Films About Women Opening This Weekend
Black Rock – Directed by Katie Aselton
Black Rock is every woman’s worst nightmare. You go out on an adventure with friends and then things go horribly wrong and you are running for your life. Katie Aselton gives us a film where the women Lake Bell, Kate Bosworth and Aselton herself need to work together to get out of a horrible situation. They have nothing but their wits and guts and life long relationships to come out of what should have been a fun camping trip alive. A major triumph of girl power. I’d take any of those women camping with me. (Melissa Silverstein)
Frances Ha – Co-Written by Greta Gerwig
“Remember when life was like that?” “It still kind of is.”
This was an exchange I overheard after seeing Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha. Two people, no longer in their twenties, one nostalgically ruminating on what we had just seen, and one questioning that maybe that chaos, uncertainty and romantic possibility about life isn’t just a “twentysomething” thing.
Co-written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Frances Ha follows Frances (Gerwig), a 27-year-old dancer who really wants move beyond her dancing apprenticeship into the company. She lives with her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner) and the two are inseparable, until they aren’t. Frances has her dreams yet doesn’t know if they are even based in reality or how to make them so.
Frances’s life is steeped in uncertainty–about her career, romantic options even about where she’s living. Gerwig and Baumbach smartly filter Frances’s struggle through a very class conscious lens–looking at her aimless peers who may be in the same boat as her but clearly have the trust-fund means to not have to overthink it. While Frances Ha is about a woman trying to figure out her life, at the movie’s core is romance — because the one thing that Frances is certain of is her feelings for Sophie.
The film is a love letter to female friendships — from the opening montage filled with a weekend of spending time with your person — beers on a balcony, shared cigarettes, board games and falling asleep together to Netflix. It captures those heady, love-filled moments but doesn’t shy away from the painful ones when life and our own selfishness gets in the way. (Kerensa Cadenas)
The English Teacher – Co-Written by Stacy Chariton
Linda Sinclair (Julianne Moore) is a forty-year-old unmarried high school English teacher in the small town of Kingston, Pennsylvania. Linda’s simple life turns an unexpected page when former star pupil Jason Sherwood (Michael Angarano) returns to Kingston after trying to make it as a playwright in New York. Now in his 20s, Jason is on the verge of abandoning art, pressured by his overbearing father. Linda can’t stand the thought of Jason giving up on his dreams so she decides to mount his play. As Linda, now well out of her normal comfort zone, takes further risks in life and love, the stage is set for highly comic downfall. (From the press materials)
Augustine – Directed by Alice Winocour
Augustine, the debut feature film from French writer-director Alice Winocour, nominated for a 2013 Cesar for Best First Feature, an examination of the real case story and unusual relationship between Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, the pioneering 19th century French neurologist – whom Sigmund Freud studied under – and his star teenage patient, the illiterate kitchen maid Augustine, prone to spectacular fits of “hysteria.” (From the press materials)
Please Kill Mr. Know It All – Co-Directed by Sandra Feldman
An anonymous advice columnist finds herself caught in an unlikely romance with the man who has been hired to kill her alter ego. (Canadian release)
Films About Women Currently Playing
Venus and Serena – Directed by Maiken Baird and Michelle Major (doc)
Stories We Tell – Directed by Sarah Polley (doc)
The Girls in the Band – Directed by Judy Chaikin (doc)
Kiss of the Damned – Written and Directed by Xan Cassavetes
Aroused – Directed by Deborah Johnston (doc)
What Maisie Knew – Co-Written by Nancy Doyne
Caroline and Jackie
Sun Don’t Shine
Paradise: Love
Filly Brown
The Host
Blancanieves
Admission – Written by Karen Croner
Ginger and Rosa – Written and Directed by Sally Potter
The Call
Spring Breakers
Lore – Directed by Cate Shortland
Side Effects
Films Directed by Women Currently Playing
Peeples – Written and Directed by Tina Gordon Chism
Love Is All You Need – Directed by Susanne Bier
The Source Family – Directed by Maria Demopoulous and Jodie Wille (doc)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Directed by Mira Nair
Midnight’s Children – Directed by Deepa Mehta
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay – Directed by Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein
No Place on Earth – Directed by Janet Tobias (doc)
A Place At The Table – Directed by Kristi Jacobsen and Lori Silverbush (doc)
Hava Naglia: The Movie – Directed by Roberta Grossman (doc)
Films Written by Women Currently Playing
Arthur Newman – Written by Becky Johnston
Olympus Has Fallen – Co-Written by Katrin Benedikt
Emperor – Co-Written by Vera Blasi
Films By and About Women on DVD/On Demand
Future Weather – Written and Directed by Jenny Deller
Cloud Atlas – Co-Directed by Lana Wachowski
Leonie
