Festivals Reviews
Calgary Underground 2024 Review: CUCKOO, Delightfully Analog Sensory Overload
Two characters, having barely survived a traumatic and violent ordeal at a hospital, try to leave, only to find the doors locked. But wait, it is one of those situations where one door is locked but the other one works...
Udine 2024 Review: THEIR LAST LOVE AFFAIR, Lee Myung-se's Daring and Dazzling Tale of Illicit Romance
This year's Far East Film Festival is screening a large number of South Korean classics, including a full program dedicated to the country's fascinating 1950s output, such as Park Nam-ok's progressive drama The Widow, the first Korean film ever directed...
Udine 2024 Review: 12.12: THE DAY, Riveting Drama Brings Dark Episode of Korean History Into the Light
One of the final dark closets of modern Korean history gets thrown wide open in Kim Sung-soo's riveting historical drama 12.12: The Day. The film dramatises the coup d'état that took place in the wake of the assassination of President...
Udine 2024 Review: THE ROUNDUP: PUNISHMENT Wins One More Round in a Franchise Clinging to the Ropes
It’s Beast Cop vs Bitcoin in the fourth instalment of Ma Dong-seok’s enduringly popular Roundup action franchise, as his hulking detective goes toe-to-toe with a tech-savvy crime syndicate looking to expand into crypto. Helmed by action director Heo Myeong-haeng, Ma’s...
Udine 2024 Review: CITIZEN OF A KIND, A New Kind of Hero Rises in Delightful Female-Centric Vigilante Drama
If its films and dramas are to be believed, South Korea is a land teeming with vigilantes. They are typically brooding, sharply dressed and very attractive characters with dark pasts who mete out justice with brute strength or elaborate schemes,...
Fantaspoa 2024 Review: THE COMPLEX FORMS, How Classic Auteur Cinema Would Be If It Had More Monsters
Strange things are happening at an ancient villa in the literal middle of nowhere. A bunch of men are gathered here, all of them with a peculiar contract. A middle-aged man named Christian (David White) is in the process of...
Calgary Underground 2024 Review: HUMANE, The Family That Slays Together Stays Together
Apocalypses in Canadian cinema tend to occur in slow motion, and have a subversive touch of quiet absurdity. The two undisputed classics of the genre are Don McKellar’s Last Night, and Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool. Caitlin Cronenberg aims for that lofty...
Fantaspoa 2024 Review: THE ISLAND BETWEEN TIDES, Supernatural Mind-Teaser About Time, Ghosts and Complicated Relationships
When Lily (Remy Marthaller) was a child, she followed a mysterious melody and wandered onto a tidal island, disappearing for several days – though, when she returned, she claimed she was actually gone for mere minutes. Sixteen years later, it’s...
Fantaspoa 2024 Review: MASTERGAME (Mesterjátszma), Visually Compelling Thriller with Chess, Trains and Bathroom Fights
It’s November 1956, and Russian tanks have just invaded Budapest, crushing the revolution. A young couple, István (Gergely Váradi) and Márta (Varga-Járó Sára), rushes for the last train that can get them out of the country. When aboard, they are...
Panic Fest 2024 Review: THE BUILDOUT, Beautiful Meditation on Grief and Friendship
Writer/director Zeshaan Younus' feature debut flirts with genre in the same way Tarkovsky and Malick flirt with genre. The film follows two friends as they venture into the mysterious remote area in a vast Southern California desert that a religious...
Panic Fest 2024: Spanish Shorts APOTEMNOFILIA and FACIES Wow With Extreme Violence and Exciting Ideas
Panic Fest offers up another fantastic selection of shorts this year, but two in particular have stuck with me. Facies and Apotemnofilia both deliver shocking, stomach-churning moments of extreme violence that are memorable enough for the bodily reactions they elicit....
Panic Fest 2024 Review: OFF RAMP Celebrates Found Juggalo Family As Only Juggalos Can
Off Ramp is never subtle. Within the first five minutes, when Trey (Jon Oswald) is released from prison and says a heartfelt goodbye to correctional officer and fellow Juggalo (devoted fan of Insane Clown Posse) Faith (Laura Cayouette), the film...
Panic Fest 2024 Review: WORLDS Asks a Lot of Questions, Offers No Answers
Like its fellow found footage/mockumentary and Panic Fest 2024 film Jeffrey’s Hell, Worlds begins with an interview. Morgan Williams (Nikki Neurohr) talks about how she and some friends began to see a strange man (Nick Dailey), who always wore all...
Panic Fest 2024 Review: JEFFREY'S HELL Is a Brilliantly Self-Reflexive Found Footage Film
Writer/director Aaron Irons’s debut film Chest marked him as someone to watch. His sophomore effort, Jeffrey’s Hell, confirms that he’s one of the most interesting filmmakers working in the found footage horror genre. Chest follows a documentary crew investigating an...
SXSW 2024 Review: SMUGGLERS, Korea's King of Action Ryoo Seung-Wan Delivers A '70s Set Crowd-Pleaser
Two women’s lives transform when their diving careers move from harvesting shellfish to high stakes smuggling in Ryoo Seung-n’s ‘70s set comedic action thriller, Smugglers. After a healthy theatrical run in South Korea and a North American premiere at TIFF,...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: ROME: TALES FROM THE BLOCK, A Slight Alien Invasion Satire
La Guerra Del Tiburtino III has as its international title Rome: Tales From the Block, which shows you how much this film wears its influences on its sleeve. From the opening segment, in which an alien creature leaves a meteor...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: KING BABY Is A Royal Triumph
King Baby, by directors Kit Redstone and Arran Shearing, could've gone wrong in so many ways. The film is a send-up of masculine power plays, toxic machismo and the thin veneer of social niceties that hide volcanic violence waiting to...
SXSW 2024 Review: HOOD WITCH, Golshifteh Farahani Runs For Her Life In This Literal Witch Hunt
A trafficker of rare animals finds herself in the crosshairs of a literal witch hunt when a young boy plummets to his death following a visit in Saïd Belktibia’s Hood Witch, celebrating its international premiere at this year’s SXSW Film...
SXSW 2024 Review: CIVIL WAR, Is Not What You Think It Is. It's So Much More.
Civil War follows a quartet of war correspondents in the last days of the American republic as the Western Forces of the secessionist states of Texas and California advances on Washington, D.C. with harrowing results. Leading this motley crew are Lee...
Berlinale 2024 Review: DYING, Darkly Humorous Gaze Into Family Dysfunction
Michael Glasner's dramedy explores the dissonant lives of the Lunies family, intertwining themes of death, reconciliation, and the complexities of human relationships.
