Tag: top-stories
The China Hustle | Review
Unmuddied Waters: Rothstein Exposes How Financial Loopholes Conned The World
The stock market’s vitality affects almost every aspect of everyday life, potentially changing national economies...
Tuesday Blus: Flowers of Taipei in Hsiao-hsien’s Daughter of the Nile (1987)
Although he’s most widely regarded for a cluster of films from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, it was the 1980s which remain...
The Conversation – Cannes Predictions I: North & South America
As we near the announcement of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival’s program next month (April 12th for Cannes, 16th for Critics' Week and possibly...
Video: Shorts Program 1 | 2018 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance’s Shorts Program 1 is often one of the festival’s very first screenings each year. In some ways, these short filmmakers get a chance...
Interview: Philip Gröning – My Brother’s Name Is Robert and He Is an Idiot | 2018 Berlin Intl. Film Festival
Evoking narrative similarities to The Police Officer’s Wife (2013), Philip Gröning's seventh film, My Brother’s Name Is Robert and He Is an Idiot is a marathon...
Interview: Thomas Stuber – In the Aisle | 2018 Berlin Intl. Film Festival
Continuing with some of his lost souls interests found in his award-winning TIFF debut A Heavy Heart (2015), Thomas Stuber's sophomore feature film focuses on characters who...
Back to Burgundy | Review
Days of Wine and More Wine: Klapisch Delivers a Weak Vintage with Sibling Saga
French director Cedric Klapisch has enjoyed something of a singular, sanctified...
Friday’s Child | 2018 SXSW Film Festival Review
Edward's Coming of Age Thriller on the Fringe is a Big Mood
Some films aren’t meant to be enjoyed, some instead exist to agitate and...
Isle of Dogs | Review
A Dog’s Tale: Anderson Returns to Animation with Scruffy, Eclectic Fantasy
We’ve come to expect a certain technical formality from Wes Anderson, even across a...
Interview: Samuel Maoz – Foxtrot
It's been almost a full decade since Venice Golden Lion 2009's Lebanon (check out our 2009 interview), so it was with considerable anticipation and curiosity as...
Video: Jim Hosking’s An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn | 2018 Sundance Film Festival
The type of idiosyncratic creative that will likely polarize auds much in the same way Harmony Korine did, Jim Hosking's follow up to The...
Video: Hannah Fidell’s The Long Dumb Road | 2018 Sundance Film Festival
The road trip movie is probably the most tired sub-genre after the coming of age film, and yet with a fresh coat of paint...
Beauty and the Dogs | Review
Body Talk: Ben Hania’s Troubled and Troubling Portrait of Sexual Assaul
Perfectly encapsulating, perhaps to the heights of exaggeration and exploitation, why victims of sexual...
Ismael’s Ghosts (Director’s Cut) | Review
Call Me, Ismael: Desplechin Presents Jumbled Portrait of the Artist as a Dulled Man
Perhaps not since the quill of Charles Dickens, wherein iconic Ebenezer...
Video: Sandi Tan’s Shirkers | 2018 Sundance Film Festival
Sandi Tan's first (or second pending how categorize them) feature film is truly a masterclass in reappraising and reappropriating your own creative work arch....
Video: Andrew Heckler’s Burden | 2018 Sundance Film Festival
A long time in the making and perhaps the longest gestating film from the entire line-up all sections combined, starring Garrett Hedlund, Forest Whitaker...
The New Romantic | 2018 SXSW Film Festival Review
You've Got Male: Stone Adds to the Win Column with Delightful Debut
The New Romantic is a dramedy for the next generation that poses a...
The Breaker Upperers | 2018 SXSW Film Festival Review
Conscious Coupling: Modern Day "Womance" via Kiwi Duo
Yes, there is an extra syllable in the Breaker Upperers, a title imbued with the fumblings of...
Interview: James Wilks – Louie Psihoyos’ The Game Changers
After the heavily trophied The Cove (2009) and his Mission Impossible styled eco-thriller Racing Extinction (2015), docu-helmer Louie Psihoyos once again takes aim at industry. Preeming...
Tomb Raider | Review
A Tomb of One’s Own: Uthuag Cracks a Croft Pot with Video Game Reboot
Norwegian helmer Roar Uthaug, who scored an international breakthrough with his...
Eighth Grade | Review
Grade A Time Capsule: Bo Burnham’s Offers Torturous Last Week of Middle School.
Eighth Grade is literally eighth grade in hyphenate-comedian Bo Burnham’s resonant directorial...
Hannah | Review
No Whale Out: Pallaoro Strikes Somber Chords with Pitch Perfect Rampling
You’ll be hard pressed to find another melodrama as inconspicuously tightlipped as Andrea Pallaoro’s...
The Cleaners | 2018 Sundance Film Festival Review
Behind the Curtain: Block & Riesewieck Reveal the Trade of Internet Moderation
For the past decade, censorship on social media has been an increasingly hot...
2018 SXSW Film Festival: Matt Delman’s Top 5 Most Anticipated Films
An almost masochistic and perhaps futile exercise, as per usual here on the site, we stick to the mandate of picking a lottery ticket...
Interview: Mani Haghighi – Pig | 2018 Berlin Intl. Film Festival
A thematic combination of his two last works A Dragon Arrives! (2016) and 50 Kilos of Sour Cherries (2016), Mani Haghighi's latest film follows the...
