In Infinity Pool, people who are dead inside essentially play with their own corpses as shiny, new toys. The savagery of that idea is, simply, delicious.
Film
Sundance Film Festival 2023 Dispatch #1 — Girls Just Wanna
The three films I selected to start my 2023 Sundance journey were very different from one another, but they shared one common theme: girlhood.
The Boston Festival of Films from Iran returns to the MFA — Beneath The Veil
These films provide a glimpse into the workings of a culture and society increasingly cut off from the rest of the world as well as a taste of a cinema that had once been among the world’s greatest and which may one day be again.
Film Review: “Alice, Darling” — Toxic Romance
Alice, Darling is a potent reminder to women that they should trust their instincts — and rely on their friends.
Doc Talk: Making Reparations, Restoring a Reputation, Redrawing Identities
Reviews of the cogent and well-crafted The Big Payback, the comprehensive if conventional Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space, and No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics, which expertly balances whimsy and gravity, though the version of the film shown by PBS has been heavily censored.
Book Review: “Run Towards the Danger” — Grappling With Memories of Trauma
Sarah Polley’s essay on sexual assault by itself is worth the price of the book, essential reading for anyone interested in the physical and psychological after-effects of violence against women.
Film Review: “M3GAN” — Child’s Slay
M3GAN is a movie algorithmically generated to spawn as many memes about itself as possible before undiscerning viewers realize what they’re watching is a reworked Black Mirror draft.
Film Review: “Saint Omer” — Medea Redux?
Director Alice Diop wisely avoids offering a neat solution to Saint Omer‘s exploration of a mother who murders her child.
Film Review: “The Pale Blue Eye” — A Gothic, and Poetic, Murder Mystery
For viewers weary of horror that embraces the minimalist and dystopian, The Pale Blue Eye — chock-full of emotion, mystery, and romance from a bygone era — is a welcome sight indeed.
Film Commentary: The Gratuitous Comic Cruelty of “The Banshees of Inishiren”
The island scenery is stunning and the acting is fine, but at is core Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inishiren is bitter and mean-spirited