by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: THE RIDER, Dealing Gently With Thwarted Dreams

Chloