Directed By Women: Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Focus Features

By Andrea Thompson

You wouldn’t think the latest Diablo Cody-penned vision of feminine horror would lend itself much to deep contemplation, but “Lisa Frankenstein” got me thinking about how history tends to do a lot of repeating. And not simply for the multitude of references and the nostalgic 80’s sheen of its setting.

It shouldn’t be surprising. A number of more recent movies have more than proven that a deeply feminine gaze which embraces the soft colors and the general pink of it all is actually great for horror. “The Love Witch,” “Medusa,” and another Diablo Cody gem, “Jennifer's Body,” all have proved to bring the terror right along with the often brightly lit color palette. 

The past decade does not have a monopoly on this by any means of course, as tempted as we so often are to throw up a few examples as indicators that our current era came up with any and all good ideas. No less than Agnès Varda gave us a nightmarish vision of male entitlement and its consequences wrapped in sunflowers in “Le Bonheur,” to use one example.

“Lisa Frankenstein” is a tribute to much of this history, and those who managed to create in spite of a decade which could be very unkind to women. Sure, plenty of the movies at the time seemed willing to feature some form of assault to a queasy extent, but along with even more retro references such as Georges Méliès and “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” there are other reminders of the other cinematic legacies the decade gave us, such as “Look Who’s Talking.”

Lisa (Kathryn Newton) is the kind of teenage girl who would immerse herself in its more gothic offerings, and as she grows more sure of herself throughout the movie, her brand of lacey black clad, punky femininity are fashionable callbacks to Winona Ryder’s own time well spent as the heroine to weird girls in “Heathers” and Beetlejuice.” 

Lisa is the weird girl who doesn’t want to be, a budding artist who has found herself in the wrong story. Her life has essentially become a slasher since her mother was murdered trying to protect her from a deranged home invader and her father Dale (Joe Chrest) remarried a mere six months later to Janet (Carla Gugino), a stepmother whose dysfunction errs into cartoonishly evil territory. 

Focus Features

To cope, Lisa endeavors to remake her life into a Gothic romance through the sheer power of imagination. She loves to hang out alone in the lush greenery of the local graveyard, and she even has a favorite tombstone. It’s a lot for a brooding weirdo in the yuppie era, where teen girls were expected to get out and get socialized, often a euphemism for shut up and conform already.

But along with the genre’s blood-spattered killers, the 80’s also saw a number of at times tragically misunderstood, persecuted creatures interact with humans. So when the undead monster is magically raised from the grave, his existence isn’t merely the most obvious shout-out to Mary Shelley’s most famous creation who also just happens to be one of the greatest misunderstood monsters of all time, he’s also a bridge to multiple genres.

As The Creature, Cole Sprouse gets to put a bloody spin on his image as the tormented bad boy with a heart of gold. Thanks to a Tim Burtonesque animated intro before we even meet Lisa, he already has his own backstory full of artistic passion and heartbreak, and he quickly becomes a mute companion to Lisa while yearning for much more. 

As the two begin to pile up the bodies between them, partly out of revenge, partly for the spare parts The Creature uses to rebuild himself, he begins to look dangerous in an entirely different way as Sprouse goes from dank to his usual dreamy. It’s a more complex look at a teenage girl who is often unlikable and takes advantage of everyone around her, leaving a bloody path in her wake as even the undeserving are left shattered, including her sweet, well-meaning stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano), the only person who has staunchly stood by and defended Lisa. At heart, this may be Lisa’s fairy tale, but she’s no long-suffering Cinderella or even Belle, even if her love does transform a beast into a handsome prince.

Multiple genres that can’t be reduced to simplistic messaging and an extremely flawed female protagonist who dares to be horny, enraged and generally unlikable? It means another type of history is playing out, that of critical panning and lackluster box office returns. The teenage girls at my screening were loving it though, and chances are that another familiar path will manifest given time: a cult favorite and a staple of plenty a sleepover. 

Directed By Women: Birth/Rebirth (2023)

IFC Films

“Birth/Rebirth” is what I like to call an odd little film. The kind you probably shouldn’t watch while you eat.

It benefits from multiple viewings, and a sense of trust that the medical professionals know what they’re doing. Because in writer/director Laura Moss’s dark meditation on motherhood and Frankenstein, she’s clearly interested in the science of it all. If you were actually skilled and twisted enough to successfully reanimate a human corpse, what exactly would it involve?

The short answer is in some ways what you would expect: a whole lot of gruesome. And it takes all types to make it happen. The duo who bring it about, and who eventually become a twisted, odd couple co-parenting unit, are the kind of polar opposites who are brought together by their mutual interest in the undead six-year-old girl who comes to (re)define their lives.

Celie Morales (Judy Reyes) is the warmly empathetic embodiment of motherhood. Her daughter, the soon to be deceased Lila (A.J. Lister), conceived, we later discover, via IVF, is the sort of adorable moppet who will respond to her mother’s distracted state by telling her a secret: “I’m not getting enough attention.”

It’s so effortlessly sweet that getting invested in mother and daughter is one of the easier demands “Birth/Rebirth” makes, and it’s especially crucial once things really get going and the movie reveals what Celie is willing to do in the name of motherly love. 

The other half of what is to come is naturally a very deliberate contrast. A pathologist at the same hospital where Celie works as a nurse, Rose Casper (Marin Ireland) is the source of much of the film’s dark humor and its spirit. She’s the one who’s been interested in reanimating corpses since second grade, with tales of cutting off starfish legs and similar, disastrous experiments on the class hamster.

As an adult, Rose is far more comfortable around the dead bodies she’s made her life’s work, coldly dismissive of colleagues and the guy she masturbates in the bathroom to get the necessary materials for her process. She’s so socially inept in fact that she doesn’t predict that someone is bound to come looking for Lila after she tragically passes and Rose makes off with her deceased body for her obsessive quest in treating death as if it were a scientific obstacle to surmount.

To be fair, she could hardly anticipate that Celie would know to go straight to the hospital basement and track down Rose at her coldly efficient apartment to claim her daughter’s body, only to discover exactly what Rose has been up to. Like the busy single mother she is, Celie doesn’t waste time condemning, going straight into mom and nurse mode, eventually moving in with Rose in order to aid her and track Lila’s progress.

The work that they do involves the aforementioned gruesomeness of motherhood that we tend to not want to acknowledge, from the routine checkups like amniocentesis, which involve a very long needle being inserted into a pregnant woman’s belly, and the everyday efforts that involve keeping Lila reanimated.

Much like old age, motherhood ain’t for sissies. In their efforts to keep it going, Rose and Celie begin to take on each other’s characteristics, with Celie isolating herself from her well-meaning friends and Rose becoming warmer to a degree that her startled coworker asks her if she’s okay when he sees her smiling. 

It’s hardly the expected route to take, with cinema’s long tradition of creepy kids in horror that shows no signs of slowing down, from “The Bad Seed” to “Pet Sematary” to “Sinister” to more recently, “Hereditary.” But “Birth/Rebirth” keeps it real, in a manner of speaking, with the revived Lila exhibiting more of the limited motor skills and speech patterns that would be expected from such a grisly turn of events.

It’s refreshing in a way to see a movie that never forgets that in the best of circumstances, birth (at least from what I can gather from my own childfree by choice status) is a “disgusting and beautiful process.” Not to mention a bold choice to make those responsible for bringing the unnatural state of affairs into the world as the potential monsters. After all, much like the “Frankenstein” story that serves as the inspiration for this dark and twisted tale, the so-called monster didn’t ask to be created, and is not the real source of the horror to follow.

It’s us. It’s always us.

