“The whole world is watching!” This iconic chant from the protest movement of the ‘60s is featured multiple times in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” The timing of the film’s release as laws against protest movements in the United States gain traction and one of the most important elections in the country’s history…
This movie’s opening scene is a scenery-chewing feast. Kate Bosworth’s Gigi comes swaggering into a boardroom at Houston’s Shore Oil, wearing a duster that maybe she picked up in the costume trailer for a spaghetti Western, and sets a flask in front of her not too long after sitting down. Across from her sits Alfred…
“You rented a car?!” “Isn’t it snazzy!” Amazon has released an official trailer for Alan Ball’s new film Uncle Frank, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It also stopped by the Deauville, Atlanta, Mill Valley, and Savannah Film Festivals throughout this year. Writer-director Alan Ball’s heartfelt and hilarious road movie travels…
★★★★ Directed by #PietroMarcello Written by #MaurizioBraucci #PietroMarcello #JackLondon Starring #LucaMartinelli #JessicaCressy Film Review by Hope Madden “The world is stronger than me.” So opens documentarian turned feature filmmaker Pietro Marcello’s very Italian reimagining of the Jack London classic, Martin Eden. An avowed Socialist, London’s 9th novel—written long after the working class author had found…
★★ Directed by: #StevenBrill Written by: #AdamSandler & #TimHerlihy Starring: #AdamSandler, #JulieBowen, #KevinJames, #RayLiotta & #SteveBuscemi Film Review by Connor Slatkoff Sharpe A little over one year ago, Adam Sandler made the ominous statement that were he to be snubbed by the Oscars for his performance in the Safdie brothers’ New York crime thriller Uncut…
Welcome to How’d They Do That? — a bi-monthly column that unpacks moments of movie magic and celebrates the technical wizards who pulled them off. This entry looks into the breathing television effect in Videodrome. When David Cronenberg directed Videodrome in the early ’80s, he was coming off of a series of fiercely original indie…
★★★★ Directed by: #SandeepVarma Written by: #SandeepVarma & #EricNduati Starring: #CeceliaZimmerman & #TiffanyLanders Film Review by: Patrick Foley Wilderness Film Review We’re all being encouraged to spend time outside these days. A walk in the woods is a far healthier way to break lockdown monotony than re-watching ‘The Office’ for the eighth time or unlocking…
For the past two months in Colonial Williamsburg, the living history museum in Virginia, Gowan Pamphlet has stood outside an archaeological excavation, jovially saying hello to passersby. He’s not the original Pamphlet: That one died in 1809, and was the first ordained African American in the United States. This Pamphlet—one of two “actor interpreters” who…
Everybody’s sick to death of hearing about these “unprecedented times”, and nobody more so than film festival organisers. As rising Covid cases started to cancel festivals at the start of the year, festivals were faced with the decision of moving online, or scrapping this year’s edition outright, creating new challenges that may have made films…
Consider Hawaiian pizza: The divisive pineapple-and-ham topped pie is viewed as an abomination by many pizza lovers, including the president of Iceland, who once threatened to ban it. Consider, too, boxed mac and cheese. In a world of wonderful noodle dishes, from silky cacio e pepe to ramen served in a rich broth, Americans dump…
On April 20th, 1968, Enoch Powell stood in front of members of the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham and gave an oration infamously known as the Rivers of Blood speech. In it, Powell strongly criticised mass immigration and discussed the bill that would introduce the Race Relations Act, widely derided at the time. It was…
“Is that not political?” World of Wonder has unveiled an early trailer for the documentary Wojnarowicz, with a much more provocative full title: Wojnarowicz: F–k You F-ggot F–ker. The film is premiering at the DOC NYC Film Festival next month. Their full description: “Emerging as a distinctive voice in the East Village art scene of…
It was a cold January morning in 2019 when an unfamiliar car rolled into Allendale, a small village nestled within the North Pennines in Northumberland County, England. This wasn’t unusual; in the prior three months the village had seen a fresh influx of visitors, ever since the grand opening of “Neil Cole’s Adventures in Science…
It’s no accident many films and TV shows promote gun control. Yes, most Hollywood activists want more restrictions on the Second Amendment, not less. They’re happy to share those sentiments on awards show stages, social media and press interviews. It still took a group dedicated to tweaking Hollywood storylines to officially make it happen. Everytown…
Shirley Jackson was, by most accounts, an odd sort. Her feverish gothic tales such “Hangsaman” or “The Haunting of Hill House” were not exactly considered a reasonable thing for a woman to be writing in the mid-50s. Yet her stories captured and terrified the imaginations of people the world over. For all this, she was…
★★★★ Directed by #CooperRaiff Written by #CooperRaiff Starring #CooperRAiff #DylanGelula It takes a certain bravery to cast yourself as a leading man who spends more time talking to his mom and stuffed dog than the romantic object of his affection. But Shithouse, the loosely autobiographical festival favorite from writer/director Cooper Raiff, isn’t the typical college…
Constructed during the early 18th-century during the reign of Sultan Ismail bin Sharif, the Kara Prison (or Habs Qara) is a vast subterranean prison in the city of Meknes, Morocco. Its most unusual feature is that it lacked doors and bars, but it’s believed that no one ever escaped. Its inescapability despite lacking bars and…
★★★ Directed by: David Ash Written by: David Ash Starring: Matt Bailey, Clarence Wethern, Katie Willer, Bethany Ford Binkley, Christine Weber ,,Film Review by: ,,Jason Knight Inner struggles, strong emotions, relationships, romance. There are plenty of these elements to be found in David Ash’s thoughtful drama. The story explores the lives and relationships of certain…
