SIFF 2026 rolls into Seattle next month with its usual sprawling, borderline-unruly lineup — hundreds of films from dozens of countries crammed into twenty-five days of screenings. It remains, by attendance, the largest film festival in the United States, and one of the last festivals in the country that still programs with the kind 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 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...
A film review of 'Dinner in America' written and directed by Adam Rehmeier and starring Emily Skeggs and Kyle Gallner as part of our Nighthawk 2020 Film Festival coverage.
A review of 'Brittany Runs a Marathon' directed by Paul Downs Colaizzo and starring Jillian Bell as part of our 2019 Seattle International Film Festival coverage.
Delicate and hard-hitting, James Schamus’ Indignation is a dramatic and philosophical examination of Korean War-era American values bolstered by wordy comic zest, romantic aches and a challenging moral imperative. Logan…
If you wiggle a pencil fast enough, it appears soft. Rubbery. Made of flesh. It’s only when you reach out and touch the pencil that you realize it’s made of hard wood. In a film, we cannot reach out, we cannot exert force or physical contact, so we rely on cues that the filmmaker plants...
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...
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...