Hannah Rosenzweig & Wendy Sachs' SURGE tracks the entry of women into the 2018 congressional race

At this point in time there have already been several American documentaries about political candidates who were not white nor male. The latest of these is SURGE, and it is another fine example of both filmmaking and finding a subject well worth pursuing.

Filmmakers Hannah Rosenzweig (below, left) and Wendy Sachs (below, right) do a bang-up job of following three women candidates in the 2018 mid-term elections, allowing their viewers to see these women and their teams in action -- along with their hoped-to-be constituents, staff and 

friends and family -- their ideas, why they decided it was important to run for office and how they hope to achieve that goal. 

The overall film is impressive, and even if we might have wished for better election results, the strength and certainty these women possess about why and how our country needs to change -- and not in the MAGA (Make America Grate Again) manner of 

President Clown-cum-Realty-TV-Show-Host -- is worth seeing and hearing.

The three candidates we follow are Jana Lynne Sanchez (shown below), who is after a Congressional seat in a Texas district that Democrats have not won for 36 years; Lauren Underwood (two photos below) running in Illinois' 14th district, who, if elected, would be the youngest black female to hold this kind of office; and Liz Watson from notably red state Indiana (though South Bend did elect Mayor Pete), the state that gives its working class only a 12-hour window (6am to 6pm) in which to vote on election day. 

We watch as these campaigns kick off, gather steam and win their primaries, often against stiff opposition (Jana Lynne Sanchez, above, even after she won her primary, got no support from the Democratic National Committee -- yet another reason why TrustMovies shall never give another dime to that crap organization that keeps foisting "centrist hacks" upon us and refuses to endorse any real progressives).

You can see and fully understand how tiring campaigning is as you watch these women work against all odds to see things through to the finish. You also understand even more strongly what a waste it is to have to keep asking for donations rather than doing what's necessary to get out and meet, really listen to, and then convince, the voters.

As Election Day approaches and Republican opponents get dirtier and nastier, good things look less likely, but onward these gals go, and so do their documentarians, whose style is as positive, smart, caring and energetic as that of their subjects.

If you have mixed feelings by the finale, you're entitled. But I can't imagine any progressive-minded viewer not being pleased and edified by the chance to see all these wonderful women at work. Running 93 minutes, Surge is available to view now. Click here for further information on how to do so.

WOMEN OF THE WEST: new Anthology Film Archives series features 18 westerns with female protagonists

The usual suspects are all gathered here: Joan Crawford in Nick Ray's Johnny Guitar, Jean Arthur in Wesley Ruggles' Arizona, and especially Barbara Stanwyck (above), who stars in in three films in this series: Anthony Mann's The Furies, Sam Fuller's Forty Guns and Allan Dwan's Cattle Queen of Montana. These are all from the glory days of the American western, the 1940s and 50s. But among the surprise delights of this new series -- WOMEN OF THE WEST, presented by Anthology Film Archives in New York City and beginning this Friday, August 31, through Sunday, September 16 -- are some unexpected near-gems.

Look for Gordon Parks, Jr.'s Thomasine & Bushrod (above: a sort-of Blacksploitation western from 1974), Maggie Greenwald's The Ballad of Little Joe (a cross-dressing surprise from 1993) and a must for any Lina Wertmuller "completists" out there, The Belle Starr Story, a Spaghetti western from 1968 that Wertmuller co-wrote, co-directed (under the pseudonym of Nathan Wich) and then took over, once her co-writer/director Piero Cristofani left the film.

All these and more are part of the series which TrustMovies imagines will be catnip for feminists, western fans and just about anybody who appreciates oddball movies -- some of them very good indeed.

Having already seen most of the films included here, I'll concentrate on the Wertmuller, which was spanking new to me and is not very good at all. Nor is the print I viewed via DVD screener, said to be provided by The Swedish Film Institute, which is utterly bleached of color and looks like it was transferred from a much-copied VHS tape back in the day.

From the outset almost everything about this silly movie seems rudimentary, as though everyone involved -- from those in front to the camera to those behind it -- were  thinking, "God, let's just get this over with!"

Consequently, it is difficult to determine or even imagine what drew Ms Wertmuller (shown at right) to the project, other than the opportunity to simply be able to direct a movie. Any movie. And, as this occurred very early in her career, it must have provided some important on-the-job training.