Interview: Bavo Defurne & Yves Verbraeken – Souvenir
We met with director Bavo Defurne and screenwriter Yves Verbraeken following the premiere of their sophomore collaboration Souvenir at the Toronto International Film Festival...
What’s Up Doc? Hao Wu, Khalik Allah & Jenny Murray Top March Must See Doc List
The year has already picked up significantly since Sundance, as eyes turn to this past weekend's True/False, SXSW, and Tribeca Film Festivals. Taking the...
Dylan Kai Dempsey’s Top 10 Films of 2017
Some, including the American literary scholar James English, argue that artists shouldn’t care about awards like the Oscars. Author of “The Economy of Prestige,”...
Red Sparrow | Review
Bird of Prey: Lawrence Tries a Red Scare with Gritty Espionage Thriller
Like the Marquis de Sade outfitted for a contemporaneous tangent of the...
Foxtrot | Review
Dancing in Hollow: Maoz Moves Sharply between Shock, Grief & Absurdity
Israeli director Samuel Maoz was one of the most surprising Golden Lion winners in...
Death Wish | Review
Wish in One Hand…: Roth Revamps Urban Terror for the Neo-Privileged
Vigilantism isn’t perhaps the best narrative thrust for American audiences during the early days...
Video: Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot: 2017 TIFF Post Screening Q&A
Among the fivesome of nominees for Best Foreign Language Film for this weekend's Oscars, Foxtrot finally makes its way into theatres this weekend via Sony Pictures Classics...
The Conversation: Finale of the Berlinale 2018
In what constitutes a rather curious and unpredictable session of the Berlin International Film Festival, the 68th edition of the festival ended with some...
Gloria Meet Gioria: Fabrice Du Welz Finds Lead for “Adoration” (EXCLUSIVE)
Showcased as part of the fierce acting quartet in the Venice Film Festival Silver Lion winning Xavier Legrand's Custody (Jusqu'à la garde), child actor...
Mug (Twarz) | 2018 Berlin Intl. Film Festival Review
Eyes Without a Face: Szumowska Constructs a Christ Figure in Melancholic Farce
Love is a many splendored thing, albeit something often compromised or mutilated by...
Interview: Andrey Zvyagintsev – Loveless
A master of complex family dramas, with Andrey Zvyagintsev's latest we are witness to abandonment and neglect via an intense investigation of the family torn apart...
Interview: Bo Burnham – Eighth Grade | 2018 Sundance Film Festival
Way back in 2006, Robert Pickering “Bo” Burnham won our hearts with viral home videos during YouTube’s first legs. Since then, the 27-year-old hyphenate...
Video: Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade – 2018 Sundance Film Festival
Is Eighth Grade an affectionate critique of adolescence? A study on our relationship with technology? A self-love letter aimed at insecure adults? All of...
Interview: Elsie Fisher – Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade | 2018 Sundance Film Festival
Previously unknown aside from her voice acting in the Despicable Me series, Elsie Fisher is a star-in-the-making thanks to her performance in Bo Burnham’s...
Interview: Josh Hamilton – Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade | 2018 Sundance Film Festival
We caught up with film (recent Park City trips include Experimenter, Take Me to the River, Manchester by the Sea) and TV staple Josh...
Shock Waves: Diary of My Mind / First Name: Mathieu | 2018 Berlin Intl. Film Festival Review:
In the spirit of the 2011 German mini-series Dreileben (which included segments from Christian Petzold, Christoph Hochhausler, and Dominik Graf), in which a trio...
Eva | 2018 Berlin Intl. Film Festival Review
All About Eva: Jacquot Remounts Losey with a Haughty Huppert
“Don’t get hooked,” she warns of her much younger lover. But by the time she...
Black Panther | Review
Black Cat, Nine Lives: Coogler Clocks a Milestone with Exemplary Marvel
Rare is the opportunity to be surprised by anything studio related in mainstream American...
Through the Looking Glass – the Top 50 American Indie Films of 2019: Picks #5 to #1
#5. Eliza Hittman's A
With Eliza Hittman oeuvres we find a cinema about those trying to fit in. In remarkable back to back micro portraits in 2013's It...
Through the Looking Glass – the Top 50 American Indie Films of 2019: Picks #10 to #6
#10. Shane Carruth's The Modern Ocean
Much to our surprise and delight, when it was announced that thesps Anne Hathaway, Keanu Reeves, Daniel Radcliffe, Chloe...
Western | Review
German Cowboys Navigate Rocky Terrain in Brooding Drama
A film like Western simmers like a marshmallow on an open fire, never quite flaring up, but instead...
Through the Looking Glass – the Top 50 American Indie Films of 2019: Picks #50 to #11
It's never too early to look into the distant future. Last week, our Nicholas Bell took a look past the 2018 calendar with Through the...
The Conversation: Top 5 Most Anticipated 2018 Berlin Intl. Film Festival Offerings
On the surface, the competition lineup for Berlin 2018 seems demurer than the past several years. With the exception of the Wes Anderson opener...
The 15:17 to Paris | Review
Terror Train: Eastwood Monotonously Mulls an Act of Heroism in Failed Experiment
For evidence of why narrative filmmaking is generally assisted by the designation of...
Through the Looking Glass – The Top 50 Foreign Films of 2019: #5 to #1
#5. Nicolas Roeg’s The 7th Magpie
This past autumn, famed British auteur Nicolas Roeg began collecting financing for his first feature since 2007’s Puffball: The...
