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Annie Hall
(1977)
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Lynne Segal
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Is Woody Allen's commonplace pessimism really inevitable? While pondering this, we can have a good laugh at this black comedy.
Posted Aug 26, 2022
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Dyn Amo
(1972)
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Ros Spain
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The film, especially towards the end, is harrowing. Each girl is stripped both physically and emotionally of all pretense.
Posted Nov 17, 2021
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Grease
(1978)
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Jill Nicholls
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Grease is like a co-ed St Trinians -- giggly overgrown highschool kids dancing and romping. The fifties nostalgia is a joke, a gimmick; the whole thing is shamelessly superficial.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
(1974)
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Laura Mulvey
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder is proving to be one of the most important directors of the 70s, and his film Fear Eats The Soul... is a good example of his recent work.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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California Split
(1974)
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Sally Feldman
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The underlying sentiment is that men... are more fun, better sports, firmer friends, and more steadfast lovers [than women]. As in the westerns and the gangster films we're always aware that it's a fantasy -- but the feeling is that it's a wistful one.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Girlfriends
(1978)
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Sue Clayton
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It's a well-produced and very witty film.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
(1974)
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Linda F. Dove
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It is an interesting, enjoyable film with situations you'll probably identify with except finally we have a slightly battered but happy ending -- that's where films can't mirror life even if they wanted to.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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The Romantic Englishwoman
(1975)
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Ruth Reckless
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The audience is left to either examine for themselves the aspects of marriage, romantic love and role reversal which the film gingerly picked up, or to dismiss the whole thing as "pulp novel fantasy," depending on their preoccupations.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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A Star Is Born
(1976)
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Alison Fell
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Get the old message, girls, and in pounding stereo -- you still can't have a career and a man. Not that your man will actively hold you back -- he'll just destroy himself in protest.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Seven Beauties
(1976)
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Karen Margolis
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Wertmuller is certainly in the mainstream of European film-making; her work is often cinematically beautiful and sometimes provocative. I would like to see her reduce the sweep of her canvas to explore her central themes in greater depth.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August
(1974)
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Karen Margolis
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Swept Away... is disappointing because it raises difficult questions about sex, class and eroticism which should be explored by women directors; yet its impact is to reinforce many man-made myths.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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The Turning Point
(1977)
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Alison Fell
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All is resolved in laughter and kisses, with both women accepting their different lives in a way which I think we're supposed to see as mature. It was certainly far too cosy for me.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Looking for Mr. Goodbar
(1977)
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Katherine Gieve
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A fascinating book is turned into a bleak and empty film by making things much less complicated than they really are. The film maker has manipulated the idea of the book and has limited the image of the woman to satisfy commerce requirements.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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1900
(1976)
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Mandy Merck
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Patriarchal power is not only not challenged, it's positively celebrated.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
(1975)
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Alison Fell
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Berger and Tanner seem generally at sea with their female characters, which leads them into all sorts of doldrums, mystifications and annoyances. I mean, how can they have missed the fact that woman's liberation also exploded in the late 60's?
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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The Innocent
(1976)
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Naomi Deutscher
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Visconti seems to exploit the rising independence of women by having them occasionally utter strong words, but never enabling or allowing them to put them into practice.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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The Goodbye Girl
(1977)
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Grace Jones
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The film begins with a veneer of sympathy for the plight of the 'deserted woman' but soon embraces a plot which is romantic, male-dominated and has a happy ending.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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The Brute
(1977)
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Claire Fazan
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The Brute is an extremely disturbing film. It is a male sadistic fantasy combined with occasional 'realistic' scenes to give it the deceptive appearance of a study of matrimonial violence.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Blacks Britannica
(1978)
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Melba Wilson
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One of the most important points made by Blacks Britannica is its emphasis on the fact that institutional racism poses a much greater threat to blacks and Asians than does the National Front.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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The Stepford Wives
(1975)
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Amanda Sebestyen
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In trying for a nice liberal up-to-date angle on women within such a very conventional form as the commercial horror movie, I think The Stepford Wives actually broke through into some surprisingly rebellious images.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Coming Home
(1978)
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Alison Fell
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I found the film's portrayal of machismo in crisis pretty convincing. Fonda acts Sally Bender's stumblings from conformity to politicisation with tenderness and precision, and Dern is moving as the all-American hero going into self-destruct.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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An Unmarried Woman
(1978)
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Jill Nicholls
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It's just another of those films made by a man with women in mind.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Harlan County, U.S.A.
