Naoko Ogigami’s Close-Knit is a charming, if disappointingly conservative, family drama about a girl who finds herself being raised by a transgender woman.
Gender and Sexuality
Explore depictions of masculinity, femininity, and sexual identity.
Julia Ducournau’s Raw is a new kind of female body horror
Mary Angela Rowe’s review of Raw. Cannibalism is definitely a lady problem in Julia Ducournau’s Raw, but the film isn’t about the horror of female sexuality so much as the twisted results of shoving young women into a pressure cooker of experiences and expectations.
Hello Destroyer explores the thin line between hockey menace and model
Kevan Funk’s Hello Destroyer is a hockey movie where the drama is not in the game, but in how its violence has consequences that ripple off the ice.
Unlearning toxic masculinity in the Dardennes’ La Promesse
Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s 1996 film, La Promesse (The Promise), examines how a teenage boy unlearns patriarchal values through his relationship with an undocumented Burkinabé immigrant.
Manchester by the Sea embraces conventional stereotypes
Despite its obvious Oscar-bait trappings, Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea is plagued by outdated ideas about masculinity and weak supporting characters.
Andrew Neel’s Goat lacks psychological insight
Andrew Neel’s Goat is an excellent showcase for up-and-coming star Ben Schnetzer, whose strong performance hints at the better film it could have been had Neel been less focussed on brutality and more focussed on psychological insight.