Women's Voices For Change

"Year by the Sea" is a fairly quiet movie, as it should be. Joan finds herself because she slows down and listens, really listens, to her own needs and wants, to nature and the day-to-day rhythms of the village she’s become a temporary part of.

According to IndieWire, last season there were 41 new shows, of which 20 had female leads. This year there are 36 new shows and only 11 have women in the leading role.

As the “Black Lives Matter” movement gains momentum around them, spurred on by incidents in Sanford, Ferguson, New York, and Waller County, as well as Baltimore, you can understand why step feels so relevant and personal to the girls. There is a fierce defiance to their routines. These young women are determined.

Image after image of luminaries from her earlier career fade away as she pulls out what she calls “the b-sides,” akin to the extra song on the back of a popular record.

Writer/producer and first-time director Marti Noxon takes eating disorders seriously herself. Noxon began her own struggle with anorexia and bulimia as a teenager. In her new indie movie 'To The Bone,' which premiered at Sundance and is available on Netflix, she draws on that experience.

'The Beguiled' was an interesting choice for Coppola, and I’m so glad she decided to make it. Her sixth feature film, it is an interesting and feminist take on some fairly sexist and exploitative material.

'My Cousin Rachel' offers up a fascinating, if unfinished, portrait of a woman’s attempt to buck a system that affords her less autonomy than her intelligence and sensitivity demand.