DAYTIME REVOLUTION documents peaceful TV takeover
by Melissa Strong, Staff Writer
Daytime Revolution emphasizes how Lennon and Ono’s programming choices contributed to the expansion of progressive, social democratic ideas.
Ghost Week: The unseen ghost in REBECCA
by Melissa Strong, Staff Writer
MJ’s Ghosts, Goblins, Ghouls, Goths, and Grotesqueries! theme is a great time to revisit the Alfred Hitchcock classic Rebecca (1940).
CLOSE TO YOU is reserved, but still provides a window into a transmasc experience
by Melissa Strong, Staff Writer
Viewers willing to look past Close to You’s imperfections will be rewarded with a moving take on an experience rarely explored in feature films.
MJ ZINE HIGHLIGHT: letter to A SINGLE MAN
by Melissa Strong, Staff Writer
Special sneak peek at our Summer 2024 print issue featuring cinematic loneliness… Melissa shares a letter of sorts inspired by the 2009 film, A Single Man.
NEW LIFE offers a thrilling ride for its two women leads
by Melissa Strong, Staff Writer
Described as a horror thriller, this movie incorporates mystery, suspense, chase, apocalyptic themes, and social commentary to enrich the results.
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, is the movie I didn’t know that I needed this spooky season, a black-and-white delight of a feminist Iranian vampire western.
Read MoreStar of the Month: Harrison Ford stops running in REGARDING HENRY
by Melissa Strong, Contributor
Written by J.J. Abrams and directed by Mike Nichols, Regarding Henry received praise for its acting and criticism for its heavy-handedness.
Grossing out the Patriarchy: 4 Great Recent Moments in Body Horror
by Melissa Strong, Contributor
Though rendering women’s bodies grotesque, body horror can challenge gender norms and beauty standards that include the relationship between a woman’s physical attractiveness and her worth and the contradictory expectations of purity and sexual receptiveness.
ALICE provides a new take on American horror
by Melissa Strong, Contributor
Despite its shortcomings, Alice is an entertaining take on a familiar narrative.
Cult comedy ADVENTURES IN SUCCESS aims high and fumbles
by Melissa Strong, Contributor
Adventures in Success aims high, but it is not greater than the sum of its parts.
Nostalgia permeates UNDER THE VOLCANO
by Melissa Strong, Contributor
Nostalgia isn’t necessarily problematic, and plenty of Gen Xers still love the synth-y songs of the New Wave era. This is the documentary’s apparent target audience, and I fit the demographic.
MOMENTS WITHOUT PROPER NAMES offers an expressionist look at George Parks' photography
by Melissa Strong, Contributor
Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was a Renaissance man talented in many mediums, from photography and film to writing, music, and painting.
Read MoreWHEN I'M HER explores the healing power of performance
by Melissa Strong, Contributor
The documentary short When I'm Her combines dance and drag–two of my favorite things–to explore the healing power of self-expression.
TINY TIM: KING FOR A DAY celebrates the virtues of the authentic self
by Melissa Strong, Contributor
Sometimes sad and always interesting, King for a Day chronicles the life of a person bold enough to embrace his authentic self even when others laughed and mocked, a feat few others can achieve.
The Short History of The Long Road
Written and directed by Ani Simon-Kennedy
Starring Sabrina Carpenter, Maggie Siff, Danny Trejo and Steven Ogg
Running time: 1 hour and 30 minutes
by Melissa Strong
The Short History of the Long Road is a coming-of-age story with elements we need more of: female protagonist (check) who doesn’t chase a boy (check plus), experience unplanned pregnancy and/or sexual assault (check plus plus) or find herself victimized, exploited or violently harmed (noyce!). Writer/director/producer Ani Simon-Kennedy also is female. Next time, and the time after that, I would love to see a story like this with a protagonist who is a young person of color and/or queer and/or trans and/or disabled and/or in the foster system and/or… I could go on, but surely you get the picture. Nevertheless, I quickly became biased in favor of Nola (Sabrina Carpenter) and this movie about her maturation.
Read MoreWhere'd You Go, Bernadette
Written and directed by Richard Linklater
Starring Cate Blanchett, Judy Greer and Kristen Wiig
MPAA rating: PG-13 for some strong language and drug material
by Melissa Strong
Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019) adapts Maria Semple’s 2012 bestselling novel of the same name, the story of an eccentric, possibly unlikeable woman who goes missing before a family trip. Directed by Richard Linklater from a screenplay he cowrote with Holly Gent, Vincent Palmo, Jr., Michael H. Weber, and Scott Neustadter, the film features Cate Blanchett in the title role. With her big, dark sunglasses, bobbed hair, blunt-cut bangs, chic outfits, and icy demeanor, Blanchett’s Bernadette resembles an amazonian Joan Didion.
Read MoreThe VVitch
by Melissa Strong
Greetings from the first half of the undergraduate American literature survey. For nearly 10 years I have taught the “Beginnings to the Civil War” college class that seems a lot like the boring half when compared to its sibling “Civil War to the present” (a semester full of cool stuff like the Harlem Renaissance, Sylvia Plath, and postmodernism). I love “Beginnings to the Civil War” because it reveals the origins of issues our country faces today, but it can be a hard sell due to boring crap like sermons, letters, diaries, and speeches. This goes on for months until Poe and the Transcendentalists show up. No matter how excited I get about the Enlightenment and the era of reform, the excitement tends not to be contagious.
Read MoreVideo Boys
by Melissa Strong
VHS tapes are tools for identity formation? Believe it. Browsing the aisles of the video store, selecting movies, and watching them with other weird smart kids shaped the person and movie lover I became. And because they were cutting edge during my adolescence and young adulthood, VHS and other analog technologies shaped my outlook on and continuing experience of the world. I may have been born close to the demarcation zone for millennials, but I firmly identify and relate with Generation X: I cannot be a peer to someone who did not experience the pre-digital era. Do you remember hopefully waiting to hear a favorite song on the radio? Did you attempt to record that song on your boom box as it played? Did you search the video store for a movie you had heard of, read about, and longed to see? And did you try to copy the movie onto a blank VHS tape so you could watch it again? If not, we will never understand each other.
Read MoreThe Male Gaze in 2018
by Melissa Strong, MJ Contributor
In 1975, Laura Mulvey published an essay analyzing feature film in a groundbreaking new way. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” first acknowledges that movies make the camera invisible, almost unnoticeable, to create the illusion of verisimilitude. Next, it observes that the disappearing camera becomes a kind of eye, and the gaze this eye creates is male. This notion - that the camera has a male gaze - is what Mulvey is best known for. Perhaps it went without saying in 1975, but today it is worth noting that the camera’s male gaze also is cisgender, heterosexual, and representative of conventional expectations of masculinity. Whatever for, you may ask? Well, as Mulvey points out, movies are a product of a patriarchal culture, so naturally they tend to reflect patriarchy.
Read MoreWho Gets to Tell Which Stories?
by Melissa Strong
The release of Detroit (2017) raised questions about who gets to tell the story of the 1967 rebellion in which white police officers killed black men. Detroit was written by a white man, Mark Boal, and directed by a white woman, Kathryn Bigelow. This raised some criticism, but Michael Eric Dyson wrote in the New York Times that Bigelow “has done what us black folk often demand white folk do: Take responsibility for your actions and a legacy of hate that is often silently transmitted.” Shining a light on injustice may constitute one way the film industry could take responsibility, but the thorny yet common issue of racial ventriloquism remains.
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