze, founder of Lust Films is holding an open call for pitches from YOU! If you’d like to join the ranks of those revolutionizing the male gaze dominated industry with their own sexually validating visions of tantalization, then this is your shot. We’re talkin’ about expanding the range of body types represented in porn, the sexual identities, the fantasies. Smashing the brackets so we can explore the full...