Reviews and coverage from major film festivals including Sundance, SXSW, SIFF, TIFF, and Cannes— the best and the rest of festival cinema.
Last year, Patrick Brice showed up to SXSW with Creep. Devilishly crafty and expertly focused, it fell in with the usual suspects of found footage horror, even though it was so much more than just another point and shoot, “gotcha!” scare effort. The natural tension that Brice was able to tease out of a scene...
There are so many pivot points in Z for Zachariah that it becomes hard to nail down exactly what director Craig Zobel intended for it. At one point, it seems decidedly about gender politics, at another about race relations, and eventually it boiled down to themes of suspicion, greed and jealousy. Spliced with a domineering...
What do 1630, a silver cup, Christian fervor and a goat named Black Phillip have in common? The Witch. Unholy goodness through and through, Robert Egger‘s feature film debut is a horror masquerading as a costume drama that’s as beady, black and misshapen as the center of a goat’s eye. Beneath the dirt-stained, leather-bound waistcoats,...
To put a pin in the beauty of The End of the Tour is a philosophical venture potentially as challenging as James Ponsoldt‘s latest accomplishment. Detailing a three-day exchange between Rolling Stones journalist David Lipsky and rock star author David Foster Wallace, Ponsoldt’s film is talky and emotionally whirling, thick with dry-mouthed moments and cemented...
Robert Redford‘s adaptation of Bill Bryson‘s popular 1998 memoir A Walk In the Woods is an unremarkable journey with a short sprinkling of low-key chuckles and a heaving dose of schmaltzy sentiment. As Redford’s travel companion, co-star Nick Nolte manages to give this low-percolating buddy comedy/road-movie-on-foot at least some minor footing, but its not enough...
Socially awkward black comedy with occasionally explosive moments of understated humor, The Strongest Man is Kenny Riches‘ follow-up to Must Come Down and his first big festival debut. His surgically shrewd examination of two nobodies stewing in the melting pot of Miami presents a deep and thoughtful metaphysical exploration of life as alien experience with...
Bumbershoot’s 1 Reel Film Festival, currated by the Seattle International Film Festival, was a charmed parade of “cinematic brevity” that came and went with a bang; a lavish celebration of the art form offering a smattering of delightful shorts. We had the in to cover as much as possible of this three day long engagement...
Spirits were high in Capitol Hill this weekend, as was the ratio of space bar music to instrumental bands. Celebrating its 18th year as a festival, Capitol Hill Block Party in its current iteration is really only four years old. Or at least that last day is. You see it takes three full days to...
Some said it couldn’t be done but goddamnit, I did it. 40 films single-handedly seen by this one naive film critic. I’ve all but overdosed on cinema. I’m obese on art films. I’m constipated by having seen films from the US, the UK, Spain, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Norway, Australia, Hong Kong, Chile, South Korea, Canada, France,...
The cloud has lifted. SIFF 2014 is over. I’ve seen 40 films. FORTY. (*Takes deep breath, drag off inhaler*) While I grossly miscalculated just how much a marathon watching 40 films in the span of a month (on top of new wide releases) would be and how taxing on my creative spirit, to have it...