Laura Dern

Michael Shannon transforms the otherwise heavy-handed economic morality tale, ’99 Homes,’ into something dynamic and alive.

Wild is a mildly-satisfying travelogue through one woman’s troubled life that never quite delivers the catharsis it promises. Reese Witherspoon gives a brave, physically-demanding performance, despite her character’s unconvincing psychological transformation. Director Jean-Marc Vallée deftly intertwines our hero’s tragic past with her epic hike along the Pacific coast, but neither informs one another on an emotional level. The result is a beautiful looking film that feels lonelier than a desolate mountain pass.

In the wake of tragic events that include her inevitable divorce from affable husband Paul (Thomas Sadoski), the heart-wrenching death of her free-spirited mother Bobbi (Laura Dern), sour memories of a chaotic childhood with her younger brother that featured an abusive stepfather (as well as heroin addiction and random reckless sexual encounters), native Minnesotan Cheryl Strayed (Witherspoon) sets out to conquer the Pacific Crest Trail as a therapeutic means to confront her heavy disillusionment. We witness the determined hotel-bound Cheryl trying to handle her overstuffed backpack (later to be nicknamed “Monster”) that is perched on her petite shoulders and back. And so she sets off, ready to embark on a mission to walk off her major angst-ridden hostilities and heartache in the trying trail that lies ahead.

Hollywood’s response to the general public’s calls for more gender diversity and strong representations of women in film has been to simply remind the world that women can play with the boys too, from female Ghostbusters to female superheroes to now female football fans. Laura Dern is now producing a comedy about “obsessive female football …

Riffing on Terek Puckett’s terrific list of director/actor collaborations, I wanted to look at some of those equally impressive leading ladies who served as muses for their directors. I strived to look for collaborations that may not have been as obviously canonical, but whose effects on cinema were no less compelling. Categorizing a film’s lead …

While I’ve never had trouble identifying with the bulk of male roles across film and television, I cannot deny that I do delight in finding gems wherein the women get lines, and maybe even their own narrative. It’s no secret that women are grossly underrepresented in films and television, both onscreen and behind the scenes. …

Jurassic Park, like many of Spielberg’s best films, allows us to be children again, even if this is, ironically, a film most kids would be scared to death by. It’s a movie that indulges in horror-movie tropes while making them feel fresh, layering a patina of intelligence over the intense, earth-rattling action. Though the human-dinosaur face-offs are the stuff of movie legend, the early sections where Drs. Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm, and Ellie Sattler debate the ethics of a theme park full of the living, breathing extinct are strangely fascinating and entertaining, at least to 28-year old me.

Wild at Heart Directed by David Lynch Written by David Lynch 1990, USA Wild at Heart, a hyper, often violent and oddly romantic take on The Wizard of Oz, starts off with a lit match and a brutal attack, and ends with a visit from Glenda the Good Witch and Nicolas Cage singing “Love me tender”. …

Wild at Heart Directed by David Lynch Written by David Lynch 1990, USA David Lynch evokes a surreal world in Wild at Heart, a film brimming over with explicit sex, murder, rape, eccentric kitsch and sleaze. There is some rather horrifyingly violence, beginning with the opening scene where a man is beaten to death, to a moment …

Inland Empire Written by David Lynch Directed by David Lynch USA, 2006 So much has been written and posited about the works of David Lynch – not just his films, but his art and music as well – that more column inches will always struggle to unearth any new readings or insights. Lynch is probably …

The Master Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson Written by Paul Thomas Anderson U.S.A., 2012 To hard core movie goers and so-called movie buffs, director and screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson requires no introduction. In under 20 years he has mesmerized, entertained, perplexed and surprised people with an impressively diverse filmmography, one that spans, at this point …