Sweetheart Deal is 98 minutes of tragedy and heartbreak but it also felt so vital and important to tell the stories of these women who suffer from so much abuse and marginalization. “Sex work is work” and “my body, my choice” are good, rhetorical, platitudes (that I believe) but they are also too vague to meaningfully represent anyone whose choice and autonomy are often taken out of the equation, often by situations far beyond their control.
Category: Festivals
Movie Festivals around the world
The Wild Robot takes flight with gorgeous animation and voice acting
A movie about a lost robot and a cynical loner fox raising an orphaned goose, plus the power of unlikely animal friendships? It’s as if this gorgeously animated marvel was built in a lab specifically to make me weep. Task accomplished, satisfaction rating 10/10.
Kate Winslet brings a spotlight to a pioneering photojournalist in Lee
In the title role of Lee Miller, Kate Winslet embodies the humanity of a pioneering photographer who was driven to bravely document the front lines of World War II.
Local Sightings started off another stellar fest this weekend
This weekend saw the kickoff of Seattle’s 27th Local Sightings Film Festival ten-day run September 20th – September 29th. Hosted at Northwest Film Forum (and online), it showcases the best and brightest the Pacific Northwest has to offer, both new and established. Filmmakers from WA, OR, AK, ID, MT, BC, and the Yukon are all eligible to participate which adds a mix of cultures, perspectives and styles for us to enjoy. Just as in years’ past the festival includes short and feature film programs that run the gamut from documentaries to experimental films.
TIFF 2024 Journal: Dispatches from the Toronto International Film Festival
Instant reactions to movies playing at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is in full swing from September 5-15 with celebrities and films flooding downtown.
Demi Moore triumphs in body horror satire The Substance
At long last, someone is brave enough to answer the question of whether there is anything grosser than watching Dennis Quaid eat shrimp.
Will & Harper, an illuminating cross-country road trip of discovery
Comedy superstar Will Farrell joins his recently-transitioned friend for an illuminating cross-country road trip of strikingly honest conversations and open-hearted discovery.
TIFF 2024: Nightbitch
Amy Adams is phenomenal as an artist who set her career aside to raise an adorable child; she sells the madness of isolation as her identity attempts to reclaim itself with hallucinations (maybe) that she’s turning into a dog.
TIFF 2024: On Swift Horses
I suppose it’s kinda cool that the hottest young stars in Hollywood now establish their cred by the rite of passage of playing gay. In Daniel Minahan’s adaptation of Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel, at least Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar Jones avoid tragic weepy stereotypes in this handsome literary take on queer identities in the 1950s American West.
TIFF 2024: The Life of Chuck
Told in three acts in reverse, Mike Flanagan has made a lovely little Stephen King adaptation about how Tom Hiddleston came to be an exceptional dancer who contains multitudes.