Tag: top-stories
Driveways | Review
This Small Town: Ahn Aims for the Heart in Soulful Suburban Drama
Death acts as impetus in cinema, and in some cases characters must deal...
Deerskin | Review
Full Leather Jacket: Dupieux’s Cinema Bizarre Continues with Killer Style
Quentin Dupieux, France’s purveyor or loopy absurdism, returns with Deerskin, headlined by high-profilers Jean...
IndieSponge Episode 4 – Yankee Comandante, The Ice Beneath Her & An American Pickle
On this week’s episode of IndieSponge, Kevin Jagernauth and I talk talk about Jeff Nichols' possible sixth feature film Yankee Commandante (which would feature...
Tammy’s Always Dying | Movie Review
Tammy and the Television: Johnson Jam Packs Eccentric Indie Drama
Death becomes Felicity Huffman in the sophomore feature Tammy’s Always Dying from actress-turned director Amy...
The Wretched | Review
Something Derivative This Way Comes: The Pierce Bros. More Wicker than Wicked in Witchy Thriller
The dead aren’t so much evil in The Wretched, the...
Interview: César Díaz – Our Mothers (Nuestras Madres)
Directed by Guatamalan filmmaker César Diaz, Our Mothers premiered at Cannes Critics' Week section and took home the top prize for a first time...
Kokoloko | 2020 Tribeca Film Festival Review
Love is Bolder Than Death: Naranjo Returns to his Roots with Lo-Fi Melodrama
All’s fair in guerilla love and warfare, at least from the male’s...
Bull | Review
If There Be Horns: Silverstein Succeeds with Discerning Debut of Rural Desperation
Likely to be compared to Chloe Zhao’s 2017 breakout The Rider, director Annie...
1BR | Review
Cult Gestalt: Marmor Explores Urban Horrors in Efficient Debut
There’s apparently more than one way to define rent control, at least as suggested by David...
IndieSponge: Episode 3 – Oscar’s Future, Lynne Ramsay Adapting Atwood, 2020 Venice Film Fest Firm
On this week's episode of IndieSponge, Kevin Jagernauth and I talk about the 2020 Venice Film Festival confirming dates, the Whitney Houston Biopic with...
Margarethe von Trotta: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series) | Book Review
For its Conversation with Filmmakers Studies series, the University Press of Mississippi has provided a volume of interviews curated to reflect the influences and...
William Friedkin: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series) | Book Review
For its Film Studies series, the University Press of Mississippi has provided a volume of interviews curated to reflect the influences and accomplishments of...
Paul Verhoeven: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series) | Book Review
Margaret Barton-Fumo, who has interviewed an illustrious coterie of renowned international auteurs throughout her career (including genre stalwarts like Brian De Palma and idiosyncratic...
Bad Education | Review
A Touch of Class: Finley Explores Famed Embezzlement Scandal
Director Cory Finley revisits one of the education system’s most notorious scandals in Bad Education, an...
Extraction | Review
Contrary Mercenary: Hargrave’s Debut Holds Steady with Routinely Staged Action
There’s a rich, albeit somewhat underappreciated tradition of notable stuntmen who segue into the director’s...
Criterion Collection: The Cranes are Flying (1957) | Blu-ray Review
The only Soviet film to ever win the coveted Palme d’Or, Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying (1957), gets a loving 2K restoration on...
True History of the Kelly Gang | Review
The Ned Don’t Die: Kurzel Returns to Form with Exploration of Infamous Outlaw
It’s been nearly 140 years since the execution of Ned Kelly, Australia’s...
A White, White Day | Review
Indiscretion of an Icelandic Wife: Palmason Primes a Crime of Passion in Simmering Drama
Nothing is initially what it seems in Icelandic director Hlynur...
Interview: Hlynur Pálmason & Ingvar E. Sigurdsson – A White, White Day
At the last Critics' Week in Cannes 2019, critics took notice of Hlynur Pálmason’s second feature, A White, White Day. Pálmason’s debut, Winter Brothers,...
IONCINEMA.com introduces… IndieSponge
While it isn't business as usual in the film world with hundreds of film productions halted and entire quarters being kiboshed, we are nonetheless...
The Quarry | Review
Steeple People: Teems Gets Spiritual in Rough-hewn Sophomore Film
It’s been over a decade since director Scott Teems delivered his warmly received debut, That Evening...
Video Interview: Dylan Holmes Williams – The Devil’s Harmony (Short Film) 2020 Sundance Film Festival
With a certain clinical Lanthimos-like aestheticism and The Stepford Wives sorting of the character set, London-based filmmaker Dylan Holmes Williams has been super-charged by...
Video Interview: Teemu Niukkanen & Antti Toivonen – Are You Hungry? (Short Film) 2020 Sundance Film Festival
Making their second Park City trip in just as many outings with 2020's Are You Hungry? following in the footsteps of Fucking Bunnies (2017), the...
Sergio (2020) | Review
The Last Thing He Wanted: Barker Resurrects Martyred Diplomat in Feature Debut
Documentarian Greg Barker returns to the subject of U.N. High Commissioner for Human...
Video Interview: Zamo Mkhwanazi – Sadla (Short Film) 2020 Sundance Film Festival
Premiering her shorts at prestige fests such as Clermont-Ferrand, Cannes and the Toronto Intl. Film Festivals, Johannesburg (known as Jozi for locals) and Switzerland...
