Reviews of movies and TV focused on women
Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie, is based on the true story of Olympic runner Louis Zamperini. The movie isn’t due out until December, but this preview emphasizes Zamperini’s Olympic career and was released during the Olympics.
I read the book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
The Hot Flashes was directed by Susan Seidelman and stars a slew of women, chief among them Brooke Shields, Daryl Hannah, Virginia Madsen, Camryn Manheim and Wanda Sykes. That attracted me before I even had a clue what the film was about.
It turns out The Hot Flashes is about the efforts of a group of Texas women who were once state high school champions in basketball to raise money to save a traveling mammogram truck. This was before Texas decided to close nearly all the clinics in the state where a woman could get a mammogram because they also offer birth control services. The mobile mammogram service was desperately needed even then.
The former champs are now a varied assortment of housewives, car salesmen, aspiring mayors, drug mavens, and oft married grocery store clerks. They’re old, out of shape, and have resentments remaining from years ago when they played together in high school.
Somehow Beth, the Brooke Shields character, manages to wrangle them into playing 3 games against the current high school women’s basketball team – which includes her daughter (played by Charlotte Graham) in an effort to raise $25,000 to save the traveling truck.
Mark Povinelli, a little person, is convinced to become the coach. The woman who works in the mammogram truck becomes the team manager. Eric Roberts is Brooke Shields husband – who is not a bit supportive of what she’s trying to do, by the way.
I’d give the film 3 out of 5 stars, meaning I liked it even if it isn’t Oscar material for best picture. It was fun to watch. It was inspiring. For a tale about overcoming all odds, it’s original and worthy of your time.
The Hot Flashes is available on DVD and from Netflix and Amazon. It was released in 2013.
A post about 10 Female Filmmakers to Follow at Indiewire recently had many comments with additional names of women in film to follow in Twitter. One of the comments mentioned a Twitter list of women directors.
Since it’s really easy to make a daily newspaper from a Twitter list using a tool called paper.li, I looked to see if anyone had made this list with 451 women directors in it into a daily paper. I couldn’t find anything like that at paper.li, so I made a daily paper for this list.
You can find Women Directors Daily here.
What the paper does is aggregate tweets from the women on the list into a daily newspaper-like display. If you subscribe to the paper, you get a daily email when the paper has been published. Instead of following all 451 women, you can just read the paper each day and within a few minutes you get 24 hours worth of tweets and information from the women on the list.
Any public list from Twitter can be made into a daily paper at paper.li. It’s very easy. If you have Twitter lists of people in film, people in entertainment, producers, actors, or any other type of list it only takes seconds to make a paper for it.
Queen to Play – original title Joueuse – is a little-known French film that is quiet, beautiful and ultimately uplifting. Released in French in 2009, it’s available on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I think you’ll love it. Beware, spoilers ahead. Continue reading “Queen to Play: Small and Beautiful”
Enough Said met all my expectations. I thought it would be funny – it was. I thought it would be charming – it was. I thought the cast would be superlative – they were. I thought it would be an outstanding example of storytelling from a female writer, a female director, and a female star – it was.
Continue reading “Review: Enough Said”The romantic comedy Enough Said coming to theaters on September 20 looks good. It stars the late James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus who get romantically involved as a couple of empty nesters. Look at some of the cast members.
Continue reading “Enough Said Looks Good”The idea is that you can get everything you need to know about an episode of The L Word from just the opening credits. If you know who was in an episode, you can remember what happened, right? Well, that’s my contention and I’m here to bring you the recap of final season of The L Word using nothing but the opening credits. Continue reading “The L Word Opening Credits (Season Six)”
Recapping season 5 of The L Word using nothing to tell the story but the opening credits. That’s what’s happening right here. Continue reading “The L Word Opening Credits (Season Five)”
This is part four of a series of posts that recap The L Word based solely on what you learn by watching the opening credits. We are ready to take on Season 4. Continue reading “The L Word Opening Credits (Season Four)”
I so wanted to go see In a World last weekend. It looks hilarious. It’s written by, directed by, and stars a woman: Lake Bell. That’s the kind of movie that makes me plunk my money down.
It opened August 9, but it is nowhere to be found in my city. What’s up with that, In a World? When do I get to see you?
Have you seen it yet? What did you think? Sound off in the comments.
