Currently browsing the "Sarah Polley" tag.

Reviews: She Said and Women Talking

I saw these two films just days apart and they seemed to speak to one another. Both take on sexual predation, but from very different viewpoints. She Said is a journalistic thriller based on the true story of the female journalists who exposed Harvey Weinstein’s long history of abuse that led to his much deserved comeuppance and ignited the #MeToo movement. Women Talking is also based on a true story, that of a group of women in an isolated religious community who come together to decide how to deal with a long and horrifying history of rape by the men in their enclave. The women who tell their stories in She Said are fearful of losing their careers, while the ones in Women Talking are afraid they will lose their place in heaven. And so they all have to think long and hard about how to take on the monstrous men who hold power over them.

Stories We Tell

Stories We Tell begins as a fairly straightforward documentary about a mother who died young and the family that has a lot of stories to tell about her, but it becomes much more than garden-variety biography. The film was made by her daughter, who happens to be accomplished actress and director Sarah Polley (Take this Waltz, Away from Her), and the film’s narration is done by the father/husband who was once an actor and was inspired to write the story of the documentary. Polley’s brothers and sister and an assortment of friends add their spin on the stories of Diane Polley who lived large, but was ultimately a mystery to even those closest too her.

Take This Waltz

Take This Waltz is one of those indies that I kept thinking might have a different sense of pace and was maybe just going to take a bit of breath before it got going, and then it would make the ride worth my time. But sadly, I was wrong. It promises to be a love story, but love is what is missing. Instead there is a lot of weird cutsieness that I guess is supposed to be a good substitute for romance, but ends up being pretty annoying.