To say Brian De Palma is a master of obsession is an understatement. For more than fifty years, he’s demonstrated his skill as one of the best American filmmakers by creating works steeped in paranoia and abound with suspenseful sequences that would have made Hitchcock sweat. His films, while often revolving around characters driven by…
It’s never too late to reinvent yourself in The Forty-Year-Old Version, the feature debut of writer, director, and actor Radha Blank. Drawing from her own life, Radha envisions a woman not dissimilar to herself: a promising playwright who, after being put on a prestigious 30 Under 30 list, saw her career fizzle. Now teaching and approaching 40, she’s…
After a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last January, Dinner in America, a punk comedy-drama writer/director Adam Rehmeier, came to genre-focused audiences at the virtual version of the Fantasia Film Festival. Film Inquiry chatted with Rehmeier about Mac Demarco, a good mixtape, and finding the right lead actors. This interview has been edited for…
It’s been a weird year, and my experience with 2020’s digital Sheffield Doc/Fest has been unusual. My engagement with the material has been somewhat at an arm’s length, without the opportunity for live participation and networking sessions. Nevertheless, the festival team did a remarkable job of consistently holding virtual Q&A sessions and panels on key…
Emma Jensen’s screenplay spares no time in setting the rules of I Am Woman, directed by Unjoo Moon. Free of the childhood, teenage, and first broken relationship, the film directly begins with Helen Reddy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) walking through a subway holding her 3-year old daughter, Tracy. Dressed in rosewood, a feminal color, while most men…
Acting is an art form, and behind every iconic character is an artist expressing themselves. Welcome to The Great Performances, a bi-weekly column exploring the art behind some of film and television’s greatest characters. This time, we turn the spotlight on Jennifer Carpenter as the titular character in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. When someone…
A woman will really get in your head in Possessor, the latest from writer/director Brandon Cronenberg. She’s able to do that because she’s backed by a powerful company, one that’s invested in mind control technology that allows Tasya to take control of another person. Through these unfortunate souls she carries out lucrative hits with hardly…
Streaming might be the future, but physical media is still the present. It’s also awesome, depending on the title, the label, and the release, so each week we take a look at the new Blu-rays and DVDs making their way into the world. Welcome to this week in Home Video for September 8th, 2020 including our…
With a filmed version finally being released on Disney+, fans and newcomers alike no longer have to enter a literal lottery for tickets or dig deep into their savings to have the chance to see Hamilton once from a seat fifty feet away, directly behind the world’s first human giraffe. Those that did, however, might…
The word incredible comes to mind when thinking about Francesco Giannini’s The Hall. The relevancy of the film and the parallels it contains will hit hard. It is important to note that the version of the film I had the opportunity of seeing was not yet complete, the current pandemic delaying post-production. Though this did nothing…
There’s no wonder that Australians remain in awe of the iconic work of country music legend and cultural touchstone Slim Dusty; every aspect of his storied career, from his cow-punching stage name to his leisurely ‘Chips Rafferty‘ swagger and way of weaving bush ballads into our national identity, perfectly embodied the classic Australian story, the…
Jon Stevenson’s Rent-A-Pal examines the videotape dating culture of the 1990s in this retro horror film. The film follows David (Brian Landis Folkins), a lonely single guy taking care of his mother who has dementia. In an effort to find a relationship for himself, he joins Video Rendezvous, a dating service. When 6 months pass,…
Kicking off right after the Sydney Film Festival made their historic turn towards making their annual cinematic celebration a digital banquet, the Melbourne International Film Festival – cheekily credited as 68½ edition – gave an online platform to a myriad of international and Australian artists to make their worldwide and domestic debuts, whether it be…
The late Kiarostami’s protegé Ahmad Bahrami returns with The Wasteland (Dashte Khamoush), a moody drama following the plight of a bricklaying factory in the middle of Iranian desert backwater. source: Venice Film Festival As part of the 77th Venice Film Festival’s Orrizonti lineup, and one of two films representing Iran at the festival, Bahrami’s second…
Queerly Ever After is a bi-monthly column where I take a look at LGBT+ films that gave their characters a romantic happily-ever-after. There will be spoilers. I am going to preface my review of the broad culture-clash comedy Mambo Italiano by saying that I am Jewish and Italian, and yes, dinner with my family is…
I find Mulan to be a fascinating case study in terms of reviewing a film based on existing source material. Depending on how you grew up with the story, you could identify it as either the most enduring Chinese folktale of all time or as one of your favorite Disney movies. Which makes this live-action…
Opening this historic 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival is Andrea Segre’s Molecole, a haunting meditation on virus-lockdown Venice. As part of the Biennale’s Out of Competition slate, Molecole was presented as the pre-opening film of the festival, a fitting personal exploration of the stillness and absurdity of our times. source: Venice Film Festival Venice…
Director Jeff Orlowski is known for his acclaimed documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Choral, films which lucidly capture the rapid erosion of Earth’s glaciers and barrier reefs. For his latest feature The Social Dilemma, he focuses on our broken world once more but takes a step back in examining what could bring about the apocalypse….
Things have gone well past thinking of ending things in Blackbird, the latest from director Roger Michell. Lily doesn’t have long no matter what she does. She’s terminally ill, but instead of waiting for an unspecified expiry date she’s set one herself and gathered her family for one last get together. She’s feeling chill about it…
Welcome to 4:3 & Forgotten — a weekly column in which Rob Hunter and I get to look back at TV terrors that scared adults (and the kids they let watch) across the limited airwaves of the ’70s. This week’s movie is 1979’s The Darker Side of Terror. Some of the most effective horror films exaggerate contemporary societal…
Welcome to World Builders, our ongoing series of conversations with the most productive and thoughtful behind-the-scenes craftspeople in the industry. In this entry, we chat with cinematographer Michael Watson about balancing the unreal with the very real horrors of Lovecraft Country. You don’t have time to get comfortable. Lovecraft Country does not care if you’re…