Autostraddle

Autostraddle is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Carmen Phillips, Heather Hogan, Jourdain Searles, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Sarah Fonseca
Rating Title/Year Author
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) Carmen Phillips It's angry and incredibly violent and despite its bright color palette - perhaps expectedly dark; it's also cathartic and triumphant. EDIT
Posted Feb 11, 2020
Fortune Feimster: Sweet & Salty (2020) Heather Hogan There is a kindness and an elegance to the way Feimster tells jokes. EDIT
Posted Jan 29, 2020
Bombshell (2019) Heather Hogan It's fun to watch powerful men get destroyed. What's not fun is watching bad people take down worse people for self-serving reasons and get treated as heroes for doing it. EDIT
Posted Dec 30, 2019
Charlie's Angels (2019) Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya Overall, it hits all the right buttons for its genre and for the Charlie's Angels canon in general while still standing on its own and playing to the strengths of its three stars. EDIT
Posted Nov 21, 2019
() Jourdain Searles To see a story like this was a breath of fresh air. EDIT
Posted Nov 13, 2019
Hustlers (2019) Carmen Phillips Hustlers is arguably the finest performance Jennifer Lopez has ever given, and there is no way for me to be unbiased about that fact. Her performance is as magnetic as it is layered, loving and warm as it is fearsome and dangerous. EDIT
Posted Sep 17, 2019
Men in Black: International (2019) Carmen Phillips Having Molly guide us back into the supernatural buddy-comedy universe really should've worked. To her credit, Tessa Thompson works very hard to make it work. EDIT
Posted Aug 10, 2019
Late Night (2019) Heather Hogan Queer director Nisha Ganatra brings [Mindy] Kaling's funny, biting, meta-critiquing script to life like a bright, slick, dazzling rom-com for women who fantasize more about their careers than they do about Mr. Darcy. EDIT
Posted Jun 5, 2019
Booksmart (2019) Heather Hogan Booksmart is a brilliant teen flick and a savvy female-fronted comedy and an exceptional lesbian film - and it's also just a really smart, really funny movie. It transcends every genre it's a part of. EDIT
Posted May 21, 2019
Wine Country (2019) Heather Hogan Unlike basically every other drunken comedy ever made, this one has experiences of womanhood baked into every layer. EDIT
Posted May 10, 2019
Butter (2011) Carmen Phillips The entire plot for Butter is the kind of wackadoodle delight that one should really experience with fresh eyes and their feet up on a couch with a bowl junk food at their disposal. EDIT
Posted Apr 11, 2019
Wild Nights With Emily (2018) Heather Hogan If someone found a way to use alien tech to scan my brain and create exactly the movie I've been waiting to see my entire life, this would be it. EDIT
Posted Apr 9, 2019
Captain Marvel (2019) Heather Hogan A slow start, but once the movie got going, it left me breathless. EDIT
Posted Mar 8, 2019
Disobedience (2017) Erin Sullivan I was informed by my viewing companion that I started to do the "wrap it up" hand motion before the credits even began to roll. EDIT
Posted Jan 23, 2019
Pimp (2018) Mackenzie MacDade It's clear every actor involved was deeply committed to not just their characters, but to the narrative. EDIT
Posted Dec 28, 2018
Bar Bahar (2016) Drew Gregory During an era where so many of us are desperately looking for comfort, I can think of no cinematic message more fitting for 2018 than this one. EDIT
Posted Dec 26, 2018
Life-Size 2: A Christmas Eve (2018) Heather Hogan You deserve to experience the absolute ecstasy of watching Tyra Banks commit to the bananapants wide-eyed wonder of this role again. EDIT
Posted Dec 19, 2018
Cameron Esposito: Rape Jokes (2018) Heather Hogan It has already changed the comedy game. EDIT
Posted Dec 13, 2018
Dumplin' (2018) Heather Hogan Yes, it's formulaic. But it's fresh, too! EDIT
Posted Dec 13, 2018
The Favourite (2018) Heather Hogan The most stunning thing about The Favourite is how it slices open three queer women and lets their messy humanity bleed all over you. EDIT
Posted Dec 3, 2018
Widows (2018) Carmen Phillips It's knotty and tense to watch as all the pieces fall into place, but nonetheless electrifying. EDIT
Posted Nov 20, 2018
Lez Bomb (2018) Heather Hogan While Lez Bomb certainly doesn't hit all the shots it takes, I think it's a really important (and entertaining) step forward. EDIT
Posted Nov 20, 2018
Blockers (2018) Mey Valdivia Rude A lot of the credit for Blockers turning the regressive tropes of the raunchy comedy genre on their head goes to director Kay Cannon... EDIT
Posted Nov 16, 2018
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) Heather Hogan McCarthy's funny, too, and not in that type-cast way she's been forced to play since Bridesmaids. I'm talking about subtle, piercing humor. EDIT
Posted Nov 14, 2018
AWOL (2016) Sarah Fonseca Talking about class can be ugly. Yet as AWOL asserts, when you dare to comment, sometimes it frees up room for beauty to unfurl. EDIT
Posted Nov 13, 2018
Whitney: Can I Be Me (2017) Sarah Fonseca It's surprising how little Broomfield inserts himself into the narrative...[he] is respectful and Crawford is only present in old footage... EDIT
