Reviews and coverage from major film festivals including Sundance, SXSW, SIFF, TIFF, and Cannes— the best and the rest of festival cinema.
July 17, 2014. Irka (Oksana Cherkashyna) and Tolik (Sergey Shadrin) live humbly in the Ukraine border town of the Donetsk, an Eastern region of disputed territory during the dawn of the Russian-Ukraine Donbas war in Klondike. They’re expecting a child. The film opens as the couple discuss birthing plans and getting somewhere safe to deliver the...
A one-of-a-kind allegorical delicacy, Fresh revels in taboo subjects to poke fun at the stomach-churning appetites of the modern dating world. A delirious mash-up of cheesy romance and body horror shlock, the debut film from Mimi Cave begins in deliciously grotesque fashion, showing flashes of both American Psycho and Martyrs as her devilish meat-cute puts...
In Clean, Adrien Brody is a garbage man named Clean. After a tragedy in his past that haunts him to this day, Clean has gone clean. He’s trying to redeem his past mistakes by cleaning up the streets of Utica. Taking out the trash, literally and metaphorically. Dirty cops and rancid garbage, all must go....
Like Clue with lycanthropy, Josh Ruben’s Werewolves Within is an ensemble-driven horror-comedy with lots of earnest charm and plenty of satisfying laughs. A hairy whodunnit about a small Vermont community terrorized by what they assume to be a werewolf, Werewolves Within is that rare effective video game adaptation, reworking Ubisoft’s multiplayer Mafia-like VR game of...
From the very first moments of Ultrasound, something is off. In fact, a lot of things are off. There’s the obvious fact that the movie starts with a brilliantly uncomfortably ‘car breaks down in the rain’ moment where a soaked man seeks shelter in the only house nearby, the kind of scene audiences are instinctually...
In Thomas Daneskov’s Wild Men (original title Vildmænd), Martin (Rasmus Bjerg) has lost his way. A family man with a wife and two daughters at home, Martin’s absconded to the craggy mountains of Norway, clan in Viking attire and armed with a makeshift bow and arrow. He plans to get back to his roots and...
Native American women go missing, are sexually assaulted, or are murdered at an average of ten times that of the non-native population. These crimes are predominantly carried out by non-native criminals. Reasons for these staggeringly high rates range from a lack of institutional concern, indifferent law enforcement policies regarding missing young women, and the multitude...
Ernest Hemingway famously opined, “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” I’ve taken this sentiment to heart in my own life, allowing a competitive spirit with myself to drive my ambitions, both professionally and athletically, rather than trying to compare my skill...
In Pan Nalin’s The Last Film Show, the death of film has never hit harder. The Samsara director and Indian auteur has established himself over the years as a filmmaker with a distinct flair for visual storytelling, his films a kaleidoscopic whirl of images that speak to the simple power of colors and lights to...
Art is similar to pornography in the sense that I know it when I see it. There is a very fine line dividing art – whether that be performance art, music, poetry, or visual arts – from empty vacancy or ugly vandalism. Sometimes those lines can be blurred, much like a nipple on Instagram or...