Lee Jutton

Brooklyn

Film Critic at Freelance

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Articles

THE SEALED SOIL: A Bold Feminist Feature from Pre-Revolutionary Iran

1 week ago | medium.com | Lee Jutton

This piece was originally published by Film Inquiry on May 29, 2025. The earliest complete surviving feature film directed by an Iranian woman, The Sealed Soil examines the clash between long-standing traditions and encroaching modernity in one small village, where a young woman stubbornly resists the pressure to be married off.
THE SEALED SOIL: A Bold Feminist Feature from Pre-Revolutionary Iran

1 week ago | filminquiry.com | Lee Jutton

The earliest complete surviving feature film directed by an Iranian woman, The Sealed Soil examines the clash between long-standing traditions and encroaching modernity in one small village, where a young woman stubbornly resists the pressure to be married off. Written and directed by Marva Nabili, the film was made without the official sanction of the pre-revolutionary Iranian government and has never been screened in its native land despite achieving critical acclaim elsewhere.
CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: Sea Change

2 weeks ago | filminquiry.com | Lee Jutton

It’s hard to name a country that has evolved more rapidly in the twenty-first century than China, and it’s impossible to name a filmmaker who has chronicled that evolution more perceptively than Jia Zhangke. Whether documentary (I Wish I Knew, Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue) or fiction (A Touch of Sin, Mountains May Depart), Jia’s films explore how globalization and industrialization have changed life in China and how its people have navigated those changes.
CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: Sea Change

2 weeks ago | medium.com | Lee Jutton

This piece was originally published by Film Inquiry on May 19, 2025. It’s hard to name a country that has evolved more rapidly in the twenty-first century than China, and it’s impossible to name a filmmaker who has chronicled that evolution more perceptively than Jia Zhangke.
DESERT OF NAMIBIA: The Gloom Generation

3 weeks ago | medium.com | Lee Jutton

This piece was originally published by Film Inquiry on May 12, 2025. Every generation has some angst-ridden cinema that informs the world how hard it is to be that generation. The time and place change, but the overall message remains the same: coming of age is hard, especially in a world that appears to care nothing about you or your future, so why should you bother trying?
DESERT OF NAMIBIA: The Gloom Generation

3 weeks ago | filminquiry.com | Lee Jutton

Every generation has some angst-ridden cinema that informs the world how hard it is to be that generation. The time and place change, but the overall message remains the same: coming of age is hard, especially in a world that appears to care nothing about you or your future, so why should you bother trying? And while this is not a phenomenon unique to Gen Z, they are the current generation living through it, so it is their turn to make movies about it. Desert of Namibia is one of those movies.
BLUE SUN PALACE: In a Lonely Place

1 month ago | medium.com | Lee Jutton

This piece was originally published by Film Inquiry on April 23, 2025. The debut feature from writer-director Constance Tsang, Blue Sun Palace pulls back the curtain of a Queens massage parlor to give us an intimate look at the lives of the immigrant women who work there.
BLUE SUN PALACE: In a Lonely Place

1 month ago | filminquiry.com | Lee Jutton

The debut feature from writer-director Constance Tsang, Blue Sun Palace pulls back the curtain of a Queens massage parlor to give us an intimate look at the lives of the immigrant women who work there. The undeniable toll that their work takes on them in body and spirit is tempered by the close friendships they have formed with each other, but a shocking act of violence plunges one of them into a pit of grief and loneliness that threatens to consume her entirely.
PINK NARCISSUS: A Queer Underground Classic Resurfaces

1 month ago | filminquiry.com | Lee Jutton

Over several years of shooting, artist James Bidgood transformed his Manhattan apartment into the glittering, candy-colored paradise of homoeroticism that is the primary setting of his sole feature film, Pink Narcissus. Shot on 8mm and 16mm film stock, the film was blown up to 35mm for its original release in 1971 and credited to “Anonymous” after disputes with financiers led to Bidgood removing his name from the credits.
A MAN AND A WOMAN: A Timeless French Romance Returns in 4K

2 months ago | filminquiry.com | Lee Jutton

Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman is a film as simple and complicated as its title implies. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Original Screenplay, it chronicles the tentative, tender romance between a widow and a widower, irresistibly drawn to one another despite the heavy weight of past tragedies.