‘I Am Woman’ Film Review: Helen Reddy Drama Finds the Soft Side of Music Biopics

Machetes, myths and murky storytelling all find their way into Tragic Jungle (Selva Trágica), the lushly made, if highly enigmatic, fifth feature from Mexican writer-director Yulene Olaizola (Fogo), which screened in the main slate of the New York Film Festival after premiering in the Horizons section in Venice.

Also Read: Tate Taylor to Direct Jean Smart in Biopic 'Miss Macy' at Amblin PartnersHer violation of protocol gets her in trouble with her handler Duke (Malkovich), but it’s a nearly-botched job in Saudi Arabia that makes her a target for her shadowy organization, run by another of Duke’s protegés, Simon (Farrell).So yes, it’s the hired-killer-becomes-prey story, and while the action sequences are serviceable (this is nowhere near “Atomic Blonde” territory), it’s all fairly familiar.

Watch Video: Jim Parsons Spoils a Birthday Party With a Heartbreaking Game in Ryan Murphy's 'The Boys in the Band' Trailer“The Boys in the Band,” paradigm-shifter though it was in its frank portrayal of a certain segment of gay life, is rather traditional in structure; it’s one of those Broadway plays where various character types gather together in a room and very quickly begin hurling long-buried truths and accusations at each other.

trial of the Chicago 7. The first few minutes provide a whirlwind introduction to all the characters as activists make plans to head for Chicago for the convention — but before they get there, and before the city unleashes its heavily armed police force to stop the peaceful demonstrations, the film suddenly jumps forward to five months after the convention.

Andreas Wiseman International EditorThe San Sebastian Film Festival has withdrawn the accreditation of U.S.-born French filmmaker Eugène Green for refusing to wear a mask.According to the Spanish festival, Green refused five requests for him to don a mask at last night’s premiere of his film Atarrabi Et Mikelats and he was ultimately asked to leave the auditorium.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorUnjoo Moon’s (“The Zen of Bennett”) latest film, “I Am Woman” charts Helen Reddy’s journey and career as she arrives in New York during the ’60s as a single mother follows her struggle ahead.Tilda Cobham-Hervey plays the singer, who faces rejection and sexism from record company execs but overcomes the odds to career success.

Veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui, one of Venice’s two Career Golden Lion recipients this year alongside Tilda Swinton, brings prewar Hong Kong to exquisite if restrained life in her latest historical drama, Love After Love (Di Yu Lu Xiang).

Also Read: 'Nomadland' Film Review: Frances McDormand Hits the Road in Quiet, Lyrical DramaThe film begins with three sentences, and they’re all the context you’ll get and all the context you’ll need: “After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the First World War, the colonial powers sketched new borders for the Middle East. Over the following decades, greed and ambition for power gave rise to military coups, corrupt regimes, authoritarian leaders and foreign interference.

The sprawling plains of Idaho and Utah, their tufted prairies dappled by cloud-filtered light and edged by craggy mountains, provide a spiritual setting for bruising personal reflection in Good Joe Bell.

Also Read: Fall Film Festivals Struggle for Relevance in the Year of CoronavirusThe first time 15-year-old Cole (Caleb McLaughlin from “Stranger Things”) sees this world, he can scarcely believe it. Tossed out of his Detroit high school for fighting, he’s dropped off at his dad’s house in Philadelphia by his mom, who can’t handle him anymore.

Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” is a tiny indie film on a huge scale, an intimate drama set against the vast spaces of the American West.

Nicole Riegel makes her directorial debut with Holler, a familiar coming-of-age film about a young woman trying to find a way out of her hometown in Southern Ohio. Ruth (Jessica Barden of Netflix’s The End of the F***ing World) lives with her older brother Blaze (Gus Halper) as her drug-addicted mother Rhonda (Pamela Adlon) is stuck at the county jail until she agrees to go to rehab.

Anyone who has spent time in a major international metropolis with a luxury shopping precinct catering to the highest income bracket will be shaken by the startling image of a massive Louis Vuitton flagship store — in this case on Mexico City's chic Avenida Presidente Masaryk — splashed with the symbolic green paint of a protest movement, the ground nearby littered with corpses not yet cold.

"Mud is like a drug to me. Better than doing drugs," affirms Matthew Burns, the central figure in Andrei Bowden-Schwartz and Sam B.

Earlier this year, Eliza Hittman’s abortion drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always followed the journey of two teenage girls — one seeking to end her pregnancy and the other providing companionship and emotional support — with remarkable sociological groundedness.

Oscar-winner Sir Anthony Hopkins and rising British name Johnny Flynn (Beast, Emma) are set to star in One Life, a drama based on the incredible true story of humanitarian Sir Nicholas George. See-Saw Films and BBC Films are behind the project, with co-managing director Iain Canning (Lion, The King's Speech) and Joanna Laurie producing and Aisling Walsh (Maudie, Elizabeth is Missing) set to direct.

The line between homage and flat repetition can be thin. The Violent Heart, writer and director Kerem Sanga's third feature (premiering in competition at France's Deauville Film Festival), falls on the dull side of the dividing line.

Helen Reddy makes of the one we’re loving in 2020: Cardi B’s “WAP.”If Tilda Cobham-Hervey’s lively-eyed portrayal of Reddy is accurate, I bet the 78-year-old entertainer is getting a kick out of the raunchy ode to women’s pleasure.

Andreas Wiseman International EditorEXCLUSIVE: Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins (The Two Popes) and rising Brit actor Johnny Flynn (Emma) are attached to star in One Life, a feature drama based on the true story of British humanitarian Nicholas Winton who helped save hundreds of children from the Nazis on the eve of World War Two.Lucinda Coxon (The Danish Girl) and Nick Drake (Romulus) have co-written the screenplay based on the extraordinary story of Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton who, when just 29 years

Atonement stings in Filip Jan Rymsza's chilly Mosquito State, an elegant but increasingly tortured allegory for the unraveling of one unwitting architect of the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis. This obsessive fever dream opens with a predatory insect's eye view of high-roller privilege then multiplies into a nightmarish infestation before vengefully claiming its sacrifice, in a poetic surrender that evokes Virginia Woolf.