Directed By Women: Kokomo City (2023)

By Andrea Thompson

Holiday breaks are wonderful for many reasons, but as I return for a new year after a self-imposed hiatus, one of the benefits I reaped is getting to view D. Smith’s remarkable documentary “Kokomo City” multiple times. In the constant hustle that is the life of a freelance writer, getting to really soak in and absorb a film has become something of a luxury in the age of content, AI, and ever present deadlines.

And there is so much to appreciate in “Kokomo City,” which follows the lives of four Black trans women, all of whom are or were engaged in sex work. Want to think, consider, and laugh out loud within the first five minutes? Then give this one a watch, because there’s a whole lot of ground to cover during the 73 minutes we spend getting to know these women.

This is the part where I tend to marvel at the fact that this is a filmmaker’s feature debut, but D. Smith had been working in the music world as a producer for years before she discovered a passion for filmmaking, an endeavor which was partly born out of necessity. Although she worked with household names in the early 2000s that included Lil Wayne and Ciara, among others, even winning a Grammy in 2009, she was “forced out of the music industry” (as Smith herself put it) once she came out as trans.

Finding herself broke, homeless, and somewhat adrift, “Kokomo City” isn’t just representative of a promising new direction, it’s something of a comeback, and the accolades have been pouring in. They damn well should be, since Smith makes good use of the access she was granted to each of these women’s lives, the kind it’s difficult to picture another filmmaker getting.

If Smith weren’t also Black and trans, would we have been privy to Smith’s own very individualistic take on the contemplative route, with the kind of intimate dialogue that includes everything from hair removal tips to discussion of class, race, and how such forces affect their ability to pay those bills while they’re lounging in bed or the bathtub?

Unlikely, since “Kokomo City” has, in many ways, an insider’s unblinking gaze of the world and topics it’s delving into. And although her previous career came to a painful end (for now at least), it seems to have been time well spent, with the doc’s gorgeous black and white aesthetic and stylistic flourishes giving it an edgy music video feel - the click of a gun, the sound of a roar as sexuality is discussed, and the killer use of music in general.

Those discussions about sexuality, complete with light reenactments and nudity, also come off as both naturalistic and raw, to use the most convenient cliche. But that rawness applies to other less flashy, but still arresting topics, namely the way all four women discuss their lives and how their identities affect not only their daily circumstances but those of their clients. These women are older - to use the more gentle euphemism about anything having to do with women in pop culture who’ve left their 20s behind - having successfully entered various phases of their 30s, and are thus savvy survivors; not only more aware of the bullshit but less likely to take it.

That bullshit manifests in film’s most constant thread: the vicious hypocrisy of the many ways men take advantage of and sometimes actively harm them, and how cis women are typically all too willing to let it happen, but are likewise unable to imagine their partners even being attracted to them. And all four of the film’s subjects, as well as the men who are willing to speak of that attraction, are willing to make some truly jaw-dropping statements about it.

Daniella Carter in KOKOMO CITY, courtesy ofMagnolia Pictures

As one member of the film’s central foursome Daniella Carter sums it up: “The only thing he there for is escaping his own goddamn reality. And you know what that reality is? Ten times better than the one he’s giving you.” With such statements - and plenty more where that came from - it would be easy to think that “Kokomo City” revels in self-seriousness, but like many a pop culture offering from those who are traditionally marginalized, humor and joy are the primary defense mechanisms when you generally don’t have access to more official protection.

What’s left unsaid may be even more telling. How did the men who are willing to talk about homophobia in the Black community and their own attraction and encounters with trans women come to meet Smith and the other women on-screen? As the women themselves speak of how often their typical customers conform to the stereotypical tough guy image, it’s indicative of a long history of gender and sexual fluidity in hip hop, a community that has only recently begun to grapple with its history of vicious homophobia.

It doesn’t prevent “Kokomo City” from earning every bit of the oft-used descriptor unflinching, and sadly that includes a frustratingly common ending for one of the most jaded of the women the documentary follows: Koko Da Doll, who was shot and killed in Atlanta, and to whom the film is dedicated. If another piece of art must end up being a tribute to a vibrant, resilient person whose life still ended far too soon, this one at least is also a beautiful, powerful testament to a community which finds itself under siege yet nevertheless refuses to define itself by its oppressors.

