Kokomo City (2023) | Directed by D. Smith

D. Smith’s Kokomo City, a documentary about Black transgender sex workers, opens with a story from Liyah, one of the film’s participants, about a client who came to see her, only for her to discover that he was carrying a gun. She wrestles the gun from him and forces him to leave her home before learning that he’s a well-known rapper in the Atlanta area carrying the weapon for protection. She immediately texts him back and asks him if he wants to come back over. And Liyah’s entire retelling is punctuated with quick cuts to recreations of the story – a choice that energizes the storytelling and enhances Liyah’s inherent humor.

This brilliant opening sets the tone of Kokomo City right at the start. This is a film that is playful and funny, frank and heartfelt. The four trans women who open their lives up for the film are refreshingly honest about their lives as trans sex workers. There’s no romanticization, but at no time does the film dip into trauma tourism either. Smith shows the mundane sides of these women’s lives, from putting on makeup and getting dressed to simply spending time with friends. But there is also so much joy captured by Smith’s stunning black-and-white cinematography. We see the film’s participants celebrating their communities, their romantic relationships, and the comfort they feel with themselves as they move through the world.

The film also explores transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny within the Black community through a series of interviews with Black men about their relationships with trans women. This provides Kokomo City with an important perspective, finding deep insecurity beneath layers of hatred and abuse. Daniella, one of the films participants, explains that the men she sleeps with are there to exploit trans women, to fetishize them. And the film never shies away from this exploitation and fetishization, the abuse or the danger that these women find themselves in through the course of their work. Some of the stories that the participants tell are harrowing, heartbreaking – but Smith is careful to never allow us to believe that the trauma and the pain is all there is to these women.

In the end, Kokomo City is vibrant, joyous, and fully alive – much like the women who participated in its making. Between the conversations with Black trans sex workers, the recreations of stories from the women, and the interviews with those on the periphery of the sex work, we’re left with an honest and frank portrait of the life these women lead – their struggles, but especially their hopes, dreams, and joys.

Where to Watch

Four Daughters (2023) | Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania

Nearly an hour into Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, one of the actors hired to perform in the film’s reenactment with Olfa Hamrouni and her two youngest daughters, Eya and Tayssir Chikhaoui, calls for the cameras to stop rolling and asks for a private conversation with Hania about the scene. Eya expresses her frustration to the camera. Why should he be worried about the scene and how it will affect her when she’s already processed these moments with mental health professionals? She has even engaged in this type of role play as part of her therapy.

This brief scene gets to the heart of the unique cinematic experience that is Hania’s Four Daughters. Much like the documentaries of Robert Greene, Hania uses interview, conversation, recreation, and interactions between the actors and the participants as a form of cinematic therapy for Olfa and her two daughters as they explore the disappearance of the family’s oldest two daughters/sisters, Ghofrane and Rahma. Actors are brought to fill in for the missing daughters, to play the roles of various men enforcing the rigid patriarchal systems of oppression these women and girls faced, and to play Olfa herself when the scenes’ emotions become too intense to bear. The playfulness of acting exercises (there are wonderfully warm and tender sequences between Eya, Tayssir, and the two actresses portraying their sisters) and the technical craft of rehearsal creates an open space for tremendous emotional release and revelation.

Even amid verité shots of rehearsal and conversation, off-the-cuff conversations and interviews, Hania and her cinematographer, Farouk Laaridh, capture stunning images, wrapped in the lush blue-green color palette of the film’s interiors. The use of mirrors throughout provides strong thematic resonances, especially in an early sequence showing Hend Sabry, the actress portraying Olfa, looking into a mirror and rehearsing her “character’s” mannerisms. The film holds a mirror up to Olfa, exploring her relationship with all her children, and in coming to understand and portray her during this series of reenactments, Hend becomes the individual most able to provide that reflection.

In fact, this reflection is part of what makes Four Daughters so compelling. The relationship between Olfa and her children is marked by patterns of generational abuse under patriarchal systems and the ways survivors seek escape from their torment. By portraying Olfa in the reenactments, Hend is able to gently challenge the mother when the film explores how Olfa’s own religious fundamentalism has disastrous consequences in her daughters’ lives. And when the standard teenage methods of rebellion didn’t work, the daughters chose an even more extreme form of fundamentalism to gain power within their family system, leading to tragedy.

Four Daughters may be a difficult and heartbreaking watch, but this journey into healing and understanding is so beautiful and deeply moving.

Where to Watch

Fugue (2018) | Directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska

 4/5

Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s Fugue is a gripping and moving drama (with touches of the surreal and uncanny) about the roles society forces on women and the toll that takes on their health, their relationships, their families, and their children. While this story of a woman with memory loss who has been reunited with her family after two years might be more straightforward than Smoczyńska’s previous film (the delirious and delightful mermaid horror musical The Lure), the emotional terrain it covers is rich and powerful, continuing her exploration of the limitations men attempt to place upon the women in their lives and the need for women to forge a new path for themselves. The two central performances are rich and honest and nuanced, with lovely subtleties and an emotional vulnerability that allows us to follow every beat of these two spouses potentially finding their way back to one another after such a long absence. Gabriela Muskała, pulling double-duty as the film’s lead and writer, has crafted a narrative that in the hands of lesser storytellers would be melodramatic or trite, but here is filled with mystery, poignancy, and even humor. Smoczyńska finds moments to let her stylistic flourishes shine through – a beach that suddenly becomes empty in a moment of horror, a moody and blue-lit silent dancefloor as characters begin to reconnect, an MRI of Alicja’s brain that transforms before our eyes into flowers – moments that help us connect with Alicja’s emotional and mental state, preparing us for the film’s powerful revelations and final moments. It may be more grounded than The Lure, but it’s an accomplished and powerful follow-up that shows Smoczyńska’s true interest in the challenges women face in society.

