BREAKING NEWS: CITIZEN KANE LOSES BEST PICTURE TO HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY BREAKING NEWS: HITCHCOCK'S VERTIGO BOMBS AT BOX OFFICE, DEEMED COMMERCIAL FAILURE BREAKING NEWS: KUBRICK'S 2001 TOO CONFUSING, AUDIENCES DEMAND REFUNDS BREAKING NEWS: BRANDO REFUSES OSCAR, SENDS APACHE ACTIVIST IN HIS PLACE BREAKING NEWS: THE EXORCIST FIRST FILM NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE FEATURING PROJECTILE DEMON VOMIT BREAKING NEWS: SPIELBERG'S JAWS BREAKS ALL-TIME BOX OFFICE RECORD BREAKING NEWS: LUCAS STEALS SPIELBERG'S BOX OFFICE RECORD WITH STAR WARS BREAKING NEWS: SPIELBERG RECLAIMS RECORD FROM LUCAS WITH E.T. BREAKING NEWS: WATERWORLD BECOMES MOST EXPENSIVE FILM IN HISTORY AT $175 MILLION BREAKING NEWS: SHOWGIRLS SETS RECORD FOR MOST RAZZIES WON BY SINGLE FILM BREAKING NEWS: ACADEMY VOTERS ASKED TO ACTUALLY WATCH ALL NOMINATED FILMS BREAKING NEWS: CITIZEN KANE LOSES BEST PICTURE TO HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY BREAKING NEWS: HITCHCOCK'S VERTIGO BOMBS AT BOX OFFICE, DEEMED COMMERCIAL FAILURE BREAKING NEWS: KUBRICK'S 2001 TOO CONFUSING, AUDIENCES DEMAND REFUNDS BREAKING NEWS: BRANDO REFUSES OSCAR, SENDS APACHE ACTIVIST IN HIS PLACE BREAKING NEWS: THE EXORCIST FIRST FILM NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE FEATURING PROJECTILE DEMON VOMIT BREAKING NEWS: SPIELBERG'S JAWS BREAKS ALL-TIME BOX OFFICE RECORD BREAKING NEWS: LUCAS STEALS SPIELBERG'S BOX OFFICE RECORD WITH STAR WARS BREAKING NEWS: SPIELBERG RECLAIMS RECORD FROM LUCAS WITH E.T. BREAKING NEWS: WATERWORLD BECOMES MOST EXPENSIVE FILM IN HISTORY AT $175 MILLION BREAKING NEWS: SHOWGIRLS SETS RECORD FOR MOST RAZZIES WON BY SINGLE FILM BREAKING NEWS: ACADEMY VOTERS ASKED TO ACTUALLY WATCH ALL NOMINATED FILMS
FILM REVIEWS · FEATURES · FESTIVALS · INTERVIEWS Tuesday, May 19, 2026
SILVER SCREEN RIOT
Probably hates your favorite movie. Since 2012.

FESTIVAL REVIEWS

Reviews and coverage from major film festivals including Sundance, SXSW, SIFF, TIFF, and Cannes— the best and the rest of festival cinema.

FESTIVAL
SXSW Review: FURIOUS 7

SXSW Review: FURIOUS 7

At the bedside of crisped brother Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), older, meaner Deckard (Jason Statham) vows revenge on the crew that turned his sibling into a pin cushion. The camera pulls back to reveal a high security hospital-turned-war zone and Statham slowly saunters past gunned-down guards, ravaged rooms and fizzling tech. The world pisses itself...

FESTIVAL
SXSW Review: A WONDERFUL CLOUD

SXSW Review: A WONDERFUL CLOUD

Eugene Kotlyarenko sets the cinematic stove to a low-broil in semi-autobiographical A Wonderful Cloud, a lackadaisical, off-kilter romp through a broken relationship in Los Angeles. The events – like the comedy – are low-key and faintly directional, though are predominantly characterized by an overwhelming essence of a half-committed shrug. The fact that Kotlyarenko and co-star...

FESTIVAL
SXSW Review: LAMB

SXSW Review: LAMB

Director, screenwriter and star Ross Partridge unearths a ripe splintering of soul in the fragile, complex love story that is Lamb. Adapted from Bonnie Nadzam‘s sage but harrowing novel of redemption and temptation, Patridge repurposes the byzantine dynamic of Nadzam’s words to co-exist in the cinematic crossroads of nail-ruining suspense and earnest, didactic sentiments of humanity,...

FESTIVAL
SXSW Review: EXCESS FLESH

SXSW Review: EXCESS FLESH

Remember those fetid middle school health videos about eating disorders? The concerned best friend, the bespectacled guidance counselor, the implied offscreen self-abuse. The gorging. The vomiting. The inevitable dramatic hospital visit. Excess Flesh isn’t quite that but Patrick Kennelly‘s wannabe horror feature is still very much the cinematic version of binging and purging. It crams...

FESTIVAL
SXSW Review: AVA’S POSSESSIONS

SXSW Review: AVA’S POSSESSIONS

Traditionally, the horror movies begins with the tabula rasa and from there builds upwards with little narrative Lincoln Logs stacked on shower scares and mirror pop-ins. Ava’s Possessions shrewdly flips the formula on its head, poising an intriguing conceit in the exploration of what transpires after a ghastly, cathartic event. Where is the werewolf at...

FESTIVAL
SXSW Review: PETTING ZOO

SXSW Review: PETTING ZOO

Petting Zoo exists in the crossroads between Texas-sized conservative values and an emerging genus of first-generation aspirations as 17-year-old Layla finds herself simultaneously presented with a college scholarship and a bun in the oven. Writer, director Micah Magee‘s tale of unexpected pregnancy is one that cuts close to home, having been a pregnant teen herself....

FESTIVAL
SXSW Review: SWEATY BETTY

SXSW Review: SWEATY BETTY

Idiosyncratic Sweaty Betty is a documentary-cum-nonfiction of odd variety. Consisting of six scenes and six cuts and using a cast composed entirely of non-actors, it represents a new-age, inner city twist on the undiluted realism of Richard Linklater or Curtis Snow’s disconcertingly realistic Snow on Tha Bluff. Tactically less intellectual than Linklater and yet more...

FESTIVAL
Sundance Review: RESULTS

Sundance Review: RESULTS

Andrew Bujalski earned an earnest little following out of Austin, Texas from his efforts in building up the mumblecore scene but his star has never shined brighter than it did two festival seasons ago with the debut of his offbeat docu-comedy Computer Chess. Expanding on that last project – which used a blend of professionals...

FESTIVAL
Sundance Review: PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

Sundance Review: PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

Having retired from his role as the Hiphopopotamus, Jemaine Clement frequents our living rooms and theaters all too infrequently. His 2014 cameo in Muppets Most Wanted didn’t nearly suffice to fill our favorite Kiwi quotient and we’ve yet to take in his lauded vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows (though we eagerly anticipated...

FESTIVAL
Sundance Review: MISTRESS AMERICA

Sundance Review: MISTRESS AMERICA

Noah Baumbach again arrives in auspicious fashion, delivering a fast-talking farcical bumblebee of a film whose honey is sweet and sting is bruising. It’s as much a diatribe about the fickle nature of youth as it is a pure slapstick comedy, featuring a humdinger of a hipster prophet in the form of a footloose Greta...