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…

“Is this the beginning of something crumbling, or is something that’s gonna strengthen [the restaurant industry].” Gravitas Venture has already released this documentary film on VOD already – but we’re just now catching up with it. Directed by Peter Ferriero, Sorry We’re Closed takes a look into the personal trauma, mental health, and livelihood of…

“Back on the Strip,” about a young man who wants to become a magician and the middle-aged ex-strippers who train him to be an exotic dancer instead, is a slapped-together indie comedy. It would probably crater completely and become unwatchable were it not for the charisma of its actors, which is boundless, and the lightheartedness of the…

The world lost a true legend with the death of Clarence Avant, the “Godfather of Black Entertainment,” who passed away August 13th in Los Angeles at age 92. He worked quietly behind the scenes to help advance the careers of so many who became giants in the worlds of music, sports and politics, with the aim of providing…

“After so long chasing him, I hope this is the one.” Freestyle Digital Media has unveiled a new US trailer for a French thriller titled The Pilot, from filmmaker Paul Doucet. This already debuted on VOD in France last year, and will finally be released on VOD in the US this September. A military drone…

As a queer woman, Stewart Thorndike aims to make feminist films in the genre sphere. After receiving her MFA at NYU, her thesis short film, “Tess and Nana,” debuted at SXSW. She then began working on her first feature “Lyle,” the first of a planned thematic trilogy about the power of motherhood. A sort of…

The Lincoln Presidential Foundation’s first-ever multimedia project, the documentary film series, “Warning Signs: Lincoln’s Response to Rising Tensions in the 1850’s,” has received a prestigious Regional Emmy nomination in the Informational Content category from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) Mid-America chapter. The “Warning Signs” film series comprises four seven-minute films featuring a diverse group of experts who compare and…

“We own that flag, too.” Gravitas is releasing this documentary later this week – check out the film’s trailer. Downwind is about one of the little known side effects of the Manhattan Project (seen in Oppenheimer) – the fallout that affected downwind communities. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Mercury, Nevada? The latter was the site for the testing…

With his new film “Passages,” writer/director Ira Sachs forges a scorchingly sensual, exhilaratingly free, and brutally honest vision of romantic desire in all its raw, violent collisions.  Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonTracing the combustible relationships between filmmaker Tomas (Franz Rogowski), his longtime partner Martin (Ben Whishaw), and schoolteacher Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos),…

“Haunting and deeply disturbing.” Yellow Veil Pictures has revealed an official US trailer for an indie crime thriller titled Ashkal: The Tunisian Investigation from Tunisia, made by filmmaker Youssef Chebbi. The film premiered at last year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, with stops at the Toronto Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, and Beyond Fest. The story begins…

“If there was trouble within 100 yards of the entrance, it was dealt with.” The first teaser trailer is out for a Chinese martial arts action film titled 100 Years, co-directed by the filmmakers Xu Haofeng (The Sword Identity, The Final Master, The Hidden Sword) & Xu Junfeng. This is premiering as a centerpiece selection…

As the film world ardently awaits the opening of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which screened at the Cannes Film Festival, my anticipation is sky-high, as I’ve been following the film’s journey since 2017 upon Scorsese’s acquirement of the book rights to Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth…

Director Peter Berg approaches Netflix’s six-episode “Painkiller” with an almost frantic style. There’s an urgency here in his telling of the origin of the opioid crisis in this country that’s admirable given the damage still being caused by Purdue Pharma, but ultimately shallow. Every episode of the series opens with shots of loved ones of people…

In 2020’s “The Mole Agent,” the Chilean director Maite Alberdi got an elderly investigator into a nursing home and filmed his attempts to uncover potential abuse there. The senior facility residents were told that they were to be the subjects of a documentary. Which was true, but definitely in a different way than they clearly…

[The dog is, in fact, saved. Again. You’re welcome. – eds.] Story: Remember that preggo megalodon from the first film? Me neither, but other than Jason Statham punching a shark, I remember very little else. Anyway, that shark had a baby shark (DOO-DOO), and researcher Jiuming Zhang, decided to keep it For The Research. Naturally, our…

“Look into this, let me know what you think.” Here we go! Netflix has revealed the first official trailer for Chloe Domont’s extraordinary new film Fair Play, which is still one of our Top 10 films of the year so far. This first premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in January (where I saw…

Acclaimed actress/playwright/director Regina Taylor’s new play, Exhibit, will be staged on Friday, September 8th, and Wednesday, September 13th, as part of “Solo Flights,” an annual week-long developmental festival in Aspen, Colorado, of one-person shows presented in the beginning stages of their making.  Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonAccording to its official synopsis, Exhibit is…

“It’s nice to meet you, monster. I’m a monster, too.” Oh, wow. Hulu has revealed an official US trailer with English subtitles for a Korean superpowers series called Moving. This was actually produced by Disney+ in Korea, similar to the extra crazy series Connect from last year. Based on the webtoon of the same name…

Ira Sachs is one of American cinema’s most reliable crafters of human-scaled cinematic dramas. That description doesn’t sound too terribly exciting, so I should assure you that “Passages” is some kind of time at the movies—a briskly-moving, turbulent, emphatically sexy, deliberately exasperating love triangle in crazy times. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho…

Season Two of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”—a trashy, gaudy soap opera about the high-flying, run-and-gun Showtime Lakers—begins with a reenactment from Game One of the 1984 NBA Finals. A charged win at the Boston Garden by the Lakers ends with the Los Angeles team rushing to the team bus before a…