This month, Flicks’ #52FilmsByWomen showcase goes from 35 to 39. I’m aided by filmmaker Alison Maclean, whose film The Rehearsal just opened nationwide after premiering at the New Zealand International Film Festival. This one’s a bit of a scoop, for she has been gifted with a movie that’s been rocking it big at international film festivals and no one at Flicks has seen yet.
#36 American Honey | written and directed by Andrea Arnold
“I’ve just seen Andrea Arnold’s American Honey and I’m still in the grip of it. Watching her films spoils me for others, for a while anyway. This one takes you deep inside the visceral experience of a young women, Star, who joins a tribe of poor kids criss-crossing America in a van to sell magazine subscriptions/themselves door to door, and like all Arnold’s films, it’s immersive and bracingly free of narrative cliché, piety and judgement.
“At 2 hrs, 40 min, American Honey feels long but the duration is part of how it works. This film has so much to say about being young, poor and living on the edge in today’s America – vulnerable to exploitation and joyfully alive, too.
“As a director, Arnold dives deep but she keeps it intimate– lets situations arise organically out of small moments, hard imperatives and fierce desire. So many vivid scenes but I can’t stop thinking about one where Krystal, the Queen bee leader of the group, distributes ‘white trash’ outfits to 4 girls and drives them to the middle of nowhere Texas to ‘sell magazines’ to oil drillers – clearly the real thing! They play Rihanna (from memory) full volume and the girls jump out of the van to dance wildly in front of the astonished men who crowd close to watch and smile. Then the van abruptly drives off… leaving the girls to silence and their own devices. It’s genuinely unnerving, full of threat – the feeling of a real human confrontation that could go anywhere.” -Alison Maclean
Watch the trailer / find out more about ‘American Honey’
#37 Citizenfour | directed by Laura Poitras
With international film critics currently weighing in on Oliver Stone’s Snowden, it feels appropriate to highlight the woman who captured the real Edward Snowden blowing the whistle on illegal covert surveillance run by the NSA. Laura Poitras earned herself and her crew an Oscar for Best Documentary last year (pipping out Wim Wenders’ astonishing The Salt of the Earth) and the subject matter alone carries enough power to drastically change an average person’s perspective on the world. On a thinner, superficial level, it’s just a bloody cool real-life cyberthriller that would play as the perfect double feature to Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film.
See DVD and On Demand options for ‘Citizenfour’
#38 The Voices | directed by Marjane Satrapi
A horror comedy about a mentally disturbed man who’s dog and cat urge him to kill women, all played by pre-Deadpool Ryan Reynolds? Sounds like a recipe for Fuck Off Fondue, but this film from Iranian director Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) and writer Michael R Perry is a lot more daring – even endearing – than the premise may lead you to believe. Satrapi shot this film beautifully, constantly switching the look from bubbly whimsy to static reality dependent on the mental state of the lead. The tone switches with it – comedic one moment, sombre the next – that may initially feel uneven but in hindsight stays painfully true to the unbalanced psychoses of its lead. Reynolds perfectly fits the ever-changing tempo, delivering one of the best performances of his career.
See DVD and On Demand options for ‘The Voices’
#39 Twilight | directed by Catherine Hardwicke
Yes, I liked the first one. Shut up. I don’t care. It’s the only one Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) directed, which is probably a good thing, because New Moon was a haemorrhoid cluster of awful. Eclipse had a bit more going on, including some superbly subtle sexual tension that Top Gun would be proud of. There’s NOTHING going on with Breaking Dawn – Part One and there’s nothing BUT decapitations in Breaking Dawn – Part Two. But yeah, the first one’s pretty good.
See DVD, Blu-ray and On Demand options for ‘Twilight’
Films by women in NZ cinemas this September: The Rehearsal, Bridget Jones’s Baby, Chasing Great
The list of #52FilmsByWomen continues with…
February (including one pick from Deathgasm producer Morgan Leigh Stewart)
March (including one pick from NewsHub’s Kate Rodger)
April (including one pick from Sunday director Michelle Joy Lloyd)
May (including one pick from professional film geek Sarah McMullan)
June (including one pick from animator/filmmaker Mata Freshwater)
July (including three picks from the women who power NZIFF)
August (including one pick from NZ Herald film critic Alex Casey)
