Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Greta Gerwig ( Lady Bird , Little Women ) is the first woman Hollywood film director to make three hit movies in a row since Penny Marshall between 1986 and 1992 ( Jumpin’ Jack Flash , Big , A League of Their Own ). Moreover, she’s a writer-director. That’s unheard of. The reported opening US box-office gross for Barbie , a film about a girl’s toy used for female empowerment, isn’t just phenomenal by the standards of woman directors - $70 million earned in one day - but by Hollywood norms. Greta Gerwig outperformed Tom Cruise at this summer’s box office. How crazy is that? If this does not make Hollywood’s biggest star want to work with a female director for the first time in his career, I don’t know what will? Actually, I can guess – it might be some nutty religion that tells him not to take orders from a woman. Barbie benefits from its association with intellectual property. Foremost, it’s a doll enjoyed and accessorised by young girls with moderately well-off parents around...

  Within the first few minutes of her 19 th Century drama, Emily , writer-director Frances O’Connor commits a crime against literary history. Thirty-year-old Emily Bront ë (Emma Mackey) faints and collapses onto a chaise longue. She glimpses at a trio of volumes. They read ‘Wuthering Heights – a novel by Emily Bront ë’. Most students of English literature are taught that the novel was first published under the name ‘Ellis Bell’, as the Brontë sisters all used pseudonyms to disguise their gender. In her desire to indicate that the young woman of failing health is the author of one of the greatest (doomed) romances of the last two centuries, O’Connor cheats. It’s an own goal that almost robs us of the desire to watch any further. Next filmmakers will present a first edition of ‘The Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath, rather than by Victoria Lucas, Plath’s pseudonym. What O’Connor could have done is just shown the title of the book. We know Emily. We know ‘Wuthering Heights’. The majority of...

  Pictured : Ingrid ( Vicky Krieps ) attempts to explore the enigma of her new best friend Sofia ( Emma Mackey ) in a scene from ' Hot Milk ', a Spanish set drama adapted from Deborah Levy 's novel by writer-director Rebecca Lenkiewicz . Still courtesy of Mubi (UK) / IFC Films (US) What sort of mother creates an obligation for her adult daughter? This is a question suggested by Hot Milk , adapted from Deborah Levy’s novel by screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, making her feature directorial debut. Casting Fiona Shaw as Rose as a sixty-one year old woman afflicted by an inability to walk after her Greek husband walked out on her and Emma Mackey as Sofia, the sullen ‘perpetual student’ daughter who ‘failed her driving test four times’ (perhaps as a form of protest), Lenkiewicz locates the film amongst stubborn Irish archetypes, although Catholicism is never mentioned, unsurprisingly really since it is a male-oriented religion. (Aren’t they all?) Accompanying her mother to the ...