More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Blink Twice, now streaming, reminds it audience that not all women are allies and not all men are predators. But some get away with acts of sexual violence akin to murder.
And when survivors band together, we’re going to do more than just dance on your table. In the blink of an eye—we’ll turn your private island into your personal hell.
The popular and critically acclaimed series The Handmaid’s Tale and The Righteous Gemstones each recently wrapped a successful series run.
When placed in conversation, The Righteous Gemstones and The Handmaid’s Tale expose the dangerous consequences of women participating in the cultural backlash against feminism. The tradwife ideologies that Amber and Judy negotiate, and that Serena Joy embraces in theory, become a totalitarian nightmare for women in The Handmaid’s Tale.
The new documentary Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print, celebrating the trailblazing history and enduring impact of Ms. magazine, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June and is available to stream on HBO Max beginning Wednesday, July 2, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
We are thrilled for the film’s release and the opportunity for millions more people to experience the story and legacy of the magazine. Ms. is more than a magazine—it’s a movement. And it’s crucial we continue to build an intergenerational, intersectional and diverse feminist coalition for the road ahead—because, as the film reminds us, we’re “at this crossroads moment for feminism, journalism and American values.”
Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning featured Tom Cruise’s action hero Ethan Hunt deep-sea diving through a submarine 500 feet under the sea, swimming naked in sub-zero temperatures, and sky diving in the middle of a plane duel. And yet, perhaps the most implausible fiction was… a Black woman president of the United States?!
Black male presidents in film and TV set the stage for Barrack Obama’s election. Could more depictions of Black female leaders pave the way for a Black woman president?
(This is Part 1 of a two-part series on women leaders and feminist leadership. Part 2—out Monday, June 2—continues with a public syllabus.)
Andor lays new groundwork for navigating political infighting and moral gray areas regarding violence in rebellion through historical parallels and the sharpest dialogue in any Star Wars project to date.
It’s tempting these dark days to dismiss the idea that any one person can make a difference.
And yet, every day ordinary people fight injustice. And some days, those people persist long enough, resist long enough, that their fights rise to national prominence. One such fight is chronicled in the new film Lilly, in theaters beginning May 9. The brainchild of director Rachel Feldman, Lilly tells the story of Lilly Ledbetter, “an ordinary woman who became extraordinary,” in the words of actor Patricia Clarkson, who portrays her in the film.
Unfortunately, Ledbetter didn’t live to see the film arrive in theaters. She died in October 2024 at age 86. “She was so profoundly happy to know that her legacy would extend in entertainment form,” Feldman says, “particularly so that young women would absorb the story.”
Sinners is rightly recognized as a Black Southern gothic tale, with a plot driven by its male characters. Indeed, the film highlights the camaraderie and community of these men as sharecroppers working alongside their pregnant wives, or as wizened blues musicians who experienced and witnessed enough real-world evil to rival any vampirism.
However, if this “conjuring” is visceral and emotive through the blues music, it is the blues woman and conjure woman who provides its intellectual heft.
This film is a triumph and righteous rebuke of our present era of anti-DEI policies and ideologies. May this way of thinking survive and thrive beyond the vampiric impulse to erase and dominate.
“Your body, my choice.” That misogynist credo is the crux of the blockbuster Netflix mini-series, Adolescence, the third most-watched English language show of all time on Netflix. The show continues to provoke debate about the impact of social media on the mental health of boys, in a world dominated by the manosphere, and its power to transform boys’ into violent misogynists.
Surprisingly, porn was the one missing element in the otherwise brilliant four-part Netflix drama.
The show centers on a 13-year-old boy, Jamie—a typical lad, vulnerable, like so many other young men, to the venom of online misogyny spewed through unbridled social media, chatrooms, blogs and podcasts. This angry ideology, masquerading as manly virtue, blames women for male alienation and promotes violent sexuality and the dehumanization of women—the very narratives of porn.
Bluey has been praised for challenging restrictive gender norms and modeling equitable relationships and, in a quite different take, for upholding “traditional” values by promoting respect for parents and marriage. Critics have also questioned whether the show is anti-feminist by pointing to misogynistic storylines and limited diversity.
For me, Bluey is a tool. The seven-minute episodes often prompt conversation, offer a thoughtful guide for answering complex questions, and inspire creative and engaging play. The show has real value in our house.
Companion starts with a dreamy tradwife fantasy and ends in a blood-soaked feminist reckoning. Writer-director Drew Hancock’s film may nod to Scream, Ex Machina and Black Mirror, but it carves out its own smart, brutal allegory for waking up from the fantasy of obedience. Sophie Thatcher’s performance anchors the story as Iris evolves from Stepford-perfect to gloriously feral, reminding us that when women start asking questions, the whole system bleeds.