Selah and The Spades | Review
School for Scoundrels: Poe Preens a Teen Queen with Curious, Benign Debut
Director Tayarisha Poe fashions her debut Selah and The Spades, a YA drama...
Endings, Beginnings | Review
Some Other Beginning’s End: Doremus Continues on the Battlefield of Love
Love is hardly a many splendored thing in the filmography of Drake Doremus, who...
Interview: Lucía Garibaldi & Romina Bentancur – The Sharks (Los tiburones)
The apex of the ocean's pyramid of predators, the mystic and misunderstood animal is most renowned for its powerful bite. Sundance preemed The Sharks (Los...
Behind You | Review
The Mirror Crack’d: Mecham and Whedon Wax Derivative in Debut
Bearing all the marks of a strained production is Behind You, the directorial debut of...
Tigertail | Review
Tiger, Tiger Burning Dim: Yang Unveils a No-frills Yarn on Relationships, Regret
Producer Alan Yang (“Parks and Recreation,” “Master of None”) presents a highly personal,...
Video Interview: Haley Elizabeth Anderson – Pillars (Short Film) – 2020 Sundance Film Festival
Nature's wrath, individualism, a father-daughter relationship grounded in tough love and the L word are heightened and poetically rendered in Haley Elizabeth Anderson's Pillars...
We Summon the Darkness | Review
Heaven and Earth: Meyers Tackles Organized Religion with Droll Thriller
Director Marc Meyers returns to the isolating terrors of the rural Midwest in a different...
Sea Fever | Review
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Hardiman Finds Humanity in the Horror
We’ve seen countless films about bands of isolated humans in...
Video Interview: Alexandre Dostie – I’ll End Up in Jail (Short Film) – 2020 Sundance Film Festival
An award-winning film that began it's festival life at TIFF in 2019, and would hit Park City and prestigious Clermont-Ferrand early 2020, Quebecois filmmaker...
Why Don’t You Just Die! | Review
The Kalashnikov Sonata: Sokolov Serves Pulp in Enjoyably Nasty Debut
Hell hath no fury like a struggling actress, at least as it’s played in the...
Video Interview: Jessie Kahnweiler – He’s the One (Short Film) 2020 Sundance Film Festival
Arriving at the Sundance Film Festival with yet another thought-provoking and edgy-laced noir humor oeuvre that asks tough questions He's the One addresses victim...
Never Rarely Sometimes Always | Review
The Story of Women: Hittman Hits Home Run with Stellar, Topical Abortion Drama
How often have you seen an abortion drama, in any language, which...
Coffee & Kareem | Review
Fecal Weapon: Dowse Gets Derivative with (Another) Odd Couple Comedy
The odd couple dynamic in comedy is as old as the genre itself, and thus,...
The Other Lamb | Review
Lamb Tied to (Mis)Take: Szumowska Gets Culty with English Language Debut
Cults seem to be making something of a comeback in popular film culture, which...
Video Interview: Bridget Moloney – Blocks (Short Film)
An educational rainbow colored building toy that has been making victims out of unsuspecting adults (stepping on one is up there with Bruce Willis'...
Video Interview: Fanyana Hlabangane (The Spirit Guest) – 2020 Sundance Screenwriters Lab
Once again reflected in this year's batch, the 2020 January Screenwriters Lab truly emphasizes geographic inclusion and diversity perhaps best exemplified in this future...
Butt Boy | Review
Butt, I Won’t Do That: Cornack Redefines Anal Retentive in Crass Comedy
Although it requires a healthy suspension of disbelief in order for it...
Video Interview: Laura Moss & Brendan O’Brien (Birth/Rebirth) – 2020 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab
Most recently collaborating on the 1989-set coming-of-ager (set against the backdrop of Ted Bundy's execution) SXSW selected short Fry Day, they continued their creative output...
Criterion Collection: Bamboozled (2000) | Blu-ray Review
That Spike Lee remains one of the true provocative soothsayers of cinema should come as no surprise, yet it’s an epiphany for those reconsidering...
Criterion Collection: Teorema (1968) | Blu-ray Review
“Whatever the bourgeois do is wrong?” is a question posited in the flurried opening segment of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s arcane arthouse classic Teorema, a...
Video Interview: Andrew Thomas Huang (Tiger Girl) – 2020 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab
A multidisciplinary visual effects artist who has previously worked with the likes of Perfume Genius, Thom Yorke, FKA Twigs and most notably Björk (he...
Resistance | Review
The Wages of Ham: Jakubowicz Mimes Melodrama in Offkey Resistance
For his third film, Venezuelan born Jonathan Jakubowicz falls headlong into an acceptable faux pas...
Vivarium | Review
Life as a House: Beware the Burbs in Finnegan’s Metaphorical Sophomore Feature
The novelty of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone,” or any of its various...
Human Capital (2020) | Review
It’s Easier for a Camel…: Meyers and Moverman Craft Serviceable, Familiar Remake
Although it pulls no punches in its re-working of Paolo Virzi’s 2013 title...
Caught in a Bad Romance: Clouzot’s Dire Love Story Resurrected “Manon” | Blu-ray Review
Arrow Academy resurrects an early notable work from the filmography of Henri-Georges Clouzot with his 1949 Manon, which won the Golden Lion at the...