What the movie does have is a couple of Italian
"stars" of some note from the 1960s, especially the beautiful, slightly-freckle-faced Elsa Martinelli (shown below) in the leading role as that American woman outlaw icon known as Belle Starr.

Also onboard is the darkly handsome hunk, George Eastman (below), as another outlaw named Larry Blackie, who proves especially good at undressing, rolling his eyes and laughing a lot. The two of them prove to be one of those on again/off again romances in which the lovers keep vying for control over each other, with neither willing to give in (this would become a kind of hallmark of much of Wertmuller's work).

With a screenplay that's as obvious, silly, clunky and pseudo-poetic as it gets, the movie gives us Belle's back story and history -- which includes a lecherous and evil uncle, an Indian maiden rescued from lynching, and a friend-and-maybe-eventual lover (played by Robert Woods, below),

all finally leading up to the major diamond heist that provides the movie's most compelling section -- it's final half hour in which things heat up and get a little interesting for a change.

We get a bit of safe-cracking, the robbery itself, and then -- via a Pinkerton agent (Bruno Corazzari, below) who proves both the movie's major villain, as well as a bizarre bit of actual conscience at film's end -- a nasty, sexy torture scene complete with homoerotic overtones between said agent and our semi-hero Blackie (above).

The Belle Starr Story will take you back to a time when men were men, women women, and those Italian spaghetti westerns were already getting way too long in the tooth. And it'll make you eager to view again some of Ms Wertmuller's later films, while offering the chance to see an example of how this talented director, movie-wise at least, first cut her own teeth.

Her film will play during AFA's Women of the West series on Monday, September 10, at 6:45pm; on Wednesday, September 12, at 9pm and on Friday, September 14 at 9pm.  To view the entire AFA series schedule, simply click here.          

VODebut--The high-end low-down on plastic surgery: Joan Kron's TAKE MY NOSE... PLEASE!

A fast-moving, hugely-enjoyable, surprisingly thought-provoking romp about a subject awfully dear to (but generally unspoken about) women and some men: plastic surgery, of the kind that will render the person undergoing it either younger- or more beautiful-looking. So, yes, we're talking "vanity" here. Now, really, you may be thinking: Could there possibly be anything more to consider, feel or say about a subject that is, as the phrase used to go, of so little redeeming social value?  Well, yes, since just last fall we saw yet another media kerfluffle regarding this surgery via that useless Jane Fonda/Megyn Kelly interchange. And if your guide to this subject is a woman named Joan Kron, who has covered the plastic surgery scene for decades and probably knows it as well as any journalist (or filmmaker) alive today, you're in the very best of hands.

Ms. Kron, pictured at left, has not only covered the scene, she's undergone it, too (multiple times, I think), and her movie, TAKE MY NOSE... PLEASE!, stresses a point made countless times already: that women's place in our society demands that they constantly look their best, as this is the route to their well-being and survival.

What makes Kron's film different and also allows it to resonate more strongly, is that the women she follows here are all comedians. They make us laugh, yes, but they also make us understand their very mixed and complicated feelings about undergoing "the knife."

Chief among Kron's funny ladies is, for my money, the most talented, funny and transgressive comedian I've ever seen, Jackie Hoffman, pictured above (and below, on stage), who talks openly and often hilariously about her appearance, life, work, career, upcoming surgery and even her very supportive and cute-as-a-button hubby. Hoffman is a delight, as usual, and her honesty, wit and willingness to confront-the-difficult are among the movie's great treasures.

We also spend a great deal of time with a lesser light named Emily Askin, below, who hails from Pittsburgh and works with an all-girl improv group called Bombardo. Emily is pretty and talented and has a fiance who feels absolutely no need for her to get that nose job (she's got a very small bump on her proboscis), but she is determined anyway, and so he stands by whatever she wants.

Interwoven with these stories are those of a number of other comedians -- Lisa Lampanelli, Judy Gold and Julie Halston (in the penultimate photo, below) among them -- as well as archival footage of the late and famous, such as Totie Fields (below), Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers (shown at bottom). Their stories (or parts of them) add to the pros and cons we're given regarding this surgery.

We meet a few of the better-known practitioners of the "art" (such as Sherrell J. Aston, at left, below), and watch them as they advise their clients on some do's and don'ts, and, as this 99-minute documentary comes to its close, we realize that -- well, I did, anyway -- some of our heavy-duty prejudices against the whole idea of this surgery have been at very least called into question.

