Tag: top-stories
Exodus: Gods and Kings | Review
Death on the Nile: Scott’s Biblical Epic Unworthy of the Gods
Arriving just in time for ritual slaughter is Ridley Scott’s update on the Moses...
Criterion Collection: Safe | Blu-Ray Review
Todd Haynes receives his first entry in the Criterion collection with a beautiful restoration of his landmark 1995 sophomore feature, Safe, the film that launched...
Dying of the Light | Review
Does Not Go Quietly: Schrader’s Latest Tampered Product
Veteran film director and screenwriter Paul Schrader just can’t seem to catch a break. Much like the...
Fandor eh?: Discover Films from the NFB, Norman McLaren, Guy Maddin & Xavier Dolan
Our favorite online curator have offered us an interactive map on some of the top Canadian film spotlights (from Canuck/poutine filmmaker types) available over at...
Zero Motivation | Review #2
Band of Girls: Lavie’s Acerbic, Confident Debut
Exacerbated ennui is explored to comedic effect in Tayla Lavie’s striking directorial debut, Zero Motivation, which explores life...
Zero Motivation | Review
A "Staple" Female-centric Portrait: Lavie Adds Dark Charm to Bureaucratic Military Milieu
With a subject so entrenched with weight and political correctness, there seems to...
Sundance ’15: Zobel, Bujalski, Brice & Kris Swanberg Among U.S. Dramatic Competition
Last year, it was Damien Chazelle's richly texturized, foot-tapping, finger-snapping sophomore pic Whiplash that instantly became the "it" film to beat in the sixteen competition...
Black or White | Review
Black to Basics: Binder’s Safely Bland Racial Message Movie
The latest film from actor/director/screenwriter Mike Binder, Black or White presents us with the possibility of...
Video Interview: Krzysztof Zanussi (Foreign Body) – 2014 Toronto Int. Film Festival
We sat down with Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival after the premiere of his new film, Foreign Body....
Criterion Collection: Les Blank: Always for Pleasure | Blu-ray Review
Many people may know Les Blank most for his association with Werner Herzog, who he filmed while on the brink of creative madness in...
Pioneer | Review
Oil!: Skjoldbjaerg’s Latest an Icy Conspiracy Thriller
Norwegian director Erik Skjoldbjaerg has remained a hard director to peg ever since his celebrated 1997 debut, Insomnia,...
Miss Julie | Review
Touch of Class: Ullmann’s Update of Classic Text Ultimately Lifeless
There are a scant few equals to the texts of playwright August Strindberg’s, his 1888...
Life Partners | Review
She’s the One: Fogel’s Debut a Top Tier Examination of Co-Dependent Friendship
Borrowing shades of autobiographical instances from their own lives, director Susanna Fogel and...
The Foxy Merkins | Review
American Gigola: Olnek’s Hilarious Sophomore Film Reinvents the Masculine Realm of Hustler Bonding
Few filmmakers are able to successfully create a distinctly unique universe of...
Wild | Review #2
A Prayer for the Wild at Heart: Vallee Continues Reinvention of Lost Souls
Arriving at the end of star Reese Witherspoon’s auteur binge is one...
Wild | Review
Peaks and Vallée: Witherspoon Eats, Prays, Hikes
When Cheryl Strayed's memoir was released in 2012, the climate for gender politics was different. The book's popularity soared...
A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness | Review
The Brothers Ben Find Supernal Solace On The Fringe
There are creative collaborations and there are perfect unions. The newly born cinematic relationship between experimental...
Best of Fest – Docs: Laura Poitras Racks Up Noms For Citizenfour, IDFA Announces Awards (November 2014)
With year end lists already flooding the interwebs a full month before the actual year’s end, its hard to ignore the fact that awards...
Video Interview: Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure)
I'd argue that he was a mostly known as a film festival favorite yet art-house oddity entity beforehand, which is certainly is no longer...
21 Years: Richard Linklater | Review
Just alright, alright, alright: Friends Laud Linklater's Adulthood
Traditionally speaking, retrospectives of prominent people tend to transpire as an ode after the fact or as...
Butter on the Latch | Review
Pass the Butter: Decker Cooks Up Female & Peyote Driven Experiment
Serving as a statement more so than a film, Butter on the Latch, tosses...
Mirage | Review
Saving the Farm: Hajdu Offers Poor Man’s 12 Years A Slave
Set against sprawling plains and a dusty backdrop, Mirage (aka Délibáb) unravels as a...
Late Phases | Review
Silver Bullet Band: Bogliano’s English Debut Nontransformative Nostalgia
After the surprising critical success of his 2012 title Here Comes the Devil, Spanish director Adrian Garcia...
Once Upon a Time, Veronica | Review
Sex and Candy: Gomes’ Wise, Intricate Character Study
Arriving over two years after its world premiere at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival, Brazilian director Marcelo...
