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CineWomen

CineWomen is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Annlee Ellingson.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
The Boys of Baraka (2005) Annlee Ellingson Ewing and Grady’s special talent is gaining the trust of their protagonists and sharing such intimate moments with us that we care.
Posted Sep 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Folktales (2025) Annlee Ellingson Ewing and Grady braid in the Norse mythology of three Norns — powerful deities who shape humans’ futures by weaving threads of fate. It’s a rich metaphor, returned to again and again.
Posted Sep 13, 2025  Edit critic review
It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley (2025) Annlee Ellingson A profound elegy of profound loss.
Posted Sep 13, 2025  Edit critic review
East of Wall (2025) Annlee Ellingson "East of Wall" juxtaposes the romanticism of horsewomanship against an otherworldly backdrop with the hardship, poverty, and resilience of West River womanhood.
Posted Sep 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Freakier Friday (2025) Annlee Ellingson This setup provides a showcase for Curtis’ unique charm when she’s portraying a teenager trapped in the body of an older woman. The iconic actress gives voice to the horrors of aging ... and she’s having the time of her life doing it.
Posted Sep 13, 2025  Edit critic review
I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) Annlee Ellingson Treading a fine line between nostalgia and unoriginality.
Posted Jul 30, 2025  Edit critic review
The Old Guard 2 (2025) Annlee Ellingson A waste of a kickass pairing in what could have been a fun and provocative franchise.
Posted Jul 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Oh, Hi! (2025) Annlee Ellingson Viewers will find themselves going along with it because Iris (Molly Gordon) especially is gosh-darn charming.
Posted Jul 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Sorry/Not Sorry (2023) Annlee Ellingson There’s a lot of soul-searching in Sorry/Not Sorry. ... Not, however, by the subject of the documentary itself.
Posted Aug 01, 2024  Edit critic review
Proof (1991) Annlee Ellingson Proof’s lack of clarity is its appeal: a character study inside an enigma that’s never solved — Martin McGrath’s cinematography makes sure of that, positioning the frame so that we don’t know what’s true and what’s a lie.
Posted Aug 01, 2024  Edit critic review
The Fabulous Four (2024) Annlee Ellingson There’s a feminist anthem at the heart of The Fabulous Four — to not acting your age, to valuing friendships, to childless cat ladies. Unfortunately, it’s buried under clumsy monologues, cringey special effects, and a pile of tulle.
Posted Aug 01, 2024  Edit critic review
Zola (2020) Annlee Ellingson What started as a Twitter thread so epic it earned the hashtag #TheStory has been transformed into a wild and woolly big-screen adaptation that not only honors its audacious social-media origin story but marks the breakthrough of a bold, fresh voice.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Worth (2020) Annlee Ellingson Though it’s unlikely that [Kenneth] Feinberg’s personal growth was tied so neatly to how the [9/11] dispensation actually played out, thematically this development can’t help but reflect on the current political climate.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
The World to Come (2020) Annlee Ellingson The World to Come is a rapturous, inevitably tragic, love story that suggests resolution only in its titular eschatological phrase.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) Annlee Ellingson What means to be a whodunit that leaves the reveal to the very, very end, Where the Crawdads Sing, directed by Olivia Newman, instead sucks all of the mystery out of a murder trial that offers no alternatives to the theory at hand.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
The Watermelon Woman (1996) Annlee Ellingson A quarter of a century later, The Watermelon Woman suggests that ’90s indie is a genre unto itself. ... For those who came of age as cineastes during that era, it’s a nostalgic nod to that gritty aesthetic and an important milestone in New Queer Cinema.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Wadjda (2012) Annlee Ellingson [Director Haifaa] Al-Mansour doesn’t explain the particulars of Saudi culture for Western viewers. Rather, she drops us in, sans exposition, to experience and piece it together ourselves.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Tiny Furniture (2010) Annlee Ellingson A dozen years later, [Lena Dunham's] clear-eyed portrait of herself and her friends and the women who relate to them is astute as ever, demonstrating a keen self-awareness at its most unflattering.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Time (2020) Annlee Ellingson [Time asks viewers] whether they believe in time served and second chances, and to bear witness to a prison-industrial complex built on the legacy of slavery.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Stray (2021) Annlee Ellingson These dogs’ lives are scrappy, sometimes ugly, but also — elevated by [directory Elizabeth] Lo’s quotes of the dog-obsessed Greek philosopher Diogenes — charismatic and noble.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) Annlee Ellingson By casting and working with nonpros, from a treatment with scenes she wrote each morning, [Chloé] Zhao taps into stories — perhaps much like theirs — with authenticity and empathy.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Sharp Stick (2022) Annlee Ellingson As confounding as the character’s quirks are ... what follows is a sex-positive journey of self-discovery that’s a sweet as it is explicit.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Respect (2021) Annlee Ellingson Draping the film in a nostalgic haze, [director Liesl] Tommy suggests a lack of clarity during these early years as Aretha stumbles toward freedom, driven by a stirring soundtrack of hit after hit, and powered by [Hudson's] performance.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Real Women Have Curves (2002) Annlee Ellingson Coming up on its twentieth anniversary, the movie was perhaps ahead of its time with its authentic, at times very funny portrayal of a Latinx family in a Los Angeles little seen on the big screen, and body-positive messaging right in the title.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020) Annlee Ellingson The horror experienced by Aida — and this entire town — is only emphasized in a devastating coda that demonstrates just how depraved these events were, and how profoundly the world failed them.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Promising Young Woman (2020) Annlee Ellingson In [Emerald] Fennell’s candy-colored revenge fantasy, the heroine wields her femininity as a weapon.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
