The journey of attending film festivals encompasses screening new films, meeting film talent, and networking with fellow critics and moviegoers. It never disappoints, and on-site experience has always heightened my film perspective. Each film festival has its unique vibe and tone; having attended Cannes, Sundance, and Toronto, I’ve been waiting for the right time to…
Prolific feminist filmmaker Jennifer Reeder first picked up a camera while studying performance at Ohio State University. While attending the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1990s, she began creating dozens of DYI video art with a distinctly riot grrrl-bent. These include the anarchic short film “White Trash Girl,” with Reeder herself in the titular…
“Something doesn’t feel right here.” “Exactly – something is off…!” Uncork’d Entertainment has unveiled a trailer for a wacky indie horror film titled Mary Had A Little Lamb, from filmmaker Jason Arber. I guess they’re really digging at the bottom of the barrel finding anything to adapt and turn into films nowadays. This looks as…
It’s going to be an unusual Toronto International Film Festival this year. With the dual strikes still rattling the industry, the red carpets won’t be quite as star-studded, leading to a different kind of fest. However, the movies will still be there, with submissions from dozens of countries and hundreds of perspectives. In fact, we’re…
Remember the intermission scene in Mel Brooks’ 1966 “The Producers” where a won-over theatergoer bursts into the bar and exclaims, “Did you ever think in a million years you’d ever love a show called “Springtime for Hitler’?” I don’t want to be glib or make any appalling false equivalencies here. Just point out that film…
“We live in strange times.” Cinetic has debuted a festival promo trailer for the indie film The Monk and the Gun, the second feature made by the very talented Bhutanese filmmaker Pawo Choyning Dorji. His first film, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, was nominated for Best International Film at the 2022 Academy Awards –…
For his second cinematic magic trick of 2023 (the first was the sublime “Asteroid City”), director Wes Anderson conjures a shaggy dog story without a hair out of place. The source is the author Roald Dahl, whose The Fantastic Mr. Fox inspired Anderson’s first foray into stop-motion animation. Fox was a kid’s book of sorts, but Anderson…
“Dario Argento is fear!” Italian master of horror / giallo filmmaker Dario Argento finally gets the biopic documentary treatment. Premiering at the 2023 Venice Film Festival underway now in the “Venice Classics” section is Dario Argento Panico (also known as just Panico), a new documentary by filmmaker Simone Scafidi. The first biopic dedicated to Argento….
In a world where even Prime Video’s multi-billion dollar “Lord of the Rings” series doesn’t seem to have broken through to mainstream popularity the way they expected, another season of “The Wheel of Time” feels particularly superfluous. The first season premiered on Prime Video less than a year before “The Rings of Power,” presumably as…
“Put ‘em both up, insect, before I comb your hair with lead …” Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWhat reads like cliched dialogue from some forgotten B-western or gangster movie are among the most momentous words in the history of screen comedy. They mark the first on-screen meeting between Oliver Hardy and…
Pendleton Ward’s “Adventure Time” took Cartoon Network and its viewers by storm when it premiered in 2010. Its colorful palette, song & dance breaks, and voice acting made it stand out amongst other animated shows of its time, creating unforgettable iconography that still has a hold on pop culture today. The series originally followed a boy…
Whether you were dancing in the ‘80s, or dancing now, it would be hard to find a more infectious track than “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go,” one of the biggest hits by the short-lived English ’80s pop band Wham! While the band’s legacy was eclipsed by the mesmerizing rise of its lead singer and songwriter…
“A demonstration made up of angelic troublemakers, such as yourselves!” Netflix has revealed the first teaser trailer for the film Rustin, which is premiering at the Toronto Film Festival kicking off next week. It’s also likely to have its first premiere at the Telluride Film Festival later this week. The talented Colman Domingo stars in…
The Cinema Foundation, a non-profit branch of the National Association of Theatre Owners, has named this Sunday, August 27th, National Cinema Day, a one-day event that will see participating locations sell movie tickets for prices as low as four dollars. This special effort aiming to reinvigorate moviegoing will occur at more than 3,000 theaters across the U.S.,…
The facts of the matter are grim in “Scrapper.” A woman dies and leaves behind her 12-year-old daughter, Georgie (Lola Campbell). The father is not in the picture. Georgie doesn’t want to be put into the foster care system, so she sets up an elaborate lie system, telling the school and social services she is living…
For the last decade or so, Liam Neeson has been cranking out largely generic programmers that have no real reason to exist other than the hope that one might turn out to be another “Taken,” the 2008 thriller that became a massive worldwide hit and unexpectedly reinvented him as an action hero. I doubt I…
“Do you really want to leave her here alone, day after day?” Amazon Studios + MGM have unveiled the first official trailer for Foe, a new romantic drama from acclaimed filmmaker Garth Davis (of of the films Lion and Mary Magdalene before this). It’s currently set to premiere at the New York Film Festival, and…
This movie’s title describes a particular kind of equine gait in dressage. We get to see a version of this in a kind of film-within-a-film in this intriguing picture directed by Ann Oren (who co-wrote the script with Thais Guisasola). The work is a commercial, actually, for an anti-depressant. Which at first depicts a horse…
“You’re pushing things. The other wrestlers think you’re getting too big.” Let’s goooo Cassandro!! Amazon’s Prime Video has revealed the first official trailer for a film titled Cassandro, which originally premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. I watched this and loved it, still on my Best of 2023 list. It really…
I urge journalists from underrepresented communities: specifically, critics and writers who identify as BIPOC, women, LGBTQ+, and/or people with disabilities to apply for The Sundance Film Festival’s Press Inclusion Initiative, to attend and cover Sundance 2024. Those writers who are eligible and interested can apply here, after which they will receive a unique link to apply for accreditation to the festival. Both…
Half a century has done little to dull the potency of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 shocker, “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” Makeup artist Tom Savini is fond of saying that old films aren’t really old if you haven’t seen them yet. And I hadn’t seen the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” until six years ago, shortly…