Category: Review
Film Review: ‘The Bikeriders’ Rides High on Movie Star Charm
A breezy ensemble piece rides into town with Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, a period crime drama starring Tom Hardy, Austin Butler, and Jodie Comer. Chronicling…
Film Review: ‘Kinds of Kindness’ is a Tough Sell (in Either Direction)
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness is going to be a problem. The worst film critic you know (or wannabe critic) will laud it as an underappreciated masterpiece….
Film Review: Richard Linklater Returns to Crowd-Pleaser with ‘Hit Man’
Coming-of-age stories. Decade-spanning humanist narratives. Rotoscoped paranoid thrillers. Richard Linklater is a member of a unique class of filmmakers whose next move can never be…
Rétrospective du Festival de Cannes: Deadly Shu Qi in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Masterful ‘The Assassin’ (2015)
This writer’s first encounter with the Taiwanese-Hong Kong actress, Shu Qi, was in the late 1990s. One of the few occasions a certain sibling, a…
Festival de Cannes Review: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
She’s mad as hell and as vengeful as they come— a woman of few words with the red hot fire of revenge in her eyes….
Rétrospective du Festival de Cannes: Film d’amore e d’anarchia, ovvero: stamattina alle 10, in via dei Fiori, nella nota casa di tolleranza… / Love and Anarchy, 1973
Lina Wertmüller might have a German name, but she is an unsung heroine of Italian cinema. The writer and director was the very first woman…
Rétrospective du Festival de Cannes: Le Passé / The Past (2013)
Iranian maestro filmmaker, Asghar Farhadi, dipped his toe in French language cinema in 2013 with The Past. It has to be said, a far more…
Film Review: Ava DuVernay’s ‘Origin’ (2023)
Based on journalist Isabel Wilkerson’s best-selling and award-winning non-fiction book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Origin is written, directed and co-produced by Ava DuVernay…
Film Review: Reptile (2023)
Coveted as a music video extraordinaire to all the big name singers of the twenty-twenties, it seems Grant Singer has decided to spread his directorial…
Film Review: George C. Wolfe Hat Tips Further African American Heritage with ‘Rustin’
Produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions and directed by George C. Wolfe (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), Rustin is a gripping insight into…
Film Review: ‘American Fiction’ Proves An Impressive Feature Film Debut for Cord Jefferson
If Cord Jefferson had not ‘made it’ in his profession as a writer for television, it would perhaps make sense seeing him try something different….
Alexander Payne Returns to Form with ‘The Holdovers’
When director Alexander Payne released his film Downsizing it was universally praised for its highly original premise. Unfortunately, however, it received decidedly mixed reviews for…
TV Review : The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)
The master of humanist horror is back with his Netflix swan song, premiering this spooky season on the major streaming platform. Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of…
TIFF 23 Dispatch: including ‘Fallen Leaves’; ‘Green Border’; ‘The Zone of Interest’
In addition to all the major Hollywood films and American indies I saw at TIFF, I also saw several international films from some of the…
