Reviews and coverage from major film festivals including Sundance, SXSW, SIFF, TIFF, and Cannes, the best and the rest of festival cinema.
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 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...
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...
An old flame forks her way back into the life of a married man in Joshua Marston‘s mysterious and somewhat satisfying Complete Unknown. Marston struck a chord with debut Maria Full of Grace, which played Sundance 12 years ago, giving a drug mule a face in performer Catalina Sandino Moreno. With Complete Unknown, the Californian...
Other People sets expectations firmly in place early on for its uneven mix of tragedy and comedy. A family huddles in a dark bedroom, some whimpering, some crying out, others silent, all grasping hands, all seeking tendrils of connection, all weeping over a recently departed body. In the midst of this disruptively bleak opening, the...
Women He’s Undressed, Gillian Armstrong’s new documentary about Hollywood costume designer Orry Kelly, opens over an unnaturally-saturated view of a blue sky, with a quote from actress Fanny Brice: “Let the world know who you are because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose; then where will you be?” The...
OG Black Flag vocalist Henry Rollins has been lending himself out to little movie roles since he left the band in 1986. Arguably his most prominent and commercial appearance came out of his run on Sons of Anarchy as the muscle of white supremacist group the League of American Nationalists. In the role, Rollins hinted...
The Diabolical is the first – and oddly enough only – horror movie I’ve seen at SXSW that actually tries to be scary. More often than not at this year’s fest, we saw midnighters going for a creepy but never quite scary vibe (The Boy, The Frontier), attempting to be satirical (Ava’s Possessions, Excess Flesh)...