I have loved movies since I was a child. I grew up in a small town that had a beautiful old (even when I was young) theater downtown – the Virginia – and nothing was more exciting to me than going to see a matinee on a Saturday afternoon. The Virginia had burgundy velvet roping attached to brass fixtures in the lobby and a heavy ornate curtain that opened slowly before each show and an older gentleman in a uniform with a bow tie would take my ticket. It all felt so glamorous to me – a kid in a little town 2,500 miles away from Hollywood.

I know I must have seen a lot of Disney films there as a kid, but they aren’t the ones I remember. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is one of the first films I clearly recall seeing. It was such an adventure – and to be fair, I probably fell in love with Katherine Ross on the handlebars of that bicycle. I also vividly recall an older cousin taking me and his brother to see Rosemary’s Baby when I was around 12. He was almost ten years older than us – I guess that’s how he got us into an R rated movie. He was supposed to be “watching” us while our parents were shopping or something. By the way, that cousin went on to become a MAGA – so his inappropriate decision-making tracks.

Anyway, I remember being terrified, but also intrigued by the whole look of the film – so different than anything I’d ever seen before. And even if I didn’t understand the story, I think that’s when I first realized that movies don’t have to be technicolor and cheerful. My mother was furious when she found out and I had a few nightmares, but seeing (okay, I may have hid my eyes a few times) Rosemary’s Baby only increased my curiosity for films. That said, horror movies are not my preferred genre at all. I mean, just hearing the opening notes of “Tubular Bells” (the theme from The Exorcist) creeps me out a bit.

But I did find myself at The Bride! last weekend. The film, written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, is a wild reimagining of Mary Shelley’s Bride of Frankenstein storyand doesn’t neatly fit within the horror genre. Honestly, it doesn’t fit into any genre. It’s a musical, a comedy, a romance and most of all – a scathing narrative about agency that explores consent and self-definition in bold, violent, and visually spectacular ways. Is it messy? Sometimes. Is it slow? Never. Did it make me have to process a lot of my own feelings? Yes. And I loved it!

My wife and I sat on the end of a row near the back of the theater and five young women – all in their 20’s – stepped over us to take their seats right before the film started. After the movie, we went to the restroom and from my stall, I could hear a bunch of women excitedly talking. When I came out, I saw that it was them. One of them was saying how relatable the film was to today’s issues. I couldn’t help but jump into the conversation and we all kept chiming in about things we loved about the movie. Later, I thought about how cool it was that two women in their 60’s and five women four decades younger, were united in their impressions of a film.

Alas, The Bride! opened to mixed reviews and very poor box office. And honestly, that pisses me off. I sat through seven trailers of upcoming films on Sunday – most of them loud apocalyptic mashups of mayhem that have already been made – mostly by men. So freaking boring.

The dismal box-office of The Bride! is getting a lot of attention because of the film’s $80 million budget and the fact that it’s written and directed by a woman. The Oscars are this Sunday and in the 97-year history of the Academy Awards, only nine women have been nominated for Best Director. This isn’t breaking news – the film industry, like most industries, is male dominated. And women are held to a different standard – a storyline as old as time – and when they are tagged as a fiscal failure, the stakes are even higher.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is an acclaimed actor and her directorial debut, 2021’s The Lost Daughter, was a critical success on Netflix – and was made on a shoestring budget of $5 million. I hope she is given the opportunity to direct again – soon. She gives voice – with vivid imagery – to aspects of the female experience that are often drowned out by the mob mentality of the herd. And I love that she is not afraid to take big swings – I find that exhilarating.

She’s also one strong broad. I saw her on Late Night with Seth Myers on Monday night – mere hours after the crushing weekend box-office numbers were reported. You would have thought her film had broken all records – she was so confident, assured, and vibrant as she talked about her film. And she seemed terribly amused by the comments that she had made a fearless and daring film. She laughed and said, “This is a movie made for a movie theater. If you love movies, go see them.”

What she said – just don’t take your 12-year-old cousin.