The Present (2020) Annlee Ellingson What should be an easy errand gets bogged down by checkpoints with segregated entrances and arbitrary soldiers in a maddening display of daily onslaught on human dignity.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Plan B (2021) Annlee Ellingson Anchored by bright, bubbly performances from [Kuhoo] Verma and [Victoria] Moroles, Plan B has lower stakes... — Sunny doesn’t know that she’s pregnant and has a loving, if demanding, home life — and so can afford to turn the girls’ ordeal into a fun romp.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
The Perfect Candidate (2019) Annlee Ellingson Seven years after Haifaa al-Mansour filmed Wadjda, the first feature shot entirely in ... Saudi Arabia, she returns with The Perfect Candidate, a movie that demonstrates how much has changed in the Arab country — and how much has stayed the same.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Pariah (2011) Annlee Ellingson [Director Dee] Rees has crafted an indelible coming-of-age portrait of a teen lesbian and poet that’s by turns funny and awkward, painful and triumphant.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
One Night in Miami (2020) Annlee Ellingson For people invested in social justice, the questions that [director Regina] King and her characters grapple with continue to persist today.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) Annlee Ellingson [Director Eliza] Hittman films with unblinking, sympathetic closeups that expose the girl’s desperation and grit.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Nomadland (2020) Annlee Ellingson With Nomadland, Chloé Zhao completes a trilogy of sorts that offers an authentic and empathetic portrait of the dispossessed of the American West.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Moxie (2021) Annlee Ellingson Fun and inspiring and all too relevant.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
The Mole Agent (2020) Annlee Ellingson Warmhearted and poignant, The Mole Agent doesn’t erupt with the explosive scandal sought by the client so much as reveal a festering familial failure to care for our loved ones. Call your mom, dad, grandma, or grandpa. Better yet, visit.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020) Annlee Ellingson The scenario, the quandaries it poses, and especially [Yahya] Mahayni’s galvanic performance [are] as indelible as the ink on Sam’s skin.
Posted Jul 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Mamma Mia! (2008) Annlee Ellingson An experienced, award-winning theater and opera director, Phyllida Lloyd exerts keen control of the film’s energy, if not its specious plot.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
The Mad Women's Ball (2021) Annlee Ellingson The Mad Women’s Ball uses a fictional woman of privilege to tell [Louise Augustine Gleizes's] story, [and] here the points of view of the doctor and his ilk are sidelined for that of the women under his care as well as the women caring for them.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
A Love Song for Latasha (2019) Annlee Ellingson The short documentary A Love Song for Latasha by Sophia Nahli Allison is indeed that, a cinematic elegy for Latasha Harlins, the 15-year-old Black girl whose fatal shooting in a South Central convenience store contributed to the 1992 L.A. riots.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
Lore (2012) Annlee Ellingson [Cate] Shortland get[s] up close and personal with intimate, handheld camerawork as Lore confronts what she’s been taught and her family’s legacy of fascism and genocide, blue eyes popping with judgment, hate, fear, confusion, and, finally, resolve.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
Little Woods (2018) Annlee Ellingson [Director Nia] DaCosta deploy[s] handheld camerawork ... to bring intimacy to two women’s stories, whose personal collisions with addiction, abortion, the housing crisis, and the broken promise of the American dream are writ large.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
Little Accidents (2014) Annlee Ellingson Owen’s emotional journey, captured with intimate handheld camerawork, is poignantly nuanced, and his inevitable intersection with Amos is executed with delicate grace.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
The Letter Room (2020) Annlee Ellingson A sweet, simple, yet profound story to which Oscar Isaac brings his formidable talent.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
Jesus Camp (2006) Annlee Ellingson Heidi Ewing’s breakout feature film was the Academy Award-nominated Jesus Camp in 2006, a movie that, fifteen years later, plays eerily familiar.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
Illusions (1982) Annlee Ellingson [Julie] Dash’s most significant work before Daughters was Illusions, a thirty-four-minute narrative film that takes on racism and sexism in the movie industry.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
I Carry You With Me (2020) Annlee Ellingson When the couple reaches middle age, their romance starts to feel real, documentary-esque, and — spoiler alert — that’s because it is. ... This turn is a delightful discovery that brings both ambiguity and urgency to their tale.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
Herself (2020) Annlee Ellingson Phyllida Lloyd’s Herself is a modest Irish movie about a single mom who builds a little house for herself and her two young daughters. Sweet enough, but the circumstances that motivate her plan ... throb with urgent topicality.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
First Match (2018) Annlee Ellingson First Match is a confident, sensitive debut in a gritty, real milieu that’s worth seeking out.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
Eve's Bayou (1997) Annlee Ellingson Twenty-five years ago, Kasi Lemmons made her feature directorial debut with Eve’s Bayou, a steamy family drama as steeped in hidden dangers as its 1960s rural Louisiana setting, starring a who’s who of Black cinema.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
Enemies of the State (2020) Annlee Ellingson Sonia Kennebeck’s documentary thriller Enemies of the State parcels out her discoveries in a manner that manipulates viewers’ sentiments about the situation.
Posted Jul 28, 2024  Edit critic review
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