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cinemagooey · 10 days

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FEMME FILM

In Celebration of Women Filmmakers

Greta Gerwig as Francis Ha!

Remember when that thing happened called the pandemic?

HAHA! Jk...of course we do. We're still living in a mad, disjointed post-pandemic world, four years later. The pandemic pummeled humanity and just about everything else - Hollywood included.

Covid re-wrote the Hollywood playbook. Theater attendance stopped cold. At-home streaming became standard entertainment practice. The last movie I went to see at the theater before the virus invaded was a little-known 2019 horror flick called The Lodge. I don't remember much about the movie, but, looking back, I feel bittersweet about the experience. How was I to know that would be my last, innocent foray before society unraveled in a such way that going to the movies would never be the same?

So what's the connection between the pandemic and female filmmakers, you might ask? Well, just when the Hollywood studios were on their covid-masked knees begging for something to save the theater experience (and their financial lives), along came:

BARBENHEIMER!

Some say it was Top Gun Maverick/Tom Cruse that saved Hollywood after the virus, but I'm sticking to my pink atomic guns that it was the daring duo of Barbie/Oppenheimer.

WHAT A SUMMER! Those two films energized the movie-going experience like no other and Hollywood was as pumped as tween on Twizzlers and RedBulls.

Nolan's Oppenheimer is epic. It is historical. It is emotional. It is long. It is a history lesson about the annihilating evil that man created and that the world can (literally) be relegated to stardust with the push of a button. Applause, applause! Kudos, Christopher Nolan! Your Academy Awards and other trophies were well deserved!

But Barbie? Greta Gerwig's Barbie is communal. It brought people together for a joyous theatrical excursion. Groups gathered at theaters all over the world, dressed in pink, creating bubble-gum colored watch parties, drunk on the female power the film reminded us we have, and sobered at the admonition that the patriarchy is very real. It was also the highest grossing film of 2023, gracing Hollywood with a 1.4 billion box office gift. Applause, applause! Kudos, Greta Gerwig! Your Academy Awar...

Oh. Wait.

The Academy Awards didn't happen for Barbie, other than best song, which is nice, but...

And them's the brakes (and I do mean brakes as well as breaks) for women in Hollywood. The good old boy network rules in LALA land just like it does everywhere else (click here to see the factual, if not depressing, data).

In this post Cinemagooey raises it's fist in solidarity to women filmmakers everywhere, those heroes of feminine empowerment who buck patriarchal odds to bring their creative vision to life and share it with the world, come hell or highwater.

Highlighted below are just some of the women filmmakers who serve as shining stars and beacons of hope for other film warriors who are following in their path:

ELAINE MAY

Elaine May and Walter Matthau in A New Leaf (1971)

Elaine May is a gift to humanity. A true genius, she's been a Broadway star, film star, playwright, screenwriter and director in her long, illustrious career. If you want to introduce yourself to her prodigious talent, I recommend starting with A New Leaf, in which she performed the Hollywood trifecta: writing, directing and starring in this hilarious black comedy. Other writing/directing credits include: The Heartbreak Kid, Mike and Nickey, Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Tootsie, The Birdcage and, famously Ishtar, the film that effectively ended her movie career (here's a little link to that fascinating story). May boasts even more directorial and writing credits, but there's too many to list here. Look her up and prepare to be amazed.

I could go on and on about Elaine May, but I'll save it for a post dedicated exclusively to her and her shining accomplishments. She was one of the early greats who painstakingly forged a path for others in the field.

Today's women filmmakers stand on May's shoulders and owe her a debt of gratitude. Cinemagooey salutes this original, one of a kind bad ass.

With Charles Grodin, directing The Heartbreak Kid

Directing A New Leaf

Schmoozing with the big boys, circa 1980s

NANCY MEYERS

Nancy Meyers is the queen of the cozy romcom. When it comes to LOL-witty love stories that make us swoon, she slays. Meyers is renowned for directing comfy, side-splitting hits such as The Parent Trap (1998), Something's Gotta Give (2003), The Holiday (2006) and It's Complicated (2009), to name a few. She also wrote or co-wrote a number of smash hit screenplays, starting with my favorite, Private Benjamin (1980) but also crafting Irreconcilable Differences (1984), Baby Boom (1987) and the Father of the Bride franchise (1991, 1995 and 2020), just to name a few.

