Reviews and coverage from major film festivals including Sundance, SXSW, SIFF, TIFF, and Cannes, the best and the rest of festival cinema.
Like a lens flare cast from No Country For Old Men or an arresting never-before-seen side plot from Breaking Bad, Transpecos sets us on the belt buckle region of the Mexican-American border. In a diminutive shanty of a migra outpost – in essence, a tollbooth and boom barrier – three glorified crossing guards witness hell...
If you had told me that John Travolta would comeback from his recent Academy Award persona butchery (2014’s “Adele Dazeem”, 2015’s repulsively awkward Scar-Jo sneak-a-kiss) by playing a sand-blasted moral compass in a Ti West Western (a Western, it must be noted, that is of the genre through and through, absent of the horror flair...
In Sophie Goodhart‘s intentionally lackadaisical comedy My Blind Brother, Nick Kroll sharpens his post-television presence as unambitious deadbeat Bill whose doomed purpose in life is to be a seeing-eye underdog for his egotistical handicapable brother Robbie (Adam Scott). Complications arise when Bill and Robbie have eyes, er feelings, for the same girl, the spirited, wanna-be-do-gooder...
To start with a bit of housekeeping, Hush joined the critically acclaimed Iranian Sundance debut Under the Shadow when it was swept up by preeminent streaming service Netflix before it was ever screened in front of an audience. Adding to their growing stockade of boutique horror films, Netflix has queued up the Mike Flanagan-directed thriller...
John Michael McDonagh stepped out from the shadows of filmmaker young brother Martin McDonagh, who’s crafted such cult modern classics as In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, in 2011 when he debuted The Guard. That film went on to mild box office success (overseas) and general critical adoration, though I’ll admit the deadpan acidic humor never...
To look is not to see. And so goes Claire in Motion, a missing persons dramatic procedural that struggles to be more than meets the eye. College math professor and wife to a known hobby survivalist, Claire (Breaking Bad’s Betsy Brandt) is forced into a waking nightmare when her husband Paul (Chris Beetem) fails to...
An introspective sociopolitical drama about a discarded Somalian, A Stray stars Captain Phillip’s Barkhard Abdirahman as Adan, a refugee living on the streets of Minneapolis who happens upon a lost dog. Without a home or hearth of his own, Adan is unable to provide for himself much less another helpless lot of God’s creations. Complicating...
When Key & Peele premiered in 2012 on Comedy Central, it was as close to an overnight success as any sober TV producer could hope for. The sketch comedy show that covered anything from pop-culture fandom to racial relationships, all with unprecedentedly competent production value, found even more love on YouTube where many of their...
Jeff Nichols is very quickly solidifying himself as a distinct and essential American voice. The 37-year old Arkansas native blends the mystic nostalgia of Steven Spielberg’s great wonders with the romanticized bayou lyricism of a Mark Twain novel. The result is often staggering, the heavy, heady crossroads of lock stock ultra violence and meaningfully sentimental...
Anyone who ever found themselves wishing for a cross section between The Cable Guy and The Exorcism, rejoice in thy ancient cursed tongues. Carson D. Mell’s supernaturally awkward brom-dram is a conjoined twin of ghost tale hula-hoops and male acquaintanceship hoopla. A batty genre-defying lark to its close, Another Evil deals with the clumsy delicacies...