Movie Magazine International Blog

By Moira Jean Sullivan Eva Husson has presented films twice at the Cannes Film Festival -- Girls of the Sun in the official selection in 2018 and Mothering Sunday included in the Cannes Premiere Section of the 74th Festival de Cannes in May. It is an extraordinarily well-crafted film with a provocative narrative structure, based on the novel by Graham Swift, recipient of the British Hawthorndon literary award. The film begins with shots of three young boys; two are children of the Nivens and who died in World War I . The third child is Paul Sheringham, the only survivor and what remains of the Nivens' and Sheringhams' bond. The slow motion of a galloping horse sets the stage for the milestones in Jane Fairchild’s life that she feels set her on the path of becoming a writer, including being given a Paxton typewriter. The pace of the film provides the opportunity to contemplate the sumptuous imagery. In discontinuous continuity the story telling enfold showing time in...

By Moira Jean Sullivan One of the parallel sections of the 44th Créteil International Women Film Festival this year (March 11-20) was a history of directors in different genres of cinema made by women. This included short film programs with directors such as Germaine Dulac, Lois Weber, Maya Deren, and Ida Lupino. Also of interest was the horror genre and several exceptional horror films were presented including The Countess from 2009 made by French actress and director Julie Delpy, an historical film about the life of the Hungarian countess Erszebet Bathory. It is not often that a horror film is made with such rich detail as this film about a woman who was afraid of aging and who used the blood of young female virgins to keep herself forever young. She falls in love with the young son of Count György Thurzó (William Hurt) - Istvan, (Daniel Bruhl). The Count prevents him from meeting the Hungarian Comtesse who is to be married to the daughter of a wealthy Danish merchant. Erz...

Sidney Lumet’s The Group from 1966 features a stellar female cast of eight women attending Vassar back east in the 1930’s. Only three of the actresses are still living today – Candace Bergen as the mysterious Lakey, Mary Robin Redd as Pokey who everyone is surprised when she later gives birth to twins and Kathleen Widdoes as class valedictorian Helena. The film is based on Mary McCarthy’s best-selling novel from the same year. It would be a great film to do a remake of though the main theme is less glaring of interest today regarding the sexual repression of the women and pressure to fit an ideal - the marrying and housewife type. Actually, one film does come to mind that is relatively recent starring Julia Roberts as a teacher at Wellesley women’s college in the 1950s Mona Lisa Smile (2003) with the same pressure on female students. Joanna Pettet as Kay is the exception to the blue-blooded requirement of "The Group" but is the catalyst of the narrative with her pro...

Photo ©Moira Jean Sullivan, Castro Theater, December 12, 2021 San Francisco Steven Spielberg decided to make an updated version of West Side Story several years ago and due to the pandemic, the film was not released until December 10th. There are no real differences as far as quality of the films considering the 50-year time difference from 1961 to 2021, and I shared this first impression with Rita Moreno who sat next to me towards the end of the screening at the Castro Theater on Dec 12. Both films are excellent but there are differences as far as the representation of people of color, specifically the Puerto Ricans and the transgender character Anybody’s played by Iris Menas--- who does not want to be a girl but a boy. Moreno explained how this part of the film is subject to censor in China. Rita Moreno attended the screening in full regalia in an outstanding outfit of crimson and yellow and she was jubilant, a charismatic actress who celebrated her 90-year birthday and we wer...

By Moira Jean Sullivan Time Now is a new independent film starring Jenny (Eleanor Lambert, the daughter of Diane Lane and Christopher Lambert), written and directed by Spencer King. Lambert as Jenny, who looks more like her father than mother, is investigating the death of her brother Gonzo (Sebastian Beacon) accompanied by her five-year-old son. Lambert returns to her hometown of Detroit with Rolling Stones t-shirt, once the center of the auto industry with palatial gas guzzling sedans still roaming the streets. One of the local joints Gonzo hung out is an African American nightclub with live music where her friend Tanja (Paige Kendrick)works. It is frequented by Kash, (Xxavier Polk) a rap recording artist who keeps his producer up all night in the studio. These scenes are some of the best in the film and the contrast with a dying city from the industrial age provide a great context. Kash used to know Gonzo and tells Jenny they pushed each other as artists. Gonzo also had his ...

