by Melissa Strong, Staff Writer
The Assessment is about how far people will go to have a child, what happens if they can’t, and how this impacts others. It is also about greed, exploitation, and difficult decisions.
by Melissa Strong, Staff Writer
The centennial of Newman’s birth is the perfect time to revisit Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which marked his rise to stardom and critical acclaim.
by Melissa Strong, Staff Writer
Daytime Revolution emphasizes how Lennon and Ono’s programming choices contributed to the expansion of progressive, social democratic ideas.
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).
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.
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.
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 (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 Moreby 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.
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.
by Melissa Strong, Contributor
Despite its shortcomings, Alice is an entertaining take on a familiar narrative.
by Melissa Strong, Contributor
Adventures in Success aims high, but it is not greater than the sum of its parts.
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.
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 Moreby 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.
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.
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 MoreWritten 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 Moreby 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 Moreby 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.
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