Directed By Women: Blue Jean (2022)

Magnolia Pictures

By Andrea Thompson

In the simplest of terms, as defined by Britannica, color is the aspect of any object that may be described in terms of hue, lightness, and saturation. But how do we define how it defines us? How do we describe a phenomenon which so casually evokes a range of reactions and emotions to those who, for whatever reason, have never encountered it? How do we define what defines us, especially when it’s so intertwined in our lives we practically forget it exists?

Apropos for a film that takes such a concept into its very title, “Blue Jean” is above all evocative - of feeling most of all. The Jean of the title (played with tenderly compassionate vulnerability by Rosy McEwen) is a woman who is living what can be simply defined as a closeted life. It’s a phrase tossed off so casually, often even humorously, that we can forget what it really encompasses to have to hide the most loving, and thus often best part of yourself, from others, sometimes in plain sight.

Blue isn’t merely the film’s aesthetic of choice which winds its way through Jean’s life as she attempts to reconcile her precarious balancing act, at times it literally cradles her in her arms. Her bathroom is wrapped in blue, and of course, much of her wardrobe is various shades of it, the various settings gorgeously rendered by cinematographer Victor Seguin incorporate it, and the student uniforms during gym at the secondary school where Jean teaches are also sky hued.

It’s easy to see how another film could take a lesbian gym teacher and embrace what has long become a kind of running joke. But Jean is working and living in Newcastle in 1988. It’s relatively small, conservative, and a world away (on the other side of the country really) from the more metropolitan London, when Margaret Thatcher’s government is about to pass a law criminalizing homesexuality. Nothing funny about it.

It is, in essence, easy to get the blues, living as Jean does in a time when her very existence is seen as an offense. No wonder her more out and proud girlfriend Viv (Kerrie Hayes) uses the phrase deer in the headlights to describe Jean at one point. So what then, can a life look like?

For Jean, it can actually look pretty good, as long as nothing changes. She is mostly uninterested in joining her coworkers for a pint with their talk of pairing her up with a guy, SlimFast diets, and their general agreement with the reports that extol thinking of the children whenever anyone rebels against the concept of gay people as a threat to society. She’d rather head out to the warm vibes of the lesbian bar she frequents, where she’s earned the nickname Baby Jean, and enjoy some good sex with Viv,  who is quick to push back against her girlfriend’s own internalized homophobia.

But no cerulean shield will be enough when Lois (Lucy Halliday), one of Jean’s students, becomes a frequent attendee at the local lesbian bar and of course, recognizes her teacher. Suddenly, the microaggressions become harder to take, from her supposedly supportive sister who still keeps Jean’s wedding picture on her mantle and all but clutches her pearls at the thought of her five-year-old son being introduced to Viv as Jean’s girlfriend, the neighbor across the way whose coldly hateful gaze has all the wrath of an auto-da-fé, to the dating shows where women are asked to be appropriately feminine enough for whatever random man is chosen as the catch of the night.

As Drew Burnett Gregory wrote in her Autostraddle review of the film, “‘Save the children’ is just about the easiest manipulation tactic those who want us dead can use.” It’s an apt summary of how concern is so often weaponized to the detriment of all, including nearly every life writer-director Georgia Oakley chronicles, however briefly, in “Blue Jean.” A queer woman herself who was born in 1988, Oakley so compassionately depicts her subject and the way she at times fails the very people who need her most it’s occasionally difficult to believe she didn’t live out the period and the havoc it left in its wake, which is threatening to repeat itself, and in some cases already is.  

The thing about the color Oakley chooses for her metaphor though? It tends to always be there, waiting for those to acknowledge its presence. It’s the color of the sea and sky, some of our most common trouser choices, and it can also be indicative of how warm it can be when we find a communal safe space that lends it support.



