Tag: top-stories
The Wolf of Snow Hollow | Review
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: Cummings Returns with Cops and Neurotics
When one mentions werewolves, the notion of cinematic innovation seems moot. We’ve our...
The Forty-Year-Old Version | Review
What Happens to a Dream Deferred?: Blank Finds the Beauty of Herself in Striking Debut
Writer/director Radha Blank arrives in the wake of an opulent...
Black Box | Review
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die: Osei-Kuffour Explores Emotional Resonance in Savvy Medical Thriller
Horror and science-fiction have often been stomping grounds for exploring fantastic ideas...
The Lie | Review
Where Is It?: Sud Mines the Ethical Decay of the Privileged in Familiar but Fashionable Debut
Resorting to a continual, if varied tradition of remaking...
Charm City Kings | Review
Ride on Time: Soto Stunts in Summer Streets Lorded by Baltimore Bike Gangs
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but often real life plays out...
Time | Review
Lost in Time: One Family’s Decades-Long Battle Against Injustice
How do you measure lost time? At once elegiac and lyrical, Garrett Bradley’s documentary Time explores...
A Rainy Day in New York | Review
I Don’t Like Cities, But I Like New York: Allen’s Shelved Comedy Can’t Shake the Clouds
At one time the immortal city streets of New...
Eternal Beauty | Review
Unhappy-Go-Lucky: Hawkes Shines in Roberts’ Mental Illness Drama
The depiction of mental illness, particularly something like schizophrenia, a real condition often posed as a catch-all...
Scare Me | Review
Venus Envy: Ruben Mines Microaggressions in Uncomfortable Debut
The claustrophobic possibilities of ‘the cabin in the woods,’ not unlike ‘the old dark house,’ presents a...
Death of Me | Review
The Dead Don’t Die: Bousman Weathers a Storm in Slow Burn Genre
There’s no predicting what to expect from Darren Lynn Bousman, other than we’re...
Save Yourselves! | Review
The Mood of the Gods: Fischer & Wilson Deliver Millennial Crises in Amusing Debut
“This is the best thing we’ve ever done,” remarks one...
The Glorias | Review
Are the Voices in Your Head Calling, Gloria!: Taymor Tackles Feminist Icon in Peculiar Biopic
If there’s an art to the crafting of a biopic,...
12 Hour Shift | Review
Organ Trail: Grant Goes Haywire with Oversight on the Overnight Shift
Organ trafficking usually isn’t the focal point of a comedy, even a dark one,...
Interview: Haroula Rose – Once Upon a River
The well traveled musician (with fanbases in surprising spots around the globe) and filmmaker Haroula Rose got her first producing credit for Ryan Coogler's...
The Boys in the Band | Review
Walk-in Closets: Mantello Resurrects the Classic Queer Miasma of Fear & Loathing
In the five decades since it first arrived off-Broadway, Matt Crowley’s seminal play...
Possessor Uncut | Review
The Mind Benders: Cronenberg Returns with Eerie Exercise of Mind/Body Horror
Eight years after his 2012 debut Antiviral, Brandon Cronenberg returns with Possessor Uncut, an...
American Murder: The Family Next Door | Review
Marriage Story: Popplewell Explores Watts Family Tragedy
If Tolstoy asserted through his opening statements in Anna Karenina an adage of all happy families being the...
Misbehavior | Review
Through Beauty, Equality: Lowthorpe Examines Intersections Through Provocative Period Nexus
Sporting material speckled with enough players and perspectives to justify a much longer format, Philippa...
Arte France Cinéma Give Coin to Hansen-Løve’s “Un beau matin” & Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Les Herbes sèches”
The Arte France Cinéma selection committee will be supporting a trio of eyebrow raising projects that will go into production in 2021. At the...
Kajillionaire | Review
Money Monsters: July Returns with Poignant Puzzle of Curious Criminals
Con artists come in all shapes and sizes, but nowhere are they as decidedly low...
The Last Shift | Review
Stuck in Neutral: Cohn Cooks Up Sensitive (and Hilarious) Fast Food Tragedy
Andrew Cohn delivers a heart-wrenching ode to the working class, missed connections and...
The Secrets We Keep | Review
The Forgiveness of Blood: Rapace Shines in a Loose Regurgitation of Dorfman Play
The strangest aspect of The Secrets We Keep, the third feature from...
The Nest | Review
Bonfire of the Wannabes: Durkin Returns with Scenes from a Consumerist Marriage
Sean Durkin, at last, returns with sophomore feature The Nest nine years after...
Video Interview: Sean Durkin – The Nest
One of the hallmark signature hallmarks found in Durkinian cinema is the ability to capture the psychology of his characters through their inaction. This...
Antebellum | Review
(Re)Birth of a Nation: The Past is Our Present in the Auspicious Debut from Bush & Benz
Genre filmmaking has always been the most fruitful...
The Devil All the Time | Review
Devil May Care: Campos Composes Heady Southern Gothic
For his fourth feature film The Devil All the Time, based on the 2011 novel by Donald...
In Between Dying | 2020 Venice Film Festival Review
In the Mood for Love: Baydarov Searches for a Real Love in Enigmatic Road Trip
All you need is love, if you can find it,...
