52 Films By Women Challenge - Spring Update

For the first few months of 2021, I challenged myself to start the 52 Films by Women Challenge - to watch one film by a female director every week for a year. It's been a few posts since I've updated the challenge, and thought I'd share my progress so far.

In March, I started providing coverage for the Athena Film Festival, which celebrated female filmmakers from shorts to feature films and documentaries (my reviews and thoughts can be found here). Since life became more complicated offline and ate away a lot of my free time for the challenge, I couldn't quite manage both at the same time. To keep the challenge on track as much as possible, I started replacing the films from my original challenge with projects I was screening - seven in total.

I'm also considering changing my process of choosing the films to watch. However, similar to the festival, I found a lot of freedom of being able to go out and find films to watch rather than stick to a preset of options. I'm pretty happy with the way the list is right now, but I might want to change out some films as I go along. Sometimes I find something on Netflix I had never heard of before and want to add it into the mix instead.

But as of now, I'm all caught up for the challenge and just need to continue watching one movie a week. I'll probably get back to doing a bi-weekly catch-up of the films I watch at the end of April or beginning of May.

Thursday Movie Picks - Oscar Winners Edition: Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks -  Oscar Winners Edition: Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. I just went with some semi-recent favorites who stick out in mind.

7 Actors Who Should've Won The Oscar Instead (And Who Should Win at the 2021 Oscars)

Every year movie buffs root for their personal faves throughout the award show season. Though we might disagree on who should win, history and hindsight often reveals when other performances were worthier of recognition. In celebration of trying to figure out this year's Oscars odds, I thought it'd be fun to revisit several recent ceremonies and pin down who won versus who should've won.

Which Oscar winners in the past do you think should've won? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Thursday Movie Picks - TMP Television Edition: Opening Title Sequence

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks - TV EDITION - Opening Title Sequence.

Short Films Collection at Athena Film Festival 2021

The Athena Film Festival is the premier festival celebrating and showcasing women's leadership in documentaries and feature films as well as in-depth conversations with industry experts. One of their prominent program areas features short films grouped into specific themes that explore and highlight a wide range of issues from climate change to social justice movements.

This year’s festival included several themes including Resilience Through Uncertainty, Nothing About Us Without Us, and Tear It Down: Dismantling White Supremacy. While covering the festival this month, I had access to short films from each of these sections and provide reviews to my selections below.

Test Pattern (Athena Film Festival 2021)

(This review contains spoilers for Promising Young Woman).

Two different nights in Austin, Texas set the stage for Test Pattern – the first charming meet-cute between Renesha (Brittany S. Hall) and Evan (Will Brill) ends with the couple’s courtship blossoming into a loving lived-in relationship; the second similar night ends with Renesha drugged and sexually assaulted by a stranger during a girl’s night out at a bar. And the couple dealing with the health care system as they try to secure a rape kit.

Thursday Movie Picks - Fake Identity

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is Thursday Movie Picks - Fake Identity