Directed By Women: Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Neon

By Andrea Thompson

To see an artist break out is a truly wondrous thing. But there’s a special relish when a filmmaker has been honing their skills to become as assured as Justine Triet, who became only the third woman to win the Palme D’or for her film “Anatomy of a Fall” at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

With such a paucity of representation for one of the industry’s most prestigious awards, of course Triet’s win must be qualified in that she is a female filmmaker who received the coveted prize from a film festival with its own issues regarding female agency and sexism. Bestowing Triet with this award is likely something of an effort to reconcile (if not rectify) the problem, given that it was presented to her by Jane Fonda, whose legacy of activism is far too wide-ranging to expand on here.

It’s also very much earned, given how well Triet’s delicate yet unblinking gaze dissects the aftermath of Samuel Maleski’s (Samuel Theis) death, especially once his wife Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is implicated as his possible murderer, to the dismay and further trauma of their visually impaired 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). Under such circumstances, the focus is never on mere evidence, but also the nature of Samuel and Sandra’s complex, at times turbulent relationship.

Combing through any long-term relationship with a microscope, or in this case, splatter analysis and sound recordings (in which Sandra was unaware her husband was recording her) is going to result in some ugly truths under the best of circumstances, but what Triet carefully mines is that anything discovered must also be interpreted. If there are any facts to be gleaned from a couple’s screaming match in a domestic setting, it’s going to largely depend on who is doing the interpreting, and there are a myriad number of people, from lawyers to spectators to media commentators, who are more than willing to do exactly that as Sandra’s trial is underway.

Peeling back the onion of a marriage can generally be counted on for the sort of fraught revelations that are inherently ripe for voyeuristic on-screen fascination, and Triet doesn't exactly differ in her approach; it’s more that there’s more room to maneuver. Free from the confines of the Hollywood film, Triet can be far more unfettered in conducting her analysis with far less compromise - there’s less of a need to conform to expectations about women, sexuality, language, and the legal system. 

Neon

It’s also hard to think of a better setting than the French Alps, with its implications of beauty and naturalistic, snowy exoticism which also implicates the viewers, on-screen and otherwise, who are willing to judge Sandra in a similarly cold-blooded manner. Hardly surprising, given the many painful examples of women being torn down in the public square, but the French judicial system at least allows Sandra to defend herself against charges both legal and not throughout the proceedings rather than at a designated climax on the witness stand. It proves quite useful, since Sandra is revealed to be a bisexual, confident woman who feels no need to apologize for it or the need to conduct herself according to male expectations, including that of her late husband.

It hardly needs to be said what a dangerous phenomenon this can be, no less because Sandra is on actual trial, and she makes the kinds of unwise decisions people generally make in her situation. She lies for one: about the fight with Samuel, how she got the bruises on her body, because the truth would make her appear guilty. Her other actions are also left tantalizingly open to interpretation; is a private, stolen moment with her son an attempt to manipulate him?  Is her decision to switch between English and French a front in itself, an attempt to lie better in the language she’s more familiar with?

Regardless of what the truth is, it’s always about Sandra, not about the men involved in her situation, from the prosecuting attorney to the various others who testify, nearly all of whom seem to take Sandra’s life and actions as a personal affront, or even about the one defending her, who outright states that her guilt or innocence is beside the point for him. It’s about Sandra and how she and her husband saw each other as two people, both writers, who are used to writing their own stories in every sense, with Samuel in particular seeming to have great difficulty in the fact that his wife doesn’t consider him the arbiter of hers.

If Hüller’s performance makes her seem almost born for the role, it’s partly by design, since Triet wrote it with her in mind after collaborating with Hüller in her 2019 film “Sybil.” Hüller experienced her own breakout in the 2016 film “Toni Erdmann” and has been raking in the praise ever since, with 2023 seeing her reap the rewards not only for “Anatomy,” but for her chilling turn as Hedwig Höss, the wife of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, in “The Zone of Interest,” with the film winning the Grand Prix at Cannes.

