2023 Films by Women Film Directors
Jun. 15th, 2023 11:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerFor a while I was writing reviews of all the movies I’d seen by women film directors, but at the beginning of 2023 I fell out of the habit, and since I’m now quite a bit in arrears, I’ve decided to clear the decks with a bunch of micro-reviews.
Dava Whisenant’s Bathtubs Over Broadway is a documentary about corporate musicals - that is, musicals commissioned by corporations to show to their sales teams at the big annual meeting, most common from the 1950s to 1970s. Fascinating. Highly highly recommend if you’re at all interested in musicals as an art form or in the business of making a living as an artist, as these corporate musicals kept a lot of singers and dancers afloat in between Broadway productions!
I recall that Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984 got panned when it came out, but perhaps since I went in with low expectations, I thought it was fine. It’s not as good as the first Wonder Woman, but it’s a solid popcorn flick, and Gal Gadot is a wonderful presence as ever.
Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love is another documentary (I’ve been on a bit of a documentary kick) about two rogue French volcanologists, a married couple who built their entire life around spending as much time on and around volcanoes as possible, following their passions until it ended about how you’d expect a life built around volcanoes to end. The film uses a lot of their gorgeous volcano footage, which is so wonderful and strange to watch.
Emma Holly Jones’ Mr. Malcolm’s List, another one that I thought was fine. I enjoyed the sumptuous settings and costumes but I thought the story dragged a bit.
A story that did not drag at all: Schmigadoon!. Only season 2 has a female film director, Alice Mathias, but of course I watched both seasons. I perhaps liked season 1 a little more, because like Melissa I prefer the cheerful Music Man style musicals to the darker Chicago style, but they’re both fantastic, so much fun and so visually striking. I haven’t seen a show go so all out to build an ~aesthetic since Pushing Daisies, and I love it. Very funny, great songs, highly recommended.
Elaine May’s Ishtar famously flopped when it came out - there was in fact a Far Side cartoon depicting a video store in Hell that loaned out nothing but Ishtar - only to receive a later critical reassessment, so of course I would like to say that I loved it. Unfortunately, I felt it kind of dragged, although its depiction of American masculinity is interesting and I can see why critics went for it later on. Plus it stars the luminously beautiful Isabelle Adjani: a definite bonus.
The Kan-Kan was apparently doing an Elaine May retrospective, because they also showed A New Leaf, which I missed! Devastated. Probably I would have felt it dragged too (as I also felt this about the other May film that I’ve seen, Mikey and Nicky), but nonetheless… the one that got away.
Haifaa al-Mansour’s Mary Shelley is another one that’s been on the list for a while! I love al-Mansour’s Wadjda and I love Elle Fanning, who plays Mary, so it’s shocking really how long I let this languish. Well worth seeing if you’re into dirtbag romantic poets. Percy Shelley is styled like Edward Cullen from Twilight, for reasons of emotional vampirism, while also being just thrilling and sexy enough that you can see why Mary falls so hard for him. Mary’s friendship with her stepsister Claire Clairmont is also a standout: they are sometimes seemingly rivals for Percy’s affection, but whenever one of them is in trouble, their own affection for each other comes to the fore.
Up the Women is a delightful BBC comedy series, two seasons amounting to a mere nine total episodes, in which the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle Politely Requests Women’s Suffrage. One of those wonderful British comedy series where the writers create a cast of eccentrics and then simply allow them to play off each other, to create comic effect. The members of the BICCPRWS vary widely in their attitude toward suffrage, ranging from the anti-suffrage Helen (who rules her husband with an iron fist) to Helen’s trampled but militant daughter Emily, a renegade E. M. Forster heroine who at one point writes KILL THE KING on a banner for a suffrage march.
Finally, Suzanne Raes’ Close to Vermeer, a documentary about putting together a Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Loved the chance to see the paintings “in person,” as it were - of course a film is still a reproduction, but unlike a still reproduction, you can at least tell the size of the piece, something about the experience of being in its presence. An illuminating discussion about Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura, with new insight into how he might have gotten access to what was then a high-tech instrument: he lived next door to some Jesuits who are known to have had one.
There was also a very mannered disagreement between some American curators who think that Girl with a Flute is not a true Vermeer, from which conclusion the Dutch curators politely demure… until the story erupts in the international press, when one of the Dutch curators comments (I am paraphrasing), “The American National Gallery may not be lending Girl with a Flute as a Vermeer, but the Rijksmuseum will display it as one. All doubts will evaporate over the Atlantic.” SHOTS FIRED. No controversy like art world controversy.
