I’m sure you all have heard about how audiences assembled for Avengers: Infinity War. The Marvel superhero movie has broken the record for the biggest opening weekend ever. This weekend, another film, which features the closest thing to a real superhero we have in the US, is opening, and will make a great companion piece, especially if …
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Sometimes there are films that remind us how grateful we are that independent films are released. With my focus being female filmmakers, that is the world in which I largely dwell, since so few movies put out by the studios are woman-directed. In fact, only 3% of studio films released in 2018 have a woman at …
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Opening in our area this and next weekend are two films that seem very unlike each other, given that one is a small indie film with an up-and-coming ingenue, and the other is led by an Oscar winner in the prime of her career. Upon further inspection however, Flower, starring Zoey Deutch, and Tomb Raider, starring …
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Sparkle alert! If you’ve seen any of the trailers for the highly-publicized cinematic rendering of Madeline L’Engle’s classic 1962 children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, you know sparkle figures prominently. Director Ava DuVernay, who has the distinction of being the first women of color to direct of live action film with a budget over 100 million …
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The new indie release Oh Lucy, from Japanese-American writer/director Atsuko Hirayanagi, examines the life of Setsuko (Shinobu Terajima), a lonely, chain-smoking woman of a certain age. It’s the sort of film that captures well-crafted characters undergoing real change, with all the messiness, hilarity, and unpleasantness attached to it. After being confronted with mortality, Setsuko says yes …
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Ruth Carter has been breaking barriers and building her reputation in the film industry for over 30 years. She is the first woman of color to be nominated for an Academy Award in best achievement in costume design, for Malcolm X, and has also been thus recognized for Amistad, She has worked with some of …
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It is true the Academy Awards are not the ultimate arbiter of quality and longevity of a film. You need but look to the history of winners and losers to confirm that. However, the Best Foreign Language Films is one category where the Oscars gets closer. Nearly all nominees are multiple award winners with buzz that has carried …
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In celebration of this wonderful honor, this first post by Cinema Siren in 2018 will be the Best Films of 2017, but ONLY include films directed by women. It’s thrilling to say most of these would already be on my top ten, and that is definitely a sign of the times. There are several films that were …
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Sometimes it just takes seeing people actively making a difference, approaching what they do with a balance of realism and tenaciously optimism, to remind us we really can change the world, even if it’s in some small way. The women of the documentary short Heroin(e) are saving lives and helping people change their circumstances every day. Watching them is …
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If I were making a movie with two women playing mother and daughter, Oscar nominated Saoirse Ronan of Atonement, and Brooklyn, and Emmy and Tony Award winner Laurie Metcalf of Toy Story, Roseanne, the Steppenwolf Theater and at least 14 Broadway and off-Broadway plays, would be on my dream list. Apparently Greta Gerwig agrees. Before the beloved Indie actress, writer …
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