If a filmmaker or publicist contacts me regarding my reviews, it’s usually to complain—with the unhappy missive-composers often forgetting that the job of a critic is to, well, critique and not to make friends or earn pats on the back.  One does not undertake this type of writing to be popular, or even liked.  (I could point to my school years as evidence of this, but never mind.)  If we’re lucky, a critic might see his or her name on publicity

Many people are familiar with the Kinsey Report on sexual behavior, which rocked the establishment in the early fifties, but far fewer know about 1976’s Hite Report, which effectively described the frequency and variability of female orgasm. The report’s author, feminist researcher Shere Hite, was alternately celebrated and vilified for her writing, with media outlets often outwardly hostile to her research. But she pressed on, with other reports on

Filmmaker Billy Luther's first film, 2007's "Miss Navajo," was an involving documentary that used the determination of one contestant in the Miss Navajo Nation pageant to examine the importance of keeping culture and tradition at the forefront in the Native American way of life. The honest look at identity was personal to the filmmaker, whose mother won the title in the mid sixties. With his first feature film, "Frybread Face and Me," Luther takes

The television Western genre is long past its heyday. In the fifties and sixties, TV was filled with exciting "Oaters" that glued viewers to their sets and had young kids dreaming to be one of the real-life heroes who fought bad guys with grit, smarts and a six-shooter. While shows like "The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp," "Have Gun Will Travel" and especially "Gunsmoke" would be hard-pressed to find an audience in today's television landscape

Written by Samy Burch (from a story by Alex Mechanik), the screenplay for Todd Haynes's latest work, "May December," is filled with wit and irony. Haynes's film maintains that sharp edge throughout, but stands, also, as a striking examination of the complexity of human sexuality and attraction that reveals a shattering emotional core in its characters.

The film is not-so-loosely based on the

The seventies were a glorious time for filmmakers. From one film to the next, directors such as Hal Ashby, Jerry Schatzberg, Bob Rafelson (and more) made intoxicating works full of honesty and truth, achieving powerful emotion through rich characters and relatable situations. Through a career of mostly fantastic films, writer/director Alexander Payne has proven he paid close attention to the great auteurs of that fruitful

Beginning the year with a moving turn in the Sundance darling, "Sometimes I Think About Dying," Daisy Ridley continues her quest to carve out exciting performances in absorbing films. The actress ends 2023 with Neil Burger's "The Marsh King's Daughter." As with all adaptations of popular mainstream novels, fans of Karen Dionne's 2017 namesake work will likely lead the the book was better charge. While Burger's film (written by father and