“Promise me you’re not here to sow discord in the fields of my peace.” That’s the first line of dialogue spoken by Lady Mae Greenleaf (a chilling Lynn Whitfield) in OWN’s faith-based drama Greenleaf, and it sets the tone for a series that serves its dynastic melodrama with a liberal sprinkling of regal diva camp. The…

“The Help” is a film about a quest. Presenting itself as the story of how African-American maids in the South viewed their employers during Jim Crow days, it is equally the story of how they empowered three women to transform their lives. All three women rewrite in the course of their course to write a…

In “Colette,” based on the life of the foremost female French novelist, Giles Nuttgens’ gorgeous cinematography invites us into the lush, candle-lit world of late 19th century France, contrasting the thick greenery outdoors of the countryside with the highly decorated interiors of Paris. Both locations are seductively lavish, not in terms of the money spent by the…

Fox Solomon internalized, from a young age, that forging an identity requires witnessing how the perceptions of others invade you. She has described her photography, which turns outward in order to look in, as a method of “talking to myself.” “I advise young photographers to be their authentic self as much as they can. And to…

Lisa Spinelli, the 40-something educator at the center of Sara Colangelo’s reflective character study “The Kindergarten Teacher,” is bored out of her mind. Not only bored, but also frustrated for having a great deal to express, yet being cursed with inadequate (or moderate-at-best) creative skills to convey her novel musings through art. She navigates her way…