Originally published in Cineaste Magazine, Vol. XLV No. 4
Anyone still wondering what Pauline Kael lost at the movies need not wonder anymore. It has been found. Christina Newland claims that Kael found more at the movies than she lost, something “sexy and uncomfortably tender, something it was safe to carry around on repeat in the real estate of your head.” The refreshing voices collected in She Found it at the Movies constitute an unorthodox, and much needed, critical perspective on women, LGBTQ+, and people of color as spectators looking at and to the movies for spaces to insert themselves. The contributors to Newland’s collection of essays have moved well beyond metaphor to find themselves at the movies, or in the case of some queer, black, and trans writers, to challenge how they find themselves at the movies.