Where to Watch

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (2022) | Directed by Peter Baynton and Charlie Mackesy

 5/5

Peter Baynton and Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is an absolutely lovely little short film and one of the best made for children in a very long time. The animation is stellar, made to look like a picture book come to life, complete with all the rough edges and stray lines. It’s remarkable how effectively the film weaves aphorisms and lessons into a simple fable, managing to make the whole experience engaging and utterly captivating from beginning to end. There are lessons and truths here that, while designed for children, we adults would do well to listen to some of the simplicity of the wisdom here – especially these lessons of kindness towards others. Everyone with a child in their life should have them watch this wonderful film about finding home, finding family, and loving and caring for the different parts of yourself.

Where to Watch

Stress Is Three (1968) | Directed by Carlos Saura

 4/5

Carlos Saura’s Stress Is Three continues the Spanish auteur’s interrogation of machismo and masculinity. The black-and-white cinematography perfectly suits the film’s tone – especially as we see begin to see more of Fernando’s subjective perspective on the world around him. Like so many of Saura’s films up to this point, we have older men with younger women (this is commented on throughout the film as being unusual), and this is one reason for Fernando’s insecurity within his marriage. The editing is fantastic – quick cuts intensify and fragment the action, further pushing the couple away from one another. It’s extremely compelling to watch the ways that the husband’s petty jealousy and insecurity end up pushing his wife further away from him – his attempts to control her, to spy on her, his certainty that she is being unfaithful ends up being what causes a major rift in their marriage. Once again, Saura ratchets up the tension with his editing rhythms (short bursts of aggression, constant attempts at one-upping each other) until the explosive ending. While it may not have as much of the rich symbolism as earlier Saura films, it’s still quite strong.

Where to Watch

Sneakers (1992) | Directed by Phil Alden Robinson

 4/5

Phil Alden Robinson’s Sneakers is a thoroughly charming, early-‘90s thriller – even if it does require a Herculean suspension of disbelief in order for the film’s anticlimactic finale to work (why do no men with guns come for them as they take their leisurely drive away from the villain’s lair?). But even with these flaws, it’s a film with great dialogue, an outstanding cast (where else do you get Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix, David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell, and Ben Kingsley?), and delightful chemistry between everyone onscreen. It follows all of the conventions of your standard heist film, but its ambition never exceeds its grasp, so it all remains a bit of a fun, pleasant lark. The filmmaking is fairly workmanlike and pedestrian, but that really isn’t much of a detriment in something so amiable and charming.

Where to Watch

Peppermint Frappe (1967) | Directed by Carlos Saura

 4.5/5

Carlos Saura’s Peppermint Frappe is another incisive and biting interrogation of masculinity. You can easily see the influence Vertigo had on the film (especially in the way references are woven throughout its fabric), but it’s refreshing to see Saura explore the ways that this impulse in men to shape and control the women in their lives is so incredibly destructive, toxic, and perverse. There’s also an exploration of privilege in Spanish society under Franco, as well as the entitlement wealthy men feel toward women’s bodies, luxuries, and indeed, anything they want. There are different levels to this privilege, so while our nominal protagonist might have power in one setting, the husband of the woman he loves wields much more power in others. The use of color throughout is striking, with gorgeous bursts of green and red in tight compositions that stick with you long after the film has ended. Saura also uses long sequence shots that encircle the characters, placing us in the viewpoint of the menacing, roving, and hungry eyes of the film’s men. There’s only one way this film could end, and Saura keeps ratcheting up the tension until we reach its inevitable, gruesome conclusion.

Where to Watch

Enola Holmes (2020) | Directed by Harry Bradbeer

 2/5

Harry Bradbeer’s Enola Holmes is an uneven mess of a film. Millie Bobby Brown shows the limits of her range as a performer – she’s a bit too earnest and stilted and the dialect never fully lands. Henry Cavill’s Sherlock Holmes is charming, but the rest of the cast are merely caricatured villains or antagonists for Enola to square off against. As soon as the plot kicks into gear and “the game is afoot,” it can be a thoroughly delightful and pleasantly entertaining diversion. But whenever it dips into its teenage romance subplot, the film turns tedious and plodding, finding itself bogged down by a milquetoast romantic interest and no chemistry between the performers. However, worse than this are the narrative digressions that take us away from the central mystery (or really, mysteries) of the film, such as the nearly twenty minutes spent at a boarding school that is completely incidental to the rest of the film. And when the resolution to one of the film’s major mysteries (what happened to Enola’s mother?) is handled so haphazardly, the film winds up ending on a completely unsatisfying note.

Where to Watch

The Treatment (2019) | Directed by Álvaro Carmona

 4.5/5

Álvaro Carmona’s The Treatment is an outstanding social satire about vanity, narcissism, and our callous indifference to human life. The performances are all pitch perfect – there isn’t a false note in the cast. The film is hilarious, the comic timing is so precise – a ruthless commentary about the things society has come to value over life and a basic care and concern for others. It’s an absolute treat to watch, even as it makes us squirm with recognition.

Where to Watch

Plastic Killer (2022) | Directed by José Pozo

 3/5

José Pozo’s Plastic Killer is a clever and witty little film that uses horror and thriller tropes to explore the dangers of plastic on society – as well as the extremes that so many of us take in our activism and pursuit of justice. The performances are all delightful – big and over-the-top – but they work in the context of this satire. There’s so much going on narratively within such a short runtime that the film’s message gets a bit muddled, but the filmmaking itself is strong and compelling.