We can certainly better understand how the women we see here -- who must continue to work, eat, live and maybe raise a family -- have to do what's best for their career (and, yes, maybe their vanity, too).

OK: When set against documentaries about our current takeover by the rich and corporate or those concerning global warming, this one is small potatoes indeed. But those potatoes are funny, entertaining, even thought-provoking.

From The Orchard -- the distributor which, surprising to me, celebrates its 20th anniversary this year -- the film, after opening to good reviews theatrically last year, will hit all digital and on-demand platforms this Tuesday, January 9. 

Blu-ray/DVDebut for Kelly Reichardt's best yet: the quiet, beautifully crafted CERTAIN WOMEN

TrustMovies has run warm, though not hot, on the work of Kelly Reichardt over the past decade -- from Old Joy though Wendy and Lucy, Meek's Crossing, Night Moves and now a work that brings together all this filmmaker's gifts, while doing away with the ungainly combination of outré plotting, bizarre characterization and unnecessary melodrama that marred certain films (like Meek's and Moves). The great strength of Reichardt's most recent movie, CERTAIN WOMEN, lies in its strong, assured characterizations coupled to performances so specific and lived-in that there is not a single untrue moment in the entire movie.

It may be that Reichardt's greatest strength (the filmmaker is shown at left) comes in telling the movie equivalent of short stories, for that is what we have here: three tales joined in the most interesting of ways. This joining is handled not in the typical overly clever manner we've seen so much of over the years, but rather by the relationships of four women, not so much to each other as to other people in or near their same Montana town. Certain Women is a remarkably quiet movie, too -- considering that it deals with subjects as usually inflammatory as hostage-taking, infidelity and unrequited love.

As screenwriter (adapting from stories by Maile Meloy), Reichardt has, as usual, cast her movie extraordinarily well, using Laura Dern (above) as centerpiece in her first tale of a lawyer whose oddball client (a wonderfully goofy, sad and afflicted Jared Harris) goes calmly ballistic;

Michelle Williams (above) in the second story of a wife trying to save her marriage, family and self via a building project that will stay true to its organic community roots, even as her husband (James le Gros) strays and her daughter grows further distant;

and the duo of Kristen Stewart (above) and Lily Gladstone (below) in her final tale, in which a local ranch hand (the glowing-from-within Ms Gladstone) slowly becomes involved with a night-school instructor (Ms Stewart) who visits the town twice weekly to teach the locals "school law."

Each section is filled with the kind of rich, right detail that holds the viewer fast, while deepening story and characterization. So real and so vital is moment after moment that, despite the lack of what we might call normal "drama," the movie remains consistently riveting. In all, Certain Women proves a profound and beautiful experience, involving growth, change and deep disappointment.

Had I seen this film during at the time of its theatrical release, it would certainly have made my last year's "Best List."  As it is, I am grateful to have viewed the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray disc in a lovely transfer that captures equally well the majestic Montana landscape and these actresses' near-perfect performances. The movie hits DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow, Tuesday, September 19 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Federico Fellini's CITY OF WOMEN makes its Blu-ray and DVDebut this coming week

CITY OF WOMEN (La città delle donne), from 1980, is among the final few full-length films from Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, pictured below, and although TrustMovies could have sworn he'd seen it around the time of its original release, it turns out he had not -- until now via the new Blu-ray and DVD which hit the street this coming Tuesday, May 31, courtesy of the Cohen Film Collection's Classics of Italian Cinema. This is a most welcome release, and not simply because it will add to the catalog of a filmmaking master. It is also one of Fellini's better works.

Yes, it is full of the filmmaker's signature content and characters: Here we have the leading man who's a sexist pig par excellence, surrounded by all kinds of women -- especially those on the corpulent side who possess a very large butt, which they know how to move. His leading man is again played by his actor of choice, Marcello Mastroianni, below, who was in his mid-50s at the time and still looking terrifically good of figure and face. On a trip by train to somewhere or other, our "hero" proves to be quite taken with the woman who sits across from him and whom he becomes intent on seducing.

If only. That would-be seduction leads Snàporaz (surely one of the least becoming names in the history of leading-man characters) into a kind of Grand Hotel in which a feminist convention is taking place.