Directing Something's Gotta Give

Meyers is not only famous for her filmmaking acumen, her loyal Instagram fans are obsessed with the houses in her movies, homes that imbue a rich, intimate, put-your-feet-up-by-the-fire-and-let's-have-some-wine kind of coastal vibe. Follow her on Insta. You won't regret it. And watch her movies. You're welcome.

Above: Father of the Bride, starring this house

And the stunning beach home in Something's Gotta Give

PENNY MARSHALL

Penny Marshall Directing Big (1989)

Penny Marshall was a staple in my household in 1976 when she starred as Laverne DeFazio on the television sitcom Laverne and Shirley, about two working class gals sharing an apartment and comedic hijinks in Milwaukee. I loved that show. My sixth grade BFF and I conspired to live just such a life after high school (but with better jobs in a warmer climate). Life can upend the best of plans, howeve - that BFF and I never became Laverne and Shirley and when the show ended, Penny Marshall moved from comedic acting to cinematic directing - lucky for us.

Marshall directed a slew of hits in the 80's and 90s: Jumpin' Jack Flash, Big, Awakenings and The Preacher's Wife. But my all-time favorite is A League of Their Own, starring Geena Davis, Rosie O'Donnell, Madonna and Tom Hanks.

A League of Their Own (1992) (turn up the volume and watch this buddy moment between Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell)

The film is a Rosie-the-Riveter-meets-the-MLB story of the The All American Girls Professional Baseball League, an organization started during WWII when it was feared that men's baseball would die off as a casualty of war. The movie recounts an age when men marched off to the trenches and women were suddenly valued for more than their domestic talents, challenging patriarchal traditions and set-in-stone cultural beliefs. It's all heart and Madonna's moving "This Used To Be My Playground" theme song, as well as the reunion of the real life women who were in the league at the end of the film, poignantly encapsulate a brief, shining moment for women in sports.

Penny Marshall died in 2018. But her cinematic legacy and comedic versatility lives on in her extraordinary films, as well as the dozens of comedic roles she inhabited on t.v. (The Odd Couple, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Frasier, Portlandia and Hocus Pocus, to name but a few). It's well worth your time to dig into her films to appreciate this one of a kind female director.

Directing Tom Hanks in Big (1988)

Awakenings, starring Robin Williams (1990). Pass the kleenex

GRETA GERWIG

With Ben Stiller in Greenburg (2010)

Before Barbie and Lady Bird - two films that placed Greta Gerwig squarely on the Hollywood writing and directing map, she was the darling of a lesser known indie-film movement called Mumblecore. This cinematic genre peaked in the mid-aughts and is best described as movies with impromptu dialogue, realistic settings and low-budget markings. This is where Gerwig got her start in movies as an actress/sometimes screenwriter.

After mumbling her way through a myriad of films, Gerwig teamed up with her (now) real-life partner, Noah Baumbaugh and co-wrote and starred in a sweet little movie called Francis Ha!.

Gerwig, dancing through the streets of Manhattan in Francis Ha!

I fell, and am still, in love with Francis Ha!, a comedy about a dreamer living in NYC whose life is derailed when she loses her roommate and best friend, as well as her position in a dance company, rendering her an unemployed, aimless nomad. Francis Ha! became an indie smash, nominated for several awards (Golden Globe, Independent Spirit, London Film Critics Circle Film Awards, to name a few), and cementing Gerwig as a force in film.

Bouyed by this success, Gerwig wrote and directed Lady Bird (2017), Little Women (2019, an adaptation from the Louise May Alcott novel) and of course Barbie (2023). I can't wait to see what Hollywood's new femme-fab director brings to the table next. If it's an original movie that resonates with millions and draws in big crowds and big bucks, like Barbie did, maybe the Academy will finally give this remarkable talent the recognition she more than deserves.