Each film is a marvel in its very distinctive way, and in both Hüller almost seems to act with her very being. If that sounds evasively reductive, it’s because it’s the only explanation I can come up with for my own inability to recognize her from “Zone” during the entire time I spent viewing “Anatomy,” even though there were no great alterations in her appearance. That’s not to give short shrift to any of the fantastic talent in “Anatomy,” both behind and in front of the camera, merely that Hüller’s work in both films is the most obvious signifier of a presence which bolsters “Anatomy” to deserved heights in a market glutted with crime dramas. 

In this one, it’s Hüller who embodies its many layers, in particular the film’s refusal to provide easy answers, or sometimes, any answers at all.




Directed By Women: We Grown Now (2023)

They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes that and more to get them the hell out of poverty.

Much like “The Florida Project,” there’s a certain lightness in the fact that we are seeing an impoverished setting through the eyes of a child, even if things are a lot less grim in Minhal Baig’s “We Grown Now.” Nostalgia can be a convenient cover, and unlike the transient nature of the budget hotel in “The Florida Project,” there’s a retro setting of 1992, and the fact that the community which very much existed in the Cabrini-Green public housing complex no longer does.

But that kind of purging is unimaginable as the film begins, especially to the ten-year-old besties Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) as they simply live their lives and find the fun and joy that kids tend to do, at least before the pubescent angst kicks in.

Malik is the one who quickly emerges as the film’s star and central character, and it’s pretty clear he’s going to be a force to be reckoned with one way or another. He’s being raised in a household of women, which consists of his grandmother Anita (S. Epatha Merkerson), older sister Amber, and his mother Dolores (Jurnee Smollett). Malik moves among them with ease, effortlessly charming them all into fits of laughter, a sign of potential danger to come if there ever was one IMO.

This trio is far more likely to influence Malik for the better the way they also effortlessly impart their history and the ability to see beyond their immediate surroundings. Much like Detroit, Cabrini-Green has long been a symbol of decline, a setting for much of the ills plaguing American society. You know the drill: drugs, poverty, the breaking down of the family, all segregated in a fashion which would allow whiteness to dismiss a place and the people in it.

Minhal Baig, who also wrote the film, likewise hails from Chicago, having grown up in Rogers Park to Pakistani parents, a far cry from the setting she tenderly chronicles here. For “We Grown Now,” Baig conducted multiple interviews with former residents of Cabrini-Green’s high-rise apartments, and she clearly got a great deal of personal connection out of it in the way the film warmly depicts Malik’s residence as more than a living space.

It’s clearly a home, with pictures on the wall, the beauty of the mundane which makes use of lighting and a haunting score in a fashion will inevitably draw comparisons to “Moonlight.” “We Grown Now” certainly has its own link to the American South, with Anita’s stories of life in Tupelo Mississippi, which has a kind of living talisman in the sewing machine she brought north with her, as well as the belief she imparts to her family about seeing the poetry in everything.

So it feels like a violation when a tragedy rocks the neighborhood and the powers that be decide to do all the wrong things about it, bringing in the police to invade the neighborhood and homes to such a degree that they feel like an occupying force. Malik and Eric can scream that they exist at the top of their lungs, they can play hooky and experience more of what Chicago has to offer, such as the Art Institute, but Malik’s mother Dolores also has the clear-eyed vision of a woman who can see some of what her neighborhood is going to come to. And the family has saved up just enough to allow her to take an opportunity to better their lives by her taking a job and new home in the suburbs.

If “We Grown Now” was from her perspective, this would likely feel more akin to a gentle rebirth, but Malik mainly feels the pain of the impending separation from his friend Eric, whose lack of maternal presence in his own home where he lives with his sister and single father Jason (Lil Rel Howery) feels like being stripped of his ability to dream. We mourn with them too, as Malik and his family leave a place that always was far more than its worst aspects.

