Tag: top-stories
2021 Gotham Awards Noms: Test Pattern Lands Trio; Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter” to Duke it Out with Rebecca Hall’s “Passing”
An indie film that had it's world premiere at the Blackstar Film Festival (coined as the Black Sundance) in 2019 and was released by...
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain | Review
Wain’s World: Sharpe Presents Loving Portrait of an Artist
It’s odd to reflect upon a time when felines weren’t regarded as a stereotypical domesticated fur...
The French Dispatch | Review
Repetition Commission: Anderson Flatlines with Twee Aesthetic
Since cinema requires a semblance of participation by the audience, a passive relationship of sorts, the latest curio...
Anatomia | 2021 Warsaw International Film Festival Review
Anatomy of a Memory: Jankowska Dissects the Poetics of Belonging Nowhere
Part of the what could be coined as a niche genre of ‘melancholic European...
Dune | Review
Spice Up Your Life: Villeneuve Embarks with Somber Take on the Sci-Fi Classic
The journey of Dune to the big screen has been an arduous...
Needle in a Timestack | Review
Stye of the Needle: Ridley Can’t Thread Conceptual Sci-Fi
Time travel is tricky, especially when trying to effectively demonstrate its parameters and ramifications in narrative...
Meeting Point | 2021 Warsaw International Film Festival Review
Nighttime is the Right Time: two unlikely companions navigate a liminal Istanbul in Evirgen’s one-night odyssey
Sometime in the early naughts, a certain type of...
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy | Review
Flesh+Fantasy: Hamaguchi Harvests Regrets in Eloquent Triptych
One of Japan’s most compelling and profound contemporary auteurs is Ryusuke Hamaguchi, a purveyor of the barely contained...
I Am Fine, Thanks | 2021 Warsaw International Film Festival Review
Love, Deliver Us From Evil: Jankauskas Undercooks His Fiery Dive into Destructive Perfectionism
A flock of particularly belligerent rubber ducks floats toward Maria (Gabija Siurbytė),...
The Herd | 2021 Warsaw International Film Festival Review
There's No I in Team: Kotecka and Poryzala's Vaulting Doc is High on Girl Power
Things that amaze us, and quite often scare us, have...
Fever Dream | Review
Threadlock: Llosa Drifts into Elegant Nightmare with Faithful Adaptation
For her fourth feature, Peruvian director Claudia Llosa adapts Samanta Shweblin’s enigmatic novel Fever Dream, a...
Bergman Island | Review
The Passion of Mia: Hansen-Love Makes Her Own Place at the Table
For her complex and absorbing seventh feature, Bergman Island, Mia Hansen-Løve returns to...
Halloween Kills | Review
Boogeyman Nights: Green Overextends Himself in the Myers Saga
There is truth in having too much of a good thing, or, rather, adhering to the...
In Limbo | 2021 Warsaw International Film Festival Review
Fetch the Bolt Cutters: Khant Crafts a Story of Liberation, Love and Loss
The relevance of tragic teenage love story is packaged with a touch...
The Hill Where Lionesses Roar | 2021 Warsaw International Film Festival Review
Roar of a Generation: Bajrami Looks Beyond the Hills of Kosovo
It’s 2021 in a small town situated somewhere in Kosovo and yet everything feels...
Interview: Carlson Young – The Blazing World
Visually stunning and psychically rending, The Blazing World is Carlson Young’s feature film debut; she writes, directs and stars without missing a step. Inspired...
Son of Monarchs | Review
Butterflies Are Free: Gambis Mines Identity Through Metaphor/mosis in Sophomore Film
Director Alexis Gambis returns to his favored motif of genetics in his latest film...
South of Heaven | Review
Heaven’s Grate: Keshales Settles for Watered Down Tropes in English Debut
Nearly a decade ago, directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado promised to usher in...
Hit the Road | 2021 New York Film Festival Review
Take the Wheel, My Son: Panahi’s Character-Driven Exodus
Hit the Road is equal parts hilarious and devastating. Tracking an Iranian family while they try to...
Old Henry | Review
The Kid Stays in the Picture: Ponciroli Goes Old Fashioned with Fan Fiction Western
At a certain point, revisionism strays so far into its own...
Piece of the Puzzle: Alice Winocour Books Virginie Efira for “Revoir Paris”
Augustine, Maryland and Proxima filmmaker Alice Winocour is set to begin production on her fourth feature film with production beginning this month and lasting...
Take Shelter: Oppenheimer’s Bunker-Musical “The End” includes Neon, Swinton, George Mackay & Stephen Graham
The bygone era of the Rodgers & Hammerstein type of American '50s musicals might be revisited in tone, and tune as Joshua Oppenheimer, the...
Titane | Review
Car Crash Set: Ducournau Crafts a Cult Classic with Grotesque Odyssey of Dysfunction
In J.G. Ballard’s seminal 1973 cult novel Crash, infamously adapted in 1996...
Venom: Let There Be Carnage | Review
How to Lose Friends & Alien Ate People: Serkis Navigates Odd Bedfellows in Routine Sequel
Though perhaps a novel choice for helming Marvel sequel...
No Time to Die | Review
A Time to Love & a Time to Spy: Fukunaga Lays Craig to Rest in Bond Bacchanalian
It all comes full circle, or at least...
Inexorable | 2021 Toronto Intl. Film Festival Review
The Hand that Mocks the Cradle: Du Welz Finds an Interloper in Vintage Throwback
Long before a lithesome ingenue shows up to ruin a wealthy...