Gerwig, directing Ryan Gosling in Barbie

And there are more, but not enough...

Despite the fierce odds against them, women have been fighting to share their celluloid visions with audiences since the advent of film (the first: Alice Guy-Blanché made her first movie in 1896). Hats off to the past pioneers and present day warriors who continue to fight the good fight and inspire future femme filmmakers everywhere. I wish I could write a tribute to them all, but here are a few of the greats and one film that I recommend from each, in no particular order:

Jane Campion The Piano (1993), Sophia Coppola, Lost In Translation (2003), Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker (2008), Ava DuVernay, Selma (2014), Nora Ephron, Julie and Julia (2009), Kelly Reichardt, Certain Women (2016), Debra Granik, Winter's Bone (2010), Lana Wachowski and Lilli Wachowski, The Matrix (1999), Jennifer Kent, The Babadook (2014), Charlotte Wells, Aftersun (2022).

Kathryn Bigelow, making history as the first woman to receive the Oscar for Best Director for The Hurt Locker.

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groupiequeen · 11 months

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nancy sinatra

#nancy sinatra #60s #lana del rey #lizzy grant #elvis presley #sofia coppola #priscilla presley

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sofiasgirls · 2 years

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Designer Nancy Steiner with actor Robert Schwartzman on the set of The Virgin Suicides

#the virgin suicides #sofia coppola #nancy steiner #robert schwartzman #on set

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peonypetalsonsatin · 1 year

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I want to live in a sofia coppola or nancy meyers movie

#marie antoinette #sofia coppola #nancy meyers #movies

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steampunkforever · 25 days

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Almost every American has thought about the prospect of a second Civil War. Considering the man hiding pipe bombs around DC last election year, it becomes clear why this would come to mind. Which is why this election season is the perfect opportunity to release a movie about a modern civil war written by an Englishman who quite apparently doesn't know anything about American culture, politics, or small unit tactics.

Alex Garland's Civil War is a movie about the fall of democracy as the US is shattered by a violent military conflict as its fascist President violates the constitution in order to retain power, but it actually wants to be a movie about a cozy witch in a small German village in the alps. Ok not really. This is a movie that promises to be about political violence in America but is really about War Journalism. It tries to do both and does none of them well. But first and foremost it's a showcase of regrettable AR furniture and trite culture war references.

After January 6th, 2021, I was discussing the Capitol riots with some right-voting blue-collar workers, and the most memorable takeaway from that conversation was being told "it was our turn." This one sentence told me everything about American cultural rage that this film completely misunderstands.

Every now and then I come across a film that's very good from a visual and structural standpoint but completely falls apart thematically. This is Civil War. Alex Garland knows how to make movies, and this is a solid film that knows how to position needle drops and position the camera to really Say Something About America. Except it doesn't do that last thing.

Politically, this is a film you could make if you fed the AI bot that writes Nancy Pelosi's campaign donation emails ten thousand hours of January Sixth footage and asked it to write an article for The New Republic. Close readings reveal that this is a film about Covid, particularly journalism, but Garland shoehorns the story he wants to tell about journo ethics Cloverfield-style into a much more complicated narrative. It's simply intellectual laziness to make a movie about a morally and politically complicated war and then handwave it away with a simple "it doesn't matter." You're releasing this on an election year! This is a movie that needs a spine! How does Micheal Bay have a more biting criticism of American presidential candidates in his movies than you do?

The movie isn't politically neutral necessarily. Nick Offerman looks exactly like a certain 45th president of the United States (he even dissolves the FBI). There's a proud boy/boogaloo boy militia committing war crimes. One of the main battles we see is fought in Charlottesville, a city that saw little fighting during the actual Civil War but is infamous for the 2017 murder of a counterprotestor at a confederate statue rally. And let us not forget the film's much-quoted "what kind of American are you?" segment so prominently displayed in the trailers. The movie displays the prototypical NPR host handwringing, and this level of political commentary only serves to make the film feel even more out of touch, made all the more lukewarm at the film's halfhearted play at neutrality in the pursuit of something that #makesyouthink.

