Joey’s Home Movies For the Week of January 9th – Admiring the Courage and Emotional Effectiveness of ‘She Said’

Welcome back to my Home Movies! Today, one of the best films of 2022 in She Said hits shelves, hoping to find a bigger audience than it did while in theaters. What else is joining the top pick this week? Read on to find out…

Joey’s Top Pick

She Said

One of the most powerful films of last year depicted the crusade to publish an expose on Harvey Weinstein. With amazing performances up and down the line, led by Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan, it was a riveting experience. Back at the New York Film Festival, I raved about the movie here like so:

Abuse impacts a victim in many ways. There’s the clear external harm, as well as the psychological damage. Those aspects are clear. That doesn’t take into account what they’ll carry with them for years, nor does it include how a lack of accountability for the abuser may embolden them. It’s corrosive, from top to bottom. In 2016 we saw an accused abuser deny his way into The White House. For years, Miramax executive Harvey Weinstein engaged in a pattern of sexual assault that showed no signs of slowing down, until a pair of journalists, as well as the very women he harassed, put a stop to it. She Said depicts that effort, focusing on the journalistic process that fueled it all. Playing at the 60th New York Film Festival, it’s a brilliant movie that makes it all absolutely captivating. I loved this film, upsetting as it may be.

She Said is a tribute not just to doing the hard work of journalism, but a testament to what can happen when survivors are given a voice. The former aspect brings to mind Spotlight and All the President’s Men, with a similar quality level. The latter is a lens on our current times, never really overtly referencing the #METOO movement but understanding that it sprouted from the work done by these women, as well as the pain caused by these men. It’s powerful stuff, distilled down into a flick that’s engrossing and impossible to turn away from.

Also Available This Week

The Estate

Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Seventh Season (TV)

Good Girls: The Complete Series (TV)

I’m Totally Fine

The Man Who Fell To Earth: Season One (TV)

Piggy

Poker Face

The Return of Tanya Tucker Featuring Brandi Carlile

Criterion Corner

Imitation of Life

From The Criterion Collection: “Melodrama master John M. Stahl brings his exquisite restraint and almost spiritually pure visual style to this devastating, enduringly relevant story of mothers and daughters. Imitation of Life explores the friendship between two struggling single mothers: one (Claudette Colbert) a working-class white woman who ascends to the top of the business world, the other (Louise Beavers) her Black housekeeper, whose life is shattered by the rejection of her rebellious, white-passing daughter (Fredi Washington). It is this latter relationship—attuned to America’s bitter racial realities and heartbreakingly enacted by trailblazing Black performers Beavers and Washington—that lends the film its transcendent emotional power. This first adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s best-selling novel boldly confronts the complexities and contradictions of racial identity, economic exploitation, and the limits of the American dream.”

Stay tuned for more next week…