What is home, or any place really, but the people? Even if Malik and his family made the most of an opportunity just in time, “We Grown Now” allows us to see the bittersweet nature of making a new home and better life, especially when it means leaving behind a community that seemed as if nothing on Earth could match it for its resiliency. Until of course, forces beyond their control did.

Directed By Women: All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (2023)

By Andrea Thompson

Can a setting and the feelings and experiences it invokes be curated? Can a place and a story not so much leap from the screen as gently surround us while we view it? 

I’d make the case for yes after viewing Raven Jackson’s spectacular “All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt.” As Jackson explores one woman’s life over the decades in rural Mississippi, there’s minimal dialogue and not much more than the bare bones of a story. But the details are so immersive you can almost taste the night air on a quiet summer night, the almost impossibly rich lushness of the soil, and the water that bathes its characters (sometimes literally) as they wind their own way throughout their lives.

A human intruding on such a sensory experience to impose any kind of obvious framing device seems unnecessary to the point of ridiculous, and sure enough, the film rejects narration to the extent that it isn’t until about 35 minutes in until we learn the name of lead Mack, who is mostly played by Charleen McClure. And since the views on framing also extend to linear time, Jackson is clearly counting on her audience to pay close attention to the details she does provide, and appreciate how she lingers on the moments of tenderness she captures.

There’s been plenty of willingness to do so if the reviews are any indication, which have used words like powerful, achingly beautiful, and rapturous. Why not? Even if other filmmakers have expressed a longing for childhood and a world that seems both far simpler and forever lost to us, not since perhaps “Daughters of the Dust” - to cite one of the more obvious influences for “All Dirt Roads” - have sound and imagery fused together to such poetically awe-inspiring ends.

For outsiders, the American South can practically feel like a foreign country in itself. That’s been played up to the heights of epic historical drama, for laughs in films such as “My Cousin Vinny,” and this time it’s worthy of the choice to shoot on 35mm film. Whoever has the privilege of such a viewing, congratulations on being the object of my envy.

“All Dirt Roads” would be remarkable if it was content to be an ode to Black rural life as told through one woman’s experience, but it’s also a loving homage to what we create by handmade means. It’s no accident that one of the first things on-screen is a child’s hands as she’s being instructed by an adult on how to slowly and surely reel in the fish she’s hooked while an equal amount of care is lavished on the sounds of the water swirling and the life that congregates around it.

It’s usually pointless to hope that a cinematographer becomes a household name, but hopefully Jomo Fray defies the odds for his work, and editor Lee Chatametikool is also acknowledged for his skillful transitions, where tiny details like a little girl’s hair ribbons pass as markers for whichever point in time that’s getting a lingering look.

There are a few drawbacks to this approach, even if it’s all art. Such journeys still tend to require some manner of human anchor, and the main pivot becomes the relationship between mother and child, which reveals itself as one of the most potent forces in a film that’s all about the nature of it all. Even when I wish I knew more about what exactly was happening, or maybe just the bare minimum of this movie’s version of exposition, I can only respect a filmmaker who is so skillfully determined to take her time and create a kind of memoir that asks us simply to take our time and consider things.

 Hell, “All Dirt Roads” practically begs us to take our time and appreciate our present moments; that there’s plenty of room for modern implements and the old ways of appreciating the natural world.  As another film once proclaimed, “An artist is never poor.” The richness of the world in “All Dirt Roads” clearly doesn’t extend to things like bank accounts for any of its characters, but with such faces to do all the talking, and the wealth of music and natural bounty on display, it’s certainly hard to argue.

Directed By Women: The Marvels (2023)

Marvel Studios

By Andrea Thompson

Just when I thought I was out, Disney pulls me back in.

I thought the superhero fatigue was real for me, so much so that I completely opted out of “Blue Beetle.” But Disney does what it does, and since it insists on continuing its now sprawling universe, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by “The Marvels.”

How could it be otherwise? “The Marvels” is a concept that’s still relatively rare for a Marvel Cinematic Universe offering that doesn’t go straight to streaming - it’s about a superheroine who gets backup from not just one, but two others in supporting roles, each with their own rich history and complexities. 

