Review: The Two Popes
At the Middleburg Film Festival this year, The Two Popes was my top pick and if that’s any indication, it will win the Oscar. My favorites won the last two…
Review: Synonyms
Based on the real-life experiences of writer-director Nadav Lapid (The Kindergarten Teacher), Synonyms is the strange story of a young Israeli man named Yoav (Tom Mercier) who comes to Paris to escape…
Review: Waves
Mainstream Chick and I both watched this one at the Middleburg Film Festival. It's a family melodrama with a capital "F." At its center is the African-American Williams family, whose…
Review: The Report
We Chicks both saw The Report at the Middleburg Film Festival last month. We were both fans of this political thriller that should be seen widely, and agreed that its…
Review: Harriet
Harriet Tubman was an extraordinary woman and she deserves to have her story told (and to be on the $20 bill.) She was a tiny, illiterate slave, but she was…
Review: GIFT
When I was in grad school, the first book we had to read was Lewis Hyde's "The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World." It's a beautiful meditation on…
Arty Chick’s Middleburg Film Festival Download 2019
Another super tiring weekend in the bucolic Virginia hamlet of Middleburg watching more films than I should! I predicted early on that this festival would outgrow itself and I think…
Review: Britt-Marie Was Here
We've seen this one before. An older woman finds out her husband has been having an affair and leaves him. First she struggles with it and then she finds herself.…
Review: Ms. Purple
This stylish drama set in L.A.'s Koreatown tells the story of a young woman's dedication to family at the expense of her own happiness and her gradual return to a…
Review: Midnight Traveler
Stories of refugees and immigrants are all over the news these days. But mostly they're about numbers and policy while the people are faceless and nameless. What this gritty documentary…
Review: Neither Wolf Nor Dog
This ever so indie film was funded with a Kickstarter campaign and then self-distributed. And right now it is the longest-running US theatrical release in more than a decade, having…
Review: Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins
If you don't know who Molly Ivins was, you'll be a fan by the end of this doc. If you do remember her, you'll fall back in love. And after…
Review: This is Not Berlin
In this coming-of-age film set in Mexico City in the 80s, 17-year-olds Carlos and Gera are on the cusp of adulthood. And when they're invited to the coolest club in…
Review: Vita & Virginia
Vita Sackville-West was a British socialite and a popular writer in the 1920s. She was also fond of scandalizing the society in which she lived, especially with her female lovers.…
Review: Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché
She was there at the very beginning of the film industry. She directed hundreds of popular films and built her own studio that rivaled all the others of the day.…