The film is like Apocalypse Now! if Coppola really wanted to shoehorn in a thematically irrelevant main plot and never answer any of the questions raised by the much more interesting events that make up the movie's backdrop. It's like Children of Men if the director didn't really care about the atrocities his characters were witnessing as much as he just wanted to make a roadtrip movie. It's not bad, it's lazy, and this makes me angrier.

This is a movie that reminded me about Greta Gerwig's Barbie. A very well shot film with a solid director, great cinematography, and no idea what its message is. Except Garland didn't have a feel good montage at the end to save the movie for him. Just underwhelming combat. The only thing this film got remotely right about a modern American Civil War 2 is the fact that the Ford Excursion is the perfect vehicle to take into a war zone.

No matter how gorgeous the cinematography, don't let this movie fool you.

The White House isn't so cartoonishly simple to storm. Attack Helicopters would not be performing air support roles that close to buildings. M4 pattern rifles have a much sharper report. An abandoned JC Penny doesn't mean that America has fallen, it just reminds you that the Shopping Mall was never a sustainable business practice. The sniper scene is really good, I'll admit, but also not how any of this works.

This movie lacks the spine and the conviction to say anything real about the American Condition in any meaningful way other than "they own guns and experience cultural polarization," a take much too bland to be worth the price of tickets + popcorn.

#civil war #alex garland #filmposting #a24 #jesse plemons #kirsten dunst #film

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transmutationisms · 2 months

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respect + I don't disagree w most of what you said but it's so funny that of all of Sophia Coppola's movies the bling ring is the one that worked for you lmao

honestly, fair lol. i certainly understand why people disliked it. i think part of what made it appeal to me was actually that i find nancy jo sales's work really hateable in a way that coppola translated to the screen very successfully. i don't think it's a particularly inventive or novel piece of filmmaking but i do get kind of suckered in by this type of cultural product that essentially exists because people like to watch teenagers watching themselves, attendant moral judgments & anxieties on full display. like it's sort of a whole noxious tonal subgenre that im just fascinated by

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wakemewitch · 1 year

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She Will, Charlotte Colbert (2021) Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash (1991) The Piano, Jane Campion (1993) The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola (1999) The Secret Garden, Agnieszka Holland (1993) Angela, Rebecca Miller (1995) The Juniper Tree, Nietzchka Keene (1990) I Am Not A Witch, Rungano Nyoni (2017) Poison Ivy, Katt Shea (1992) Sister My Sister, Nancy Meckler (1994)

More!

#directed by women #women in film

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ldr-is-my-life · 1 month

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♡

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nancydrewwouldnever · 10 months

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Loving all this Hartnett love today. 💜 Pretty sure the first thing I ever saw him in was The Virgin Suicides. It was sad when he kind of faded from films, but I’m with you Nancy, Penny Dreadful was wonderful.

OMG, I need to rewatch Virgin Suicides soon! That was such a strong first movie from Sofia Coppola. @georgiapeach30513 also reminded me today that he was in The Faculty, and man was that like a blast from the past!

