Perhaps the definitive modern action movie, and also maybe the one with the action sequences that I have loved most over the years, which somehow also has literally many treatises’ worth of material going on just below the surface.
Category Archives: Female Directors
NEW MOVIE TIME CAPSULE!
Our new feature has our capsule thoughts on new movies in theaters and on streaming, in this case featuring three great women directors and also a new/old take on Shakespeare
PASQUALINO SETTEBELLEZE (1975)
Lina Wertmüller became the first ever female director nominated for Best Picture for a movie that, to my surprise, turned out to be about an amoral hatchet murderer trying to seduce his way out of a concentration camp.
THE HOUSE IS BLACK (1962)
A 22-minute short film directed by a poet about a leper colony in Iran, which is somehow one of those works of art that might mean basically anything or everything.
SEDMIKRÁSKY (1966)
Less a movie and more a set of images trying to say… something, or maybe a bunch of different things, it ran afoul of Czech communist censors but has since found its audience.
PORTRAIT OF JASON (1967)
A very influential documentary that was far ahead of its time in both its talking head approach and its LGBT themes, though for few films am I more confident saying “your mileage may vary.”
THE HITCH-HIKER (1953)
A surprisingly tense thriller about two guys who pick up a hitch-hiker only to quickly discover he’s actually a serial killer, that is considered the only “classic” film noir directed by a woman.
WANDA (1970)
An early independent film about a “born loser” woman who “doesn’t know why she exists.” So that’s fun.
LOSING GROUND (1982)
A very low-budget 1980s film with concerns far more esoteric than your average movie, which wouldn’t be rediscovered until decades later.
BIG (1988)
A “big” hit about a kid trapped in adult’s body, which works almost entirely because Tom Hanks believably plays a 13-year-old boy.
Movie Valhalla 