Teenager Autumn (Sydney Flanagan) and her best friend and cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) set out for the Big Apple seeking medical help, unavailable in rural Pennsylvania, with an unintended (and unexplained) pregnancy. They encounter both abortion pros and foes, the big-hearted and the small-minded.
Writer/director Eliza Hittman’s dreamily naturalistic film is a simple and unembellished story of two young women dealing with a situation as best they can in today’s world. Despite the charged, contentious nature of the subject, there’s little drama and no climax. Yet this story, ultimately about friendship, will stay with you. Kind of refreshing, that. It says a lot using few words.
As states across the US see access to abortion restricted, three eerily similar films about teenage girls caught in an unfair system shine a necessary light
7:00 AM
Most people measure a year with a calendar, but for movie and music buffs, a year is defined by its films and albums. With the COVID-19 pandemic creating a ripple effect of delays in the entertainment industry, the Grammys and the Academy Awards were pushed back to March and April, respectively. Time makes less and less sense during quarantine, so now seems as good a time as any to celebrate some of our favorites that flew under the radar in 2020.
Movies:
First Cow
“The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” Director Kelly Reichardt could not have possibly known how much this William Blake quote, seen in the epigraph during the opening credits, would resonate with audiences during the long, isolating year that was 2020.
Whatâs on TV This Week: âHemingwayâ and âThe People v. the Klanâ
Lynn Novick and Ken Burns revisit the life of Ernest Hemingway on PBS. And a documentary about a civil suit against the Ku Klux Klan airs on CNN.
Ernest Hemingway in a scene from “Hemingway.”Credit.John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
April 5, 2021, 1:00 a.m. ET
Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, April 5-11. Details and times are subject to change.
Monday
HEMINGWAY
8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Lynn Novick and Ken Burns look back at the life of Ernest Hemingway in this new three-part documentary, which airs over three consecutive nights beginning on Monday. The program aims to give an evenhanded assessment of Hemingwayâs life and legacy, recognizing the uglier elements (racism and anti-Semitism) while paying tribute to his work. The result
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Early in “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” teenager Skylar asks her cousin Autumn, “Don’t you ever wish you were a dude?”
“All the time,” she replies. It’s not safe being a teenage girl out there in the world. This is inherently something people already know, but far fewer may comprehend.
Eliza Hittman’s 2020 indie darling “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” which she wrote and directed, burst onto the scene when it premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and received broad critical acclaim. The film competed for the Golden Bear at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival and received the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize. The film is an important and unflinchingly honest portrait of womanhood and what it feels like to not feel control over one’s body.