Video Interview: Mona Fastvold & Brady Corbet (The Sleepwalker)
Among 2014's class of best new voices in the film landscape (which includes Eliza Hittman (It Felt Like Love), Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl...
The Imitation Game | Review
Cracking the Code: Tyldum's English Debut Delivers Thrills
Although mathematician Alan Turing OBE was responsible for creating a machine capable of solving the unsolvable Nazi...
Criterion Collection: L’avventura | Blu-ray Review
In the decades of cinema that have transpired since Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 film L’avventura, one cannot overlook its seminal status not only within the...
Before I Disappear | Review
The Sting Called Love: Christensen’s Debut Rife with Melodramatic Cliché
Shawn Christensen, who won an Academy Award for his 2013 short film, Curfew, expands his...
The Mule | Review
Mother, Jugs, and Laxatives: Sampson and Mahony’s Curious Exploration of Strange Case
Based on its poster and other marketing materials for Angus Sampson and Tony...
Extraterrestrial | Review
Shades of Mr. Gray: The Vicious Bros.’ Unsatisfying Close Encounter
Following the unanticipated success of their 2011 film debut, Grave Encounters (which feels very much...
Interview: Christopher Abbott & Gitte Witt (The Sleepwalker)
In The Sleepwalker (Sundance Selects / limited release 11.21), filmmaker Mona Fastvold sequesters her quartet of players in mostly volatile sibling, lover and fighter pairings. Architecturally speaking,...
Interview: Stephanie Ellis (Mona Fastvold’s The Sleepwalker)
The fine line of a repressed memory can get especially fuzzy when what is factual, what is imagined, what is suggested and what is...
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 | Review
The Games They Play: Collins’ YA Dystopia Trudges On and On
As is now customary in the designed business model of franchise movie making,...
2015 Sundance Predictions: Which Film is the Next Whiplash?
Despite the lottery-esque sounding odds, the U.S Dramatic Competition section which produces the finest American indie specimens such as Frozen River, Winter's Bone, Blue Valentine, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Beasts...
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night | Review
Walking After Midnight: Amirpour’s Expressive, Moody Debut
Described as an Iranian vampire film with all its characters speaking Farsi, yet filmed in California and set...
V/H/S: Viral | Review
Headcleaner: VHS Series Gets Third Installment Blues
Perhaps after this third installment this franchise can enter the same void for the format which it’s named,...
National Gallery | Review
Museum Hours: Wiseman’s Tour through London’s Famed Museum
If you’ve never been to The National Gallery in London, England, one of the most preeminent museums...
Criterion Collection: It Happened One Night | Blu-ray Review
Winner of five Oscars, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night remains an outstanding entertainment, and a touchstone of Hollywood’s most enduring cinematic genre: the...
2015 Sundance Film Festival Predictions List: An Introduction
Whether you are a filmmaker, or one of the Sundance programmers whose task it is to identify the films that make up a line-up,...
Viktor | Review
From Russia with Schlock: Martinez’s Derivative Revenge Flick
While there’s certainly a modicum of perverse interest to be satisfied in witnessing the rotund Gerard Depardieu...
Starry Eyes | Review
Eyes Without a Place: Kolsch & Widmyer’s Horrors in Hollywood
Madonna’s famed verse asks the hypothetical question of Hollywood, “How could it hurt you when...
Miss Meadows | Review
A Spoonful of Violence: Hopkins’ Unbalanced Sophomore Effort
Actress turned screenwriter turned director Karen Leigh Hopkins unleashes her sophomore feature Miss Meadows after its premiere...
2015 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Craig Zobel’s Z for Zachariah
We can still feel the heat generated from Craig Zobel's Compliance. His sophomore film, which was made on a dime (his directorial debut Great World...
2015 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Robinson Devor’s You Can’t Win
Films gods be damned. After guesstimating its eventual arrival on the film fest circuit and tracking it since it first went into production back...
2015 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young
It landed at the Toronto Int. Film Festival and already had a NYFF playdate in place before A24 films plunked down 4 million on...
2015 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Robert Edwards’ When I Live My Life Over Again
Despite one feature film under his belt with 2006's Land of the Blind (the Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland starrer won the Nicholl Fellowship...
2015 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Bill & Turner Ross’ Western
It might still be too early to mention the brothers in the same breath as Frederick Wiseman, but the Ross brothers' filmography to date...
2015 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Noah Baumbach’s Untitled Public School Project
Akin to Michel Gondry's low-budgeter We and I, the shot in 2013 campus comedy still doesn't have a name, doesn't have a release date,...
2015 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Kirby Dick’s Untitled Campus Assaults Project
The list of Kirby Dick signed films that have made it into the festival date back to 1997s' Sick: The Life and Death of...
2015 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jamey Phillips’ Untitled Bill Cosby Documentary
It is in the nature of the non-fiction film that the narrative mutates, takes a different shape, form and perspective. Wearing their colors on their...