Posted Nov 13, 2018
Regarding Susan Sontag (2014) Sarah Fonseca While it would be easy to create a sterilized portrait of the accomplished intellectual, Kates refrains from doing so. EDIT
Posted Nov 2, 2018
My Girl (1991) Sarah Fonseca When I watched My Girl as a kid, I spent 80% of the movie having Schwinn Bicycle and mood ring envy. Now, I'm also able to appreciate [the] dialogue... EDIT
Posted Nov 2, 2018
Foxfire (1996) Sarah Fonseca The intermittently-spersed electric guitar solos make the movie a little less Revolution Grrrl Style Now and a lot more ABC After-School Special. EDIT
Posted Nov 2, 2018
Boys on the Side (1995) Carmen Phillips Honestly one of the most beautiful tributes to adult friendships between women that I've seen. EDIT
Posted Oct 8, 2018
A Simple Favor (2018) Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya It's a Mommi murder mystery that knows exactly how ridiculous is, the whole cast in on the joke. EDIT
Posted Sep 20, 2018
Colette (2018) Heather Hogan On the whole, though, Colette is a lush, brilliantly scored, perfectly acted, beautifully directed biopic. EDIT
Posted Sep 14, 2018
The Feels (2017) Heather Hogan It's authentic and it's tender and while the climax is a little bit rushed - eh hem - it's a gay happy ending. And that, itself, is still revolutionary. EDIT
Posted Aug 29, 2018
Crazy Rich Asians (2018) Fiona Li It's ridiculous that anyone thinks a single film can capture the Asian experience, whatever that even means, but this film is a great start toward showing a wider breadth of it. EDIT
Posted Aug 22, 2018
The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya Way more so than most movies in this genre, the character development and relationship dynamics are so strong, dimensional, moving. EDIT
Posted Aug 10, 2018
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) Heather Hogan Moretz's performance is understated, assured... Watching her watch Desert Hearts to watch her best friend's reaction to it is one of the realest things I've ever seen on-screen. EDIT
Posted Aug 7, 2018
Duck Butter (2018) Heather Hogan The sex was good but the delirious lesbian mumblecore didn't leave a lasting impression. EDIT
Posted Aug 2, 2018
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya I can't wait for the next chapter of the Mamma Mia! Cinematic Universe. EDIT
Posted Jul 26, 2018
Liz in September (2014) Erin Sullivan PLEASE tell me this is still just a PSA for heatstroke and not a full-length feature that includes an all-lesbian resort with hot women but focuses instead on cancer and euthanasia. EDIT
Posted Jul 26, 2018
Incredibles 2 (2018) Heather Hogan Incredibles 2 is the second best superhero movie of the year, after Black Panther. EDIT
Posted Jul 6, 2018
Wonder Woman (2017) Heather Hogan Wonder Woman flips nearly every gendered superhero trope it encounters. EDIT
Posted Jul 2, 2018
Battle of the Sexes (2017) Heather Hogan It's a sports movie, complete with breathless action sequences, overwrought crowd reactions, and a soaring score. It's a biopic about a legend. And it's one of the best lesbian films I've ever seen. EDIT
Posted Jul 2, 2018
Professor Marston & the Wonder Women (2017) Heather Hogan She's brought an ardent screenplay, a soaring score, and unapologetically gauzy sunlight to bear on the story of the man, his wife, and their lover who created the most iconic female superhero of all time. EDIT
Posted Jul 2, 2018
Carol (2015) Heather Hogan Iit makes me wish the word "epic" hadn't been completely diluted so I could bring the full weight of its meaning to bear on this love story. Extraordinary? Singular? Remarkable? Yes, all of those things too. EDIT
Posted Jun 26, 2018
Lizzie Borden Took an Ax (2014) Chelsea Steiner Whenever any of the characters in this movie talk about the murder, we see the same quick shots of bloody axes and bodies. EDIT
Posted Jun 11, 2018
Ocean's 8 (2018) Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya There's almost no conflict, and that's refreshing. Why force conflict when you can just show women working together really well and having a lot of fun while doing it? EDIT
Posted Jun 11, 2018
Hearts Beat Loud (2018) Carmen Phillips A merciful reprieve from the trend of films that, the few times they have lesbian protagonists at all, only serve to remind us of the hellscape that being queer in America can be. EDIT
Posted Jun 6, 2018
Deadpool 2 (2018) Valerie Anne I enjoyed Deadpool 2. For its humor, for its action sequences, for its relentless breaking of the fourth wall, and for giving us real, undeniable queer ladies. EDIT
Posted May 29, 2018
Bloomington (2010) Erin Sullivan Bloomington, I found out, does not take place solely in a condo, but it does take place in a world where subtlety is not a concept that exists. EDIT
Posted Apr 26, 2018
The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995) Erin Sullivan We open with Laurel Holloman as "Randy" making out with an older married woman in a gas station bathroom. This, by the way, is the most interesting thing that will happen in this entire movie. Let that settle in EDIT
Posted Apr 26, 2018