Liz Braun

Film Critic at Freelance

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Articles

ON SWIFT HORSES - Review by Liz Braun

1 week ago | awfj.org | Liz Braun

0 Flares 0 Flares × A pack of good-looking people explore their orientation in On Swift Horses, a ‘50s-set drama about hidden desire and awakening from director Daniel Minahan. The film is written by Bryce Kass and based on the novel by Shannon Pufahl. The story develops as an unusual love triangle: at the end of the war in Korea, Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her fiancé Lee (Will Poulter) are living in Muriel’s family home in Kansas, planning one day to live in California.
HOLY COW (VINGT DIEUX) - Review by Liz Braun

1 month ago | awfj.org | Liz Braun

0 Flares 0 Flares × Holy Cow is a sweet coming-of-age film about Totone, a rural kid of 18 forced to grow up overnight. The story is set in the Jura region of France among isolated dairy farms and tiny villages, where the populace is dedicated to creating Comte cheese — about as far from the urban hustle and bustle as one can be.
QUEEN OF THE RING - Review by Liz Braun

1 month ago | awfj.org | Liz Braun

0 Flares 0 Flares × Queen of The Ring is an old-fashioned biopic of women’s wrestling pioneer Mildred Burke. Turns out watching a woman get in the ring and grapple her way to independence (when it was still mostly illegal for women to do so) is an unexpected treat at the movies. The movie is directed by Ash Avildsen, who co-writes with Alston Ramsay; it is based on Jeff Leen’s book, The Queen of The Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds and the Making of An American Legend.
ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

2 months ago | awfj.org | Liz Braun

0 Flares 0 Flares × In Uppercut, a hopeful young boxer tries to convince a legendary trainer to take her on and mentor her. The film is a character study, a lengthy conversation between a world-weary boxing expert at the end of his run and a determined young woman at the start of her career, hoping to fight her way to the top.
ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

2 months ago | awfj.org | Liz Braun

0 Flares 0 Flares × The 80th anniversary of nuclear testing is coming up this summer. It was July 16, 1945 when a bomb was detonated at the White Sands testing ground in New Mexico; despite sanitized versions of history, that part of America was not uninhabited and the Trinity test continues to have negative health repercussions on the locals and their descendants.
ATOMIC REACTION - Review by Liz Braun

2 months ago | awfj.org | Liz Braun

0 Flares 0 Flares × On the subject of bombs, fallout and nuclear waste, the film Trinity would make a great double bill with Atomic Reaction, a new Canadian documentary on the same subject. Directed by Michele Hozer and produced by Bernie Finkelstein and David Hatch, Atomic Reaction delves into Canada’s role in the Manhattan Project and the creation of the bombs that fell on Nagasaki and Hiroshima during WWII. It’s a lesser-known chapter in Canadian history.
CASH FOR GOLD - Review by Liz Braun

2 months ago | awfj.org | Liz Braun

0 Flares 0 Flares × Deborah Puette makes an auspicious directorial debut with Cash For Gold, a drama about a blue collar town and the spectre of addiction in America’s heartland. Puette wrote the film and co-directs with Robert Enriquez. She also stars in Cash For Gold. As Grace, she plays a recent widow and single mother trying to cope financially and emotionally after the death of her husband, who served in the armed forces.
I’M STILL HERE - Review by Liz Braun

Jan 10, 2025 | awfj.org | Liz Braun

0 Flares 0 Flares × Walter Salles’ new film, I’m Still Here, is centered on one family during the military dictatorship of the 1970s in Brazil. The film is based on the true story of the disappearance of former congressman Rubens Paiva and the fate of his family thereafter; it is an unbelievably moving and timely picture, considering the current global shift to the right and the endless sabre-rattling from president-elect Donald Trump and his main henchboy.
AGENT OF HAPPINESS - Review by Liz Braun

Oct 25, 2024 | awfj.org | Liz Braun

0 Flares 0 Flares × These are mad times. If you want to feel better about being part of the human race, have a look at Agent of Happiness, a film about a couple of government workers in Bhutan who work on the country’s happiness survey.
ZURAWSKI V TEXAS - Review by Liz Braun

Oct 20, 2024 | awfj.org | Liz Braun

0 Flares 0 Flares × Near the end of the documentary Zurawski v Texas, a legal expert says that the fight for reproductive rights in America is nationwide because, “This is what happens when you ban abortion — and it’s not what people think.” What happens when you ban abortion includes infant and maternal death, maternal infertility, and unspeakable illness, suffering and loss, as the film shows.