It's Gonna Be May(Day)

by Jason Adams

Heads-up on a movie that should be on your radars if it isn't already -- I saw director Karen Cinorre's debut film Mayday at Sundance back in February, and it's a fascinating feminist spin on the War Film starring a slew of super up-and-comer actresses, including personal beloveds Grace Van Patten (so great on Nine Perfect Strangers right now) and Mia Goth (oh how we love Mia Goth). Oh and Juliette Lewis is there too? Indeed she is! Here's a little of what I said about Mayday in February:

"Mayday... is plenty aware of... the limitations in adopting masculine ideas of violence and revenge. But unlike something like Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, which Mayday feels like an explicit rebuke of, there's no fetishization of girls play-acting tough guy roles -- their past wounds don't become level-up Barbie-costumes that wrap their sexual assaults in pleather bustier pseudo-feminist bullshit. These women's fuck-ups feel genuine, earned and experienced -- they've left more emotional marks than they have sexy thigh scars or pretty painted bruises -- while their baggy fatigues just make for a practical place to wipe off dude-gore."

Read the rest (which dives into some themes I saw percolating across several female-directed pictures at Sundance) here. Mayday is out on October 1st, and here's the trailer to get you hyped:

Putting the Genre in Gender at Sundance

by Jason Adams

A lot of ink, possibly pink, has already been spilled on this year's Sundance marking a flashpoint for female filmmakers. (You can find the same sort of headlines if you look back at last year's fest, which included Eliza Hittman's Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Kirsten Johnson's Dick Johnson is Dead, and Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman.) Still, women's voices at this year's fest feel dominant in a way I'm not sure they ever have before, and it strikes me that the ways we're seeing women re-working genre as a tool of dissembling trauma and male-dominance is in particular fascinating, especially as the Trump years come to their ignominious, death-rattling end...

Click to read more ...