One of the most remarkable things about the superb new documentary film After Tiller, from directors Martha Shane and Lana Wilson, is that it was made at all. Given the violence and harassment that abortion providers have endured for years, this group has, quite understandably, been very concerned with security issues and has been highly [...]
Thursday’s announcement of the Academy Award nominees included nods to the usual suspects (Django Unchained, Argo, Lincoln and Silver Lining Playbook are among the nominees for best picture) and some surprises (such as Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow being snubbed for best director). However, the most noteworthy theme of this year’s list of nominations is, [...]
(Beware: Spoilers below) I was hesitant to see Django Unchained, having read an earlier script floating around the Internet, until actress Kerry Washington said this about her role as long-suffering slave and love interest, Broomhilda: Look I can see how it’s not particularly feminist to play the princess in the tower, waiting to be saved. [...]
While Les Misérables is not your typical musical–or, as this Guardian review puts it, “There’s no dancing, there are no jazz hands and there is next to no speech”–it is typical of the genre in that, like opera, it includes more female characters than do many plays, movies and novels. Regardless if this is due [...]
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is, in no way, shape, or form a film that passes the Bechdel test. Not only does it lack two female characters interacting with each other about something other than a male love interest, it pretty much lacks female characters, full stop. Of all 15 main characters, not one is [...]
In what’s being called a first, one-half of the 16 dramatic films chosen for competition at the prestigious 2013 Sundance Film Festival this coming January in Park City, Utah, are directed by women. In comparison, only three women-helmed dramas were selected for the 2012 fest. And to get a larger picture of how limited directorial [...]
We went to see The Sessions because we were intrigued by the notion of seeing a woman sex therapist on screen. This independent film seemed like it would be an atypical or maybe even a transgressive depiction of a woman in charge of herself and her sexuality. We were also heartened by the trailers that suggested [...]
The Twilight Saga’s Breaking Dawn: Part 2 tries hard to be epic, and in ways it is. Not all of them good. On the plus side, it has a grander scope, better cinematography, action scenes my 13-year-old literally described as epic, and more camp. The camp part is its best feature, and this time around there [...]
This is the last in a three-part series on watching horror movies as a feminist spectator. Having covered films which reinforce the necessity of the patriarchy, and films which question its value while still punishing challenges to patriarchal norms, let’s look at two movies in which the patriarchy is almost entirely irrelevant. British director Neil [...]
This piece is part two in a series. See here for part one. Since Edward Cullen first graced the pages of a young adult novel in 2005, vampires have been the sexy bad guys du jour. But it’s not just the lingering fear that sex might lead to death that makes these nightmarish manifestations of [...]