And now I’m all caught up! Will I be able to stay on top of my reviews from now on? We shall see…
Dava Whisenant’s Bathtubs Over Broadway is a documentary about corporate musicals - that is, musicals commissioned by corporations to show to their sales teams at the big annual meeting, most common from the 1950s to 1970s. Fascinating. Highly highly recommend if you’re at all interested in musicals as an art form or in the business of making a living as an artist, as these corporate musicals kept a lot of singers and dancers afloat in between Broadway productions!
I recall that Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984 got panned when it came out, but perhaps since I went in with low expectations, I thought it was fine. It’s not as good as the first Wonder Woman, but it’s a solid popcorn flick, and Gal Gadot is a wonderful presence as ever.
Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love is another documentary (I’ve been on a bit of a documentary kick) about two rogue French volcanologists, a married couple who built their entire life around spending as much time on and around volcanoes as possible, following their passions until it ended about how you’d expect a life built around volcanoes to end. The film uses a lot of their gorgeous volcano footage, which is so wonderful and strange to watch.
Emma Holly Jones’ Mr. Malcolm’s List, another one that I thought was fine. I enjoyed the sumptuous settings and costumes but I thought the story dragged a bit.
A story that did not drag at all: Schmigadoon!. Only season 2 has a female film director, Alice Mathias, but of course I watched both seasons. I perhaps liked season 1 a little more, because like Melissa I prefer the cheerful Music Man style musicals to the darker Chicago style, but they’re both fantastic, so much fun and so visually striking. I haven’t seen a show go so all out to build an ~aesthetic since Pushing Daisies, and I love it. Very funny, great songs, highly recommended.
Elaine May’s Ishtar famously flopped when it came out - there was in fact a Far Side cartoon depicting a video store in Hell that loaned out nothing but Ishtar - only to receive a later critical reassessment, so of course I would like to say that I loved it. Unfortunately, I felt it kind of dragged, although its depiction of American masculinity is interesting and I can see why critics went for it later on. Plus it stars the luminously beautiful Isabelle Adjani: a definite bonus.
The Kan-Kan was apparently doing an Elaine May retrospective, because they also showed A New Leaf, which I missed! Devastated. Probably I would have felt it dragged too (as I also felt this about the other May film that I’ve seen, Mikey and Nicky), but nonetheless… the one that got away.
Haifaa al-Mansour’s Mary Shelley is another one that’s been on the list for a while! I love al-Mansour’s Wadjda and I love Elle Fanning, who plays Mary, so it’s shocking really how long I let this languish. Well worth seeing if you’re into dirtbag romantic poets. Percy Shelley is styled like Edward Cullen from Twilight, for reasons of emotional vampirism, while also being just thrilling and sexy enough that you can see why Mary falls so hard for him. Mary’s friendship with her stepsister Claire Clairmont is also a standout: they are sometimes seemingly rivals for Percy’s affection, but whenever one of them is in trouble, their own affection for each other comes to the fore.
Up the Women is a delightful BBC comedy series, two seasons amounting to a mere nine total episodes, in which the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle Politely Requests Women’s Suffrage. One of those wonderful British comedy series where the writers create a cast of eccentrics and then simply allow them to play off each other, to create comic effect. The members of the BICCPRWS vary widely in their attitude toward suffrage, ranging from the anti-suffrage Helen (who rules her husband with an iron fist) to Helen’s trampled but militant daughter Emily, a renegade E. M. Forster heroine who at one point writes KILL THE KING on a banner for a suffrage march.
Finally, Suzanne Raes’ Close to Vermeer, a documentary about putting together a Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Loved the chance to see the paintings “in person,” as it were - of course a film is still a reproduction, but unlike a still reproduction, you can at least tell the size of the piece, something about the experience of being in its presence. An illuminating discussion about Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura, with new insight into how he might have gotten access to what was then a high-tech instrument: he lived next door to some Jesuits who are known to have had one.
There was also a very mannered disagreement between some American curators who think that Girl with a Flute is not a true Vermeer, from which conclusion the Dutch curators politely demure… until the story erupts in the international press, when one of the Dutch curators comments (I am paraphrasing), “The American National Gallery may not be lending Girl with a Flute as a Vermeer, but the Rijksmuseum will display it as one. All doubts will evaporate over the Atlantic.” SHOTS FIRED. No controversy like art world controversy.
And now I’m all caught up! Will I be able to stay on top of my reviews from now on? We shall see…
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Date: 2023-06-16 01:22 pm (UTC)