Teyonah Parris gets some needed development as Monica Rambeau, who finally gets to sort things out with Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), currently hanging out in space with Nick Fury (a very much missed from the big screen Samuel L. Jackson). 

But one of the most radical turns “The Marvels” takes is to make their story a continuation Kamala Khan’s (Iman Vellani), who has only recently taken up the Ms. Marvel moniker. Her miniseries of the same name is what is required viewing, not to mention the first Marvel product in a while to make me not only tear up, but reminisce at what it’s still possible to accomplish within corporate guidelines.

The Marvels” actually picks up where “Ms. Marvel” left off, with Carol finding herself transported to Kamala’s room, much to her confusion. This development is both central premise and running gag, with Carol, Kamala, and Monica switching places with each other whenever one of them uses their powers, which is justified by the sciencey explanation that it’s all because each of their abilities make use of light.

Marvel Studios

Either way, Iman Vellani is a standout, with her fangirling over Captain Marvel proving to be even more adorable than when Tom Holland’s Spider-Man first met Iron Man. In a time where the Marvel universe and multiverse and prequels and sequels seem to be on the verge of becoming an exhaustive, never-ending sprawl, Vellani might prove to be its savior. 

She is already its heart, since the movie is aware that Kamala is a package deal, with her family already proven to be so central that matriarch Muneeba Khan (Zenobia Shroff) is the one who creates her daughter’s on-screen superhero look, and patriarch Yusuf Khan (Mohan Kapur) is the inspiration behind his daughter’s decision to choose an alias that fuses her history and hero worship.

The Khans are the ones who emphasize how the simple act of trashing a house has serious consequences in a movie about traversing space and different realities. When Captain Marvel shows up, one of their first questions is whether she’s pressuring their daughter, and they are a centering influence even when they’re whisked from Earth to Fury’s base of operations.

So who cares that the actual plot of “The Marvels” is actually kind of a mess, with a premise that could be lifted straight from “Spaceballs”? With very few exceptions, it’s the heroes that are icons in this franchise, so Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) follows the usual pattern of being rather lackluster in comparison to the good guys, plotting to steal the atmosphere and suns of other worlds in order to revive her homeworld, which has been stripped of much of its wealth and resources. It’s so old school that the only development which veers slightly into originality is the climax involves a big beam of light in space rather than the plain ol’ sky. 

Thing is though, “The Marvels” is also old school in another, more unfortunate way, sticking to a thin veneer of heteronormativity to the point that Monica’s admission that she was just a kid who wanted her…aunt brings the kinds of tears that we can all see for what they really are. Because right, Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune were cousins, and Xena and Gabrielle were merely best friends. 😉

Marvel Studios

You wouldn’t think such pretense would be necessary in these times, but Captain Marvel is a heroine so queer-coded she brings her cat into space with her. Hell, “The Marvels” might actually be the closest thing the MCU has gotten to a queer party, with Tessa Thompson showing up for a Valkyrie cameo fabulously attired in a suit, and the central trio journeying to another planet where the language is based in song, and sees Carol dancing with a gorgeously androgynous prince.

If it seems like the movie ricochets in all kinds of directions, that’s because it does, and the result is a gorgeous mess that never loses its sense of fun. In that sense, it bears a passing resemblance to “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which saw communing with ants as the key to saving the universe. But that has nothing on one of the later developments of this movie, where otherworldly kittens prove to be the key to saving lives. Whoever thought of that particular development was either high, a genius, or possibly a combination of the two.

You’ll just have to see it to believe it, and it’s a kick to see a movie that proves Nia DaCosta is still the director of the excellent, woefully underseen “Little Woods” after the dismal experience that was the new “Candyman,” with “The Marvels” also written by women. It shows, and it also explains the exhaustively predictable backlash this one is earning. If you do give it a watch though, you might just get excited about what the MCU has in store for the first time in a very long time.