Review: “Saturday Night”

In 2008, Jason Reitman served as a guest writer and director on Saturday Night Live for one week. The filmmaker already had two acclaimed features under his belt— the 2005 satire Thank You For Smoking and the 2007 coming-of-age comedy Juno— but cites participating in the freewheeling energy that goes into mounting the weekly live […]

SXSW Dispatch: “The Young Wife,” “Appendage,” “I Used to Be Funny”

For my final batch of reviews from the 2023 SXSW Film Festival, I’m covering three more (very different) films from female filmmakers: Tayarisha Poe’s The Young Wife (one of my top favorites of the fest), Ally Pankiw’s excellent I Used to Be Funny, which sees star Rachel Sennott taking a turn toward drama, and Anna […]

SXSW Review: “Bottoms”

We love a good double-entendre, and clearly, so does director Emma Seligman. Seligman’s sophomore feature following her fantastic 2020 film Shiva Baby reunites her with star and co-writer Rachel Sennott. Whereas Shiva Baby was simultaneously funny and anxiety-inducing, Bottoms—which centers around two lesbian high-schoolers who start a fight club as a means to get close […]