Space Dogs | Review
Every Dog Will Have Her Day: Kremser & Peter Create a Canine Ghost Story in Moody Doc
One mustn’t love dogs, per se, to enjoy...
The Best Is Yet to Come | 2020 Venice Film Festival Review
Disease Beat: Jing Revisits the Turn of the Century with Saccharine Debut
Whenever the protégé of a major contemporary auteur branches out into their own...
Video Interview: Maïmouna Doucouré – Cuties | 2020 Sundance Film Festival
With her award-winning short Maman(s), Maïmouna Doucouré masterfully details the traumas associated by living in a nonsecular upbringing. Mining from her own experiences and...
Cuties | Review
L’amener Sur: Doucouré’s Debut a Winning, Familiar Bildungsroman
French writer/director Maïmouna Doucouré strikes a mostly affable balance between familiar coming-of-age tropes and culturally specific intersections...
The Furnace | 2020 Venice Film Festival Review
Easier for a Camel: MacKay Unearths Troubling History in Revisionist Western Debut
Like Jennifer Kent before him with 2018’s The Nightingale, director Roderick MacKay mines...
Apples | 2020 Venice Film Festival Review
Blight of My Life: Nikou Finds Meaning Through Its Absence in Exceptional Debut
Somewhere along the way, the Greek Weird Wave has seemingly evolved from...
Mulan | Review
Woman is the Future of Man: Caro Adapts a Folklore Classic for Western Eyes
At first glance, Disney’s live-action reboot of Mulan, a long-gestating project...
You BETcha!: Nomadland is the Odds on Favorite for the 2020 Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion
With Cannes offering up a hypothetical edition and the Karlovy Varys and Locarnos conducting some form of film community outreach, the COVID-19 pandemic might...
Exes and Ohs: Regression Tension in Tewkesbury’s Debut “Old Boyfriends” (1979) | Blu-ray Review
“What happens when you see them again?” reads the tagline for Old Boyfriends (1979), the directorial debut of screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury, a question which...
I’m Thinking of Ending Things | Review
In Search of Lost Time Regained: Kaufman Mutates Memory and Meaning
“The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new lands but seeing...
Centigrade | Review
Cold Comfort Car: Walsh Gets Wound Up in Perfunctory Trauma Reenactment
Survival thrillers which reenact harrowing experiences documented by those who lived through unthinkable trauma...
Bill & Ted Face the Music | Review
Songs from an Empty Room: Parisot Resurrects Beloved Slackers for Nostalgic Trilogy Capper
There aren’t any nonsensical yet iconic duos from 1990s pop cinema who...
The Personal History of David Copperfield | Review
I am (re) Born: Iannucci Condenses a Dickens Masterpiece with Contemporary Aims
“It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon...
Lingua Franca | Review
Love Language: Sandoval Paints Subtle Portrait of Tenuous Lives on the Periphery
Eventually, the third film from Isabel Sandoval, Lingua Franca, should eventually serve as...
Interview: Composer Jean-Michel Blais – Matthias & Maxime
Deemed as a return to his indie filmmaking roots, Xavier Dolan's film character sets will be forever tied to soundtracks that lyrically express a...
Matthias and Maxime | Review
Peas & Carrots: Dolan Gets Caught in a Bad Romance
Xavier Dolan devotees will be happy to note his latest feature, the treacly melodrama Matthias...
Lighted Fools of Yesterday: The Grass Isn’t Always Greener in Sirk’s Neglected Drama “There’s Always Tomorrow” | Blu-ray Review
When one ponders the filmography of Douglas Sirk, one languishes in his successful meditation on stifled American lives in his 1950s soapy melodramas, the...
Criterion Collection: Bruce Lee – His Greatest Hits | Blu-ray Review
Bruce Lee is and forever will be the world’s greatest martial arts film star, perhaps only rivalled in iconicity by Jackie Chan. Both martial...
Woman Thou Art Loosed: McKee Mines Our Brutal, Inherent Misogyny in Grisly “The Woman” (2011) | Blu-ray Review
Arguably director Lucky McKee’s most radically troubling film is his 2011 hotbed of subversive themes, The Woman, which generated much distress upon its premiere...
Diamonds Aren’t a Girl’s Best Friend in Pallardy’s Camp Saga “White Fire” | Blu-ray Review
In the realm of failed art exists a select category of cinema so terribly conceived those deserving of its distinction are worthy of timeless...
Written on the Wind: Mastorakis’ Grecian Thriller a Find for Foster Fans with “The Wind” | Blu-ray Review
Arrow Video continues to champion and resurrect the filmography of B-movie director Nico Mastorakis with his 1986 title The Wind, which was released theatrically...
Tesla | Review
Sugar Pop Electric: Almereyda Gets Inventive with Curio Biopic
If one is familiar with the filmography of Michael Almereyda, one should already know when approaching...
Cut Throat City | Review
Yolo in NOLA: RZA Battles Corruption Post-Katrina in Stifled Neo-Noir
The multi-faceted artist RZA returns to the director’s seat for the third time with Cut...