By Moira Jean Sullivan The Velvet Underground by Todd Haynes was presented out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in July, a documentary on the experimental music group who did live shows and put out four albums in the 60’s. They were New Yorkers and hated the west coast scene: flower power, the hippies and Phil Graham , according to drummer Moe Tucker actress and Mary Woronov. Founded in 1964 by singer guitarist Lou Reed, Welsh multi-musician John Kale, guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Angus MacLise - later replaced by Moe Tucker, you can hear Moe’s beat in the bands famous "Venus in Fur". Andy Warhol was misidentified as the leader of the band but his brief association is confirmed in the documentary, also that he was fired by Lou Reed. German singer Nico was also in the band who is often referred to for her beauty rather than her music. According to John Cale, Nico was indifferent to the superficiality of the scene especially Warhol and spe...

By Moira Jean Sullivan PTSD: THE WALKING WOUNDED directed and written by Ash Patino is a new ON DEMAND film that opened October 1, by David Lionheart , founder of ‘Play for Your Freedom’ , a nonprofit charitable organization that helps veterans and their families transition from military life to civilian life through fitness and sports and build community. PTSD: THE WALKING WOUNDED shows the efforts of David Lionheart, a civilian in helping his community while healing his own wounds. A victim of sexual abuse he came from a broken home. The story of a friend in the military and his experiences of trauma were instrumental in Lionheart’s creation of wellness camps for veterans and victims of abuse. Lionheart says that the bridge for veterans to get re-integrated after military service is not enough especially events where veterans meet other veterans. In fact, 20% of veterans suffering from PTSD veterans commit suicide. One of the interviewees, Jillian Nadiak, has raised over 25...

Moira Jean Sullivan Cecilia Mangini has been filming and photographing nearly her entire life and was the first female documentary filmmaker in Italy. In the documentary presented at Venice. In The World in Shots she collaborates with Paola Pisanelli who provides some movement to her stills and puts together her life with old passports, photographs, programs and artefacts from her spacious apartment in Rome. In fact, it is a living archive, with Cecilia telling us the background, her thoughts instead of a voice over after her death. She is in Iran at an Italian Retrospective of Documentary Film l in 2018, and that year she is also at Créteil Films De Femmes in a public meeting with festival director Jackie Buet. The filmmaker is in Vietnam, with photographs she intended to use for a film with her husband Lino Del Fra Lwhich Pisanelli animates with sound effects of gunfire. She is at art galleries looking at great works of art. There are clips from her films such as "To ...

By Moira Jean Sullivan Three top awards went to women behind the camera at the 78th Venice Film Festival that ended Sept 11. The Golden Lion went to Audrey Diwan’s abortion drama “Happening” in what jury president Bong Joon Ho deemed a “unanimous decision". The film is about a student in provincial France, Anamaria Vartolome, who realizes she is pregnant during the countdown to her final examinations. The film comes at a time when abortion rights are being hotly debated in the US. After a 12 year absence from feature filmmaking Jane Campion does it again with a Silver Lion for The Power of the Dog at Venice based on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage. At the press conference with cast and Campion said that the “climate has changed” for female driven films. As for The Power of a Dog she remarked that she “doesn’t calculate in terms of gender but thought it was an amazing piece of literature”. Venice does not have the same criteria for films as Cannes that a film must first ...

By Monica Sullivan In the 1980's AIDS hit San Francisco like a bomb.  You lost friends and relatives you thought would be part of your life forever.  In some ways I still think of them that way.  Some of the top writers in the city were lost to us forever.  We mostly focused on people in San Francisco in the war against AIDS, but there were other people fighting just as hard in the rest of the country.  One doctor, many miles away, was Anthony Fauci, whom I did not become really aware of until a tourist ship arrived in San Francisco in early 2020 with passengers who caught a new disease called Covid 19. Another epidemic had started in San Francisco.  Frantic people searched desperately for a vaccine and learned about the disease from Dr. Fauci, who was the voice of sanity in an insane time.  We got conflicting information from conflicting government agencies.  Yes, it was a terrible nightmare.  Many persisted in cooperating with Dr. Fauci's...