(1976)
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Kerry Schott
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Harlan County USA is a powerful documentary of a long and brave struggle. But it also shows the lack of theoretical foundations in the American labour movement.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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New York, New York
(1977)
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Alison Fell
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It's nice of Hollywood to let us see women making a success of their work. Pity, though, we're only allowed to see that work and success inasmuch as it carves up their relationships with their fellas.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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3 Women
(1977)
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Ruth Wallsgrove
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There are all sorts of details that might Mean Something, that you could amuse yourself with on rainy evenings, but I would rather give credit to the three actresses, who were superb, than worry about what was going on in the director's head.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Wives
(1975)
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Rosie Parker
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It made me particularly aware of how cut off women, as wives and mothers, are from the ways and means of having a Good Time.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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The Last Woman
(1976)
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Rose Ades
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The film delves mercilessly beneath the surface.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Caddie
(1976)
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Ruth Wallsgrove
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I didn't feel I had witnessed any real hardship. It all looked very easy to be a single mother in the Depression, if you were a nice woman who smiled in a wholesome way. But it's a lie.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Julia
(1977)
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Elizabeth Wilson
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It would have been difficult for any director to dramatise this relationship effectively and perhaps we should applaud [director Fred Zinnemann] for trying before we criticise him for failing.
Posted Sep 22, 2021
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Mahler
(1974)
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Ann Scott
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[A] ghastly film.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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The Amazing Mr. Blunden
(1972)
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Rose Ades
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This film reaches near-caricature heights in reasserting conventional sex and class roles.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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A Safe Place
(1971)
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Chris Mohr
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Deliberately severing connections which might explain too much, the film's only structure is a rhythmic, nervous alternation between past and present, memory and reality, fantasy and experience, hope and fear.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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Bilitis
(1977)
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Lucy Moy-Thomas
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While the camera lingers freely over Bilitis' sexual relationships, the film's overt message is that lesbianism should be treated as an infantile disorder, something nice girls grow out of.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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Cria!
(1976)
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Ruth Wallsgrove
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It's a very sad, but powerful film.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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International Velvet
(1978)
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Jill Nicholls
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The film is "good family entertainment", sentimental and cliched, but quite enjoyable.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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One Sings, the Other Doesn't
(1977)
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Sue Clayton
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One Sings is an idealistic film open-ended; but so lyrical and pleasurable that it deserves to be seen and its politics discussed.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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Riddles of the Sphinx
(1977)
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Lisa Vine
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Riddles of The Sphinx has the rare quality of being able to put over a complex subject articulately. For me its value lay in its immediacy.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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The Harder They Come
(1972)
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Teresa Topolski
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Perry Henzell has such a lot to say about Jamaica, about life, and he's given us quite a chunk of this, his first film. I look forward to his second.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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Cross of Iron
(1977)
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Tira Shubart
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A violent war film coming from Sam Peckinpah is no surprise and normally would not be worth critical mention except for the pretentions of this film.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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Stardust
(1974)
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Marsha Rowe
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It's a paltry film, making sweeping criticism of the corruption of the record industry, the profit motive, while not attempting to make any sense of why this is so; making accusations against abuse of power, without any sensible understanding of power.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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Mother, Jugs & Speed
(1976)
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Clare Cherrington
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Mother , Jugs & Speed has no real sting. This apart, the movie does prove you don't have to be sexist to be funny.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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Number Two
(1975)
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Nell Myers
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Godard -- in setting the human "need" to love against the carnivorous backdrop of technology -- lights up what may be, beneath antagonisms of sex, race and class, our greatest problem.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives
(1977)
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Amanda Sebestyen
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I thought there were some wonderful things in this film.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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The Devil's Cleavage
(1975)
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Helen MacKintosh
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Where I started out feeling uncomfortable and suffocated I finished uncomfortable but stimulated, ready to start all over. Well, almost.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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Outrageous!
(1977)
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Helen MacKintosh
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There's very little plot, just a couple of excellent performances (Hollis McLaren and Craig Russell), some wonderful one-liners and several great star impersonations when Robin finally 'comes out' in drag.
Posted Sep 20, 2021
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