As the only male to be found (other than the hotel's staff), Snàporaz is subjected to all kinds of contempt and humiliation -- much of it creepily enjoyable, particularly as it comes from a filmmaker whose own sexism was, well, rather heavy-duty.

Clearly Fellini was trying to come to terms with feminism, which had been on the rise for some time and was intent on displacing, or at least rejiggering, the current state of Italian patriarchy. While you have to give the guy credit for handing us a leading character whose male chauvinism borders on the hugely unappealing, Fellini was so besotted with his would-be alter ego, Mastroianni, along with his needs and desires, that the filmmaker's entire identification goes to and with the man.

The women here are all, with the exception of the elderly mother/grandmother figures, sex objects or scary bitches. The old Madonna/Whore syndrome is in full Italian flower. If this lends the film an uneasy duality, it also adds the kind of tension that only a secure and talented filmmaker would risk.

That risk pays off, as scene after scene pulls us in and leaves us amazed and amused. or shocked and thrillingly appalled. We go from spoofing the old Italian "white telephone" genre (below)

to the birthday party of a fellow who has supposedly conquered 10,00 females to finally a quest for the "ideal woman."

Yeah, right. Well, boys will be boys, and if their pursuits seem a tad trivial, they're also age-old and, for so many men, show little sign of abating.

And in the hands of a filmmaker as fanciful and imaginative as Signore Fellini, they are also eye-popping and thought-provoking.

If you've never seen a Fellini, City of Women is not a bad place to begin. If you've already seen this one, a revisit is probably in order. The Blu-ray transfer, while nothing special, is certainly adequate. In any case, the filmmaker's fecund imagination provides all the special effects and amazing visuals you could want.

Available via the Cohen Film Collection and running a lengthy but never boring 139 minutes, the film resurfaces this coming Tuesday, May 31 -- for purchase or rental.

Blu-ray/DVD/Digital debut for Marleen Gorris' 20-year-old Oscar winner, ANTONIA'S LINE

Thanks to Film Movement's new "Classics" division, those of us who've had a hankering to revisit a movie we loved and that won Best Foreign Language Film some 20 years ago can do just that, come this Tuesday April 19, when ANTONIA'S LINE comes to Blu-ray (the transfer is generally sparkling and quite lovely), DVD and Digital Download.  I remember that our entire family left the theater in tears (rather joyful ones) at the end of the film, but other than that I could not recall a single specific scene. Consequently, I think I enjoyed the movie every bit as much the second time around and am happy to report that it holds up quite beautifully both in terms of its content (five generations of women -- the titular Antonia and her mom, daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter -- and how they make their way in our world) and its style (combining dark humor with magic realism to form an odd but very appealing "reality").

As written and directed by Marleen Gorris, shown at left, the movie is enormously feminist without ever having to use the word or push it any further than the film can easily maintain. It takes the position that, in a patriarchal society, strong women must isolate, to some extent at least, and these women certainly do that, while inviting certain of the men into their circle but on the women's terms, not those of the guys. Each woman in this line pursues her own agenda -- art, science/math/music, writing and exploring -- with both achievement and enjoyment, while the men watch and encourage. This is quite the opposite from what we're generally used to seeing in our films -- both mainstream and independent -- but damned if it doesn't work quite wonderfully, for the onscreen characters and us viewers, too.

The film was a Netherlands/Belgium co-production (with some help from France and Britain), and the cast Gorris chose was almost entirely new to U.S. audiences then, and is likely to have remained so even today -- with the exception of Jan Decleir (shown above left, with Willeke van Ammelrooy, the very impressed actress who plays Antonia) who has been seen in a number of films released here over the two decades since.

That cast if first-rate, however, and the assortment of odd but often loveable characters portrayed adds immeasurably to the audience's delight. There a lot of death in the movie and even some violence -- the worst offence is the crime of rape -- but the philosophy here is one of growth and satisfaction, even as time brings its usual barrage of age and loss. For anyone who loved this movie back in the day -- and certainly anyone who hasn't yet experienced it -- this new release of Antonia's Line to home video will be welcome indeed. (That's Els Dottermans, above, who plays Antonia's daughter, Danielle.)

From Film Movement Classics, in Dutch with English subtitles and running just 102 minutes, the film arrives on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download on April 19th -- for purchase or rental.