Tag: Film and TV Reviews

‘Yellowjackets’: A Tale of Cannibalism and … Feminism?

Another season of the award-winning Showtime series Yellowjackets compares female empowerment then and now, contrasting girls of the 1990s with the women they are today.

There’s a lot going on in this brilliantly suspenseful show, including some spectacular deconstructions of stereotypes—good and bad—but what really stands out to me are the questions it asks about competition. For this viewer who came of age in the ‘90s—benefiting from a lot of self-empowerment messaging but not much feminism, let alone intersectional feminism—Yellowjackets really hits.

Sundance 2023: ‘Judy Blume Forever’ and the Enduring Power of Books

Judy Blume is most at home surrounded by books. That’s the predominant impression of a new documentary on the author’s life directed by Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok, Judy Blume Forever, which premiered at Sundance last month and will begin streaming globally on Prime Video in April.

The film relies heavily on interviews with Blume herself, a wonderfully charming presence throughout the documentary. (“I could be fearless in my writing the way I couldn’t in my life,” Blume explains in the film, referring to the complexities of her own personal life, where she chafed against the confines of her early marriages.) But one of its best components is its emphasis on the readers and how they were and still are affected by her novels.

Sundance 2023: Indigenous Drama ‘Fancy Dance’ Explores the Complexities of Family, Care and Community

A Native and queer filmmaker, Erica Tremblay—director of Fancy Dance was eager to make a feature film that deals with real issues facing Indigenous women and families, but also one that focused on the “joy and happiness in Indian Country, which often gets lost in mainstream portrayals of our communities.” Reflecting on obligation, family, parenthood and the responsibilities thrust upon us by love, the film asks viewers to reckon with the complex ways joy and grief intertwine and refuses easy answers to any of its necessary questions, in a way that’s as profound as it is memorable.

Sundance 2023: ‘The Stroll’ Showcases the Lives of Trans Sex Workers Through Their Own Eyes

The Stroll is a feature-length entry into Sundance’s U.S. Documentary competition that won this year’s Special Jury Award for Clarity of Vision. The film is about several blocks of 14th Street in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, colloquially called as “The Stroll,” where trans sex workers, mostly women of color, were known to gather.

Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s compassionate and authentic portrayal is about solidarity and hope—asking viewers to understand the past while looking forward into the future.

Sundance 2023: Inventive Working-Class Drama ‘Scrapper’ Reflects on the Complexities of a Child’s Grief

There’s something both familiar and fresh about Scrapper, the debut feature of writer and director Charlotte Regan, who’s been directing music videos since her teens. Winner of Sundance’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in the Dramatic category, Regan’s working-class British drama has a straightforward premise that belies its nuanced commentary on imagination, grief, love and family.

Sundance 2023: In Indigo Girls Documentary, Music, Nostalgia and the Search for Belonging Take Center Stage

One of the best things about director Alexandria Bombach’s documentary about folk rock duo The Indigo Girls, It’s Only Life After All, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is its easygoing intimacy. Singer-songwriters Amy Ray and Emily Saliers’ rapport, with both each other and the director, shines through a series of present-day interviews, concert footage, archival videos and recollections that foreground their music and their partnership over the last 40-plus years.