Experiencing Jennifer Sheridan’s unsettling, surprisingly moving debut feature Rose: A Love Story is like watching a very bleak version of Santa Clarita Diet. Where that show (which was glorious and cancelled far too early by Netflix) explored the ‘reality’ of living with a normal person who just happens to be a zombie, Sheridan’s film, scripted…
The island of Cyprus is known for its various offerings of exotic foods and cuisines. Now, tourists and locals alike can marvel at more than 20,000 ways to flavor their food at the Salt & Pepper Museum. Inside is one of the world’s largest collections of seasoning shakers. Every item in the museum comes from…
October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true. Most people take that to mean highlighting one horror movie a day, but here at FSR, we’ve taken that up a spooky notch or nine by celebrating each day with a top ten list. This article about…
Yerevan can surprise the occasional visitor with its abundance of public art. One contemporary example is the spider statue in the city’s Charles Aznavour Square. Dedicated to the French Armenian singer Charles Aznavour, this square boasts a number of landmarks, including the Moscow Cinema, the Stanislavski Russian Theatre, and the giant spider. Upscale and austere,…
Located in the mountains southeast of downtown Sochi, Eagle Cliffs (Орлиные скалы – Orlinyye skaly) provides a reasonably easy hiking experience. It’s complete with placid meadows, spectacular views across the Caucasus Mountains, waterfalls, and swimming holes. At the mountaintop is a statue of Prometheus, the Greek hero associated with the Caucasus region. Rising well over 1,300 feet…
★★★★ Directed by: Pete Docter Written by: Pete Docter, Kemp Powers, Starring: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Film Review by Robert Stayte Soul Film Review Pixar’s releases as of late have not been bad by any means, but they haven’t been reaching the height of quality that they used to be capable of reaching. Most animated…
A game will be turned on its head in Free Guy, the latest from director Shawn Levy. Guy was pretty content with his life. He had an okay job, spent time with his best friend, and mostly avoided the gruesome mayhem surrounding him. That is until he encountered a woman he couldn’t let slip by, so…
Completed in 1572, Büyük Han is an exquisite example of Ottoman caravanserai architecture. Documents reveal that its original name was Yeni Han (New Inn). Due to the high number of patrons from Alanya, it became known as Alanyalılar Hanı, but during the 17th-century, a smaller inn was opened nearby. People began referring to the two…
★★★★★ Directed by #GarrettBradley Starring #FoxRich #RobRichII #FreedomRich Film Review by George Wolf I can’t remember the last time a film I was dreading made me feel so grateful that it existed. I knew that Time was a documentary account of a man serving an outrageous prison sentence, and the wife who was working to…
★★★★★ Directed by #AaronSorkin Written by #AaronSorkin Starring #SachaBaronCohen #MarkRylance #EddieRedmayne Film Review by Hope Madden Oscar winning, much beloved and frequently frustrating writer Aaron Sorkin first ducked behind the camera for the clever if overwritten 2017 indulgence Molly’s Game. A courtroom drama (very Sorkin) about celebrity tabloid fodder (less Sorkin-like), the film seemed an…
Jia Zhangke is one of the most intriguing chroniclers of contemporary Chinese life in cinema today. His latest feature, Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, is his first documentary since his lyrical ode to the city of Shanghai, I Wish I Knew, was released in 2010. (That film was conveniently re-released and screened in…
In a yellow taxi in the Jordanian capital of Amman, a photo of Saddam Hussein dangles from Mustafa Khalid’s rear-view mirror. The dictator’s face is printed on one side of an air freshener; the other side shows Jordan’s late King Hussein. As Khalid drives through the packed city streets, the two faces seem to trade…
★ Written, directed and produced by Rahul D. Starring: Sudarshana Das and Sumit Ghoshal Film review by Will Jones I have always found it somewhat charming that older and plenty of newer Indian films, from various regions, not only begin with a note that ‘Smoking [and/or Consumption of alcohol] is injurious to health’, but will…
On November 4, 1857, a notice appeared in the Cambridge Democrat, the local newspaper of Cambridge, Maryland. Submitted by one Dr. Alexander Hamilton Bayly, it offered a $300 reward for anyone who could locate and kidnap a 28-year-old woman named Lizzie Amby, whom Bayly had enslaved. She had fled Bayly’s house some days before, bound…
The fourth installment of Fargo — Noah Hawley‘s crime anthology series based on the Coen Brothers‘ 1996 movie of the same name — opens with a fictionalized history lesson, narrated by a clever 16-year-old biracial girl named Ethelrida Pearl Smutny (E’myri Crutchfield), who, for 24 minutes, explains the power dynamic of Kansas City crime in…
★★★★ Directed by: Christopher Deakin Written by: Christopher Deakin Starring: Katherine Farquhar, Adam Cryne Film review by: Joseph Rodgers Ever had one of those conversations where heavy words lingered in the air for longer than you could bear? Writer-director Christopher Deakin finds a witty and emotionally resonant way of presenting this in Ineffable, a tale…
★★★ Directed by: #ChadFerrin Written by: #ChadFerrin, H.P. Lovecraft (inspired by) Starring: #GinaLaPiana, #JackieDebatin, #JohannUrb, #RobertMiano, #SilviaSpross Grimmfest Film Review by: ,,Darren Tilby If you have seen one cultist community film, you have seen them all, right? Well, no, actually. There are plenty of films attempting to breath new life into this hackneyed subgenre of…
CW: domestic violence, abuse There is a shot in Phyllida Lloyd’s exceptional Herself, during a wince-inducing scene of domestic violence, that reminded me of something out of a horror movie. Our heroine Sandra lies on the floor, hair over her face, arm outstretched, as she tries to get away from her abuser. It is an…