Joey’s Home Movies For the Week of March 6th – ‘Women Talking’ (Not Women are Talking!) Engages in An Essential Conversation

Welcome back to my Home Movies! Today, the Oscar-nominated Women Talking leads the way. The slate this week is pretty light, so it’s easily the top pick, but there’s still a new Criterion Collection release to consider as well. Read on for more…

Joey’s Top Pick

Women Talking

Yes, Women Are Talking, as Marky Mark called it at SAG. In all seriousness, filmmaker Sarah Polley crafted a moving and impressive film here. Women Talking manages to get you angry without ever being overwhelmingly bleak. There’s a reason it’s Academy Award nominated, after all. I spoke to composer Hildur Guðnadóttir here about the movie, but this here is some of what I said in my review out of the Telluride Film Festival:

Women Talking rarely has a false note, even as it manages to work in some lightly comedic lines to its otherwise deathly serious story. The confidence that Polley has in this work doesn’t just resonate with the audience, it also mixes with the aces cast. Everyone is in service of each other, resulting in something pretty special.

Also Available This Week

Dear Mr. Brody

Let It Be Morning

Lonesome

Criterion Corner

Mildred Pierce

From The Criterion Collection: “Melodrama casts noirish shadows in this portrait of maternal sacrifice from Hollywood master Michael Curtiz. Joan Crawford’s iconic performance as Mildred, a single mother hell-bent on freeing her children from the stigma of economic hardship, solidified Crawford’s career comeback and gave the actor her only Oscar. But as Mildred pulls herself up by her bootstraps, first as an unflappable waitress and eventually as the well-heeled owner of a successful restaurant chain, the ingratitude of her materialistic firstborn (a diabolical Ann Blyth) becomes a venomous serpent’s tooth, setting in motion an endless cycle of desperate overtures and heartless recriminations. Recasting James M. Cain’s rich psychological novel as a murder mystery, this bitter cocktail of blind parental love and all-American ambition is both unremittingly hard-boiled and sumptuously emotional.”

Stay tuned for more next week…