Dear Evan Hansen | Review
Letter from an Unknown Human: Chbosky Hits False Note with Musical Adaptation
Now navigating its third medium following the publication of Steven Levenson’s novel and...
Interview: Fabrice Du Welz – Inexorable
For his seventh feature film Belgian filmmaker Fabrice Du Welz returns to the family domicile to chaos and mayhem. While in his previous film...
Interview: Agustina San Martín – To Kill The Beast
An already celebrated filmmaker (and cinematographer) on the fest circuit due to her short films that landed in Berlinale and Cannes, Matar a la...
Interview: Khadar Ayderus Ahmed – The Gravedigger’s Wife
Making a moral complicated medley on death being at someone's doorstep...and footsteps, with his feature debut film, Somalia-born, Finnish filmmaker Khadar Ayderus Ahmed proposes...
Captain Volkonogov Escaped | 2021 Venice Film Festival Review
Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Chupov & Merkulova Explore Redemption in Scathing, Dramatic Thriller
For their third feature, Captain Volkonogov Escaped, directors Aleksey Chupov...
Ariaferma (The Inner Cage) | 2021 Venice Film Festival Review
Guards and Monsters: Costanzo Finds Humanity in Balanced Ratios
Utilizing the novel opportunity of how power wanes in the crumbling of an institution’s viability, Italian...
Trenches | 2021 Venice Film Festival Review
Gone to Graveyards: Bureau Mines the Surreal Tragedy of Ongoing Ukrainian Conflict
Ukrainian auteur Sergei Loznitsa has, heretofore, presented the most comprehensive cinematic examinations of...
The Card Counter | 2021 Venice Film Festival Review
January Man: Schrader Fans the Underbelly in Morose Facade of Lost Souls
Paul Schrader has obsessively charted the propensity of man's repressed compulsions consuming even...
Promises | 2021 Venice Film Festival Review
Broken is the Golden Bowl: Kruithof Rips at the Red Tape in Character Driven Political Drama
It’s not so much politics as usual in Les...
2021 Telluride Film Festival: World Preems for C’mon C’mon, King Richard, Cyrano, Belfast & One Mystery Film
The titles for the 48th edition of the Telluride Film Festival have been unveiled and Peter Hedges' low-budget zoom drama The Same Storm, Reinaldo Marcus...
Video Interview: Kazik Radwanski – Anne at 13,000 ft
Making friends can be easy...unless you happen to be the central character in Radwanskian cinema. In Toronto-based filmmaker Kazik Radwanski's third feature film, we...
Anne at 13,000 Ft. | Review
Cyclo Maladroit: Social Safety Nets Deployed in Radwanski’s Latest
A Canadian agit dramaturgist whose portraits can be described as deeply humanist, in his third feature...
Interview: Edson Oda – Nine Days
Edson Oda’s debut feature Nine Days, is, quite simply, miraculous. This spiritual-fiction (“spi-fi”—coined by supporting lead Benedict Wong) film follows Will (Winston Duke in...
Ma Belle, My Beauty | Review
Lover Come Back: Hill’s Debut a Refreshing Portrait of Intimacy and Attraction
Three may not actually be a crowd, but it certainly heightens complications in...
Flag Day | Review
Americana Trauma: Penn Returns with Hysterical Melodrama
After the formidable misfire of his last directorial effort The Last Face (2016), Sean Penn unfortunately doesn’t fare...
Wildland | Review
Wild in the Streets: Nordahl’s Debut Spins on Devotional Dysfunction
The family crest for the sinister brood at the heart of Jeanette Nordahl’s directorial debut...
Wife of a Spy | Review
Spy Game: Kurosawa Finds Passion & Terror in History’s Gloom
One doesn’t tend to associate period melodrama or espionage with Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a perennial genre...
Candyman [Video Review]
Sweet Heat: DaCosta Resurrects a Darkness in Spiritual Sequel
Back in 1991, Bernard Rose’s Candyman rose to prominence as one of the few mainstream American...
The Unknown Man of Shandigor (1967) | 2021 Fantasia Film Festival Review
Cold Cuts: Roy’s Nuclear Spy Thriller Renews Its Half-Life
In The Unknown Man of Shandigor, one can experience a cinematic time capsule of corresponding themes...
TIFF 2021: Platform Comp includes Cantet, Siegel/McGehee, Abu-Assad & Hadžihalilović
Riz Ahmed and the yet to be named pair of Platform Jury teammates won't have much watching to do as this year's Platform section...
Medea | 2021 Locarno Film Festival Review
Who Could Kill a Child?: Zeldovich Explores a Fearful Symmetry in Modernized Tragedy
Russian director Alexander Zeldovich’s filmography is something of a curiosity unto itself,...
John and the Hole | Review
The Little Boy Who Lives Down the Lane: Sisto Finds a Psychopath in Disturbing Debut
There’s no arguing the discomforting vibe of John and the...
Ema | Review
Dance, Fools, Dance: Larraín Dances to Delirium in Arthouse Soap Opera
Pablo Larraín returns to Chile to dance the body electric in Ema, a masquerade...
She Will | 2021 Locarno Film Festival Review
She Wants Revenge: Colbert Commingles Traumas for a Witchy Saga
Director Charlotte Colbert delivers a moody character portrait mired in the mysteriousness of folk horror...