#ask

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jartitameteneis · 5 months

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El 7 de diciembre de 1915 nace en Brooklyn, Nueva York, en una familia de polacos judíos que con mucho esfuerzo le dieron una licenciatura en Historia por la Universidad de Texas. Inquieto, obtuvo un máster en Artes en el City College de Nueva York y su primera experiencia teatral en el Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, actividad que frecuentaría poco pero que le dio un Premio Tony. Su debut cinematográfico fue en "Baby Doll" (Elia Kazan, 1956), con una nominación a los Globos de Oro y un Premio BAFTA. Sin embargo, fue en el legendario western "El bueno, el feo y el malo" (Sergio Leone, 1966), con una nominación al Oscar, donde dejó una marca indeleble con su inolvidable papel como Tuco. A lo largo de su carrera, de seis décadas, Wallach participó en más de 90 películas, incluyendo "Los siete magníficos" (John Sturges, 1960), "Vidas rebeldes" (John Huston, 1960), "La conquista del Oeste" (John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall y Richard Thorpe, 1962), y "El padrino: Parte III" (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990), "Two much" (Fernando Trueba, 1995), "Mystic River" (Clint Eastwood, 2003), "The holiday" (Nancy Meyers, 2006), "The ghost writer" (Roman Polanski, 2010) y "Wall Street 2: el dinero nunca duerme" (Oliver Stone, 2010). Ganó un Premio Emmy por su papel en "Poppies Are Also Flowers" (1966) y un Tony Honorífico en 2010 por su destacada contribución al teatro. A lo largo de su carrera fue honrado con premios y reconocimientos, incluyendo un Oscar honorífico en 2010 por su distinguida carrera cinematográfica. Su dedicación al arte interpretativo, su presencia magnética y su habilidad para adentrarse en personajes variados con un toque de humor y de tragedia a la vez le hicieron acreedor de una gran popularidad.

Falleció el 24 de junio de 2014 en Nueva York.

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docrotten · 11 months

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THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970) – Episode 191 – Decades Of Horror 1970s

“The Old Ones are not truly dead. They only sleep. It is a dreamless oblivion, stretching on and on towards vast eternity!” Eternal, dreamless oblivion? That’s a hard pass. Join your faithful Grue Crew – Doc Rotten, Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, and Jeff Mohr – as they enroll at Miskatonic University to study The Dunwich Horror (1970).

Decades of Horror 1970s Episode 191 – The Dunwich Horror (1970)

Join the Crew on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel! Subscribe today! And click the alert to get notified of new content! https://youtube.com/gruesomemagazine

Wilbur Whateley travels to Miskatonic University to borrow the legendary Necronomicon. But, little does anyone know, Whateley isn’t quite human.

Director: Daniel Haller

Writers: Curtis Hanson, Henry Rosenbaum, Ronald Silkosky; H.P. Lovecraft (based on the story by)

Music by: Les Baxter

Title Design by: Sandy Dvore

Poster Art by: Reynold Brown

Selected Cast:

Sandra Dee as Nancy Wagner

Dean Stockwell as Wilbur Whateley

Ed Begley as Dr. Henry Armitage

Lloyd Bochner as Dr. Cory

Sam Jaffe as Old Whateley

Joanne Moore Jordan as Lavinia Whateley (as Joanna Moore Jordan)

Donna Baccala as Elizabeth Hamilton

Talia Shire as Nurse Cora (credited as Talia Coppola)

Michael Fox as Dr. Raskin

Jason Wingreen as Sheriff Harrison

Barboura Morris as Mrs. Cole

Beach Dickerson as Mr. Cole

Michael Haynes as Guard

Toby Russ as Librarian

Jack Pierce as Reeger

Set your H.P. Lovecraft expectations aside and you just might enjoy The Dunwich Horror. The film features a great cast, including Sandra Dee, Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley, Lloyd Bochner, Sam Jaffe, and Talia Shire. While the results may not be 100% successful, the cinematography looks spectacular, the often cliché visual effects are used creatively, and the direction is spot on. Could a 1970 film adapt Lovecraft more faithfully at that time? It’s hard to say. Lovecraft is a tricky beast to translate cinematically. Regardless, the poster from Reynold Brown is phenomenal. Check out what the Grue-Crew has to say. Enjoy!

At the time of this writing, The Dunwich Horror is available to stream free with ads from PlutoTV and PPV from Amazon and Apple TV. The film is also available as a Blu-ray from Arrow Video.

Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1970s is part of the Decades of Horror two-week rotation with The Classic Era and the 1980s. In two weeks, the Grue-Crew change it up for their next episode with a bit of a treat, welcoming director John D. Hancock to discuss his first feature film, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), and of course other aspects of his career. This will be fun!

We want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans: comment on the site or email the Decades of Horror 1970s podcast hosts at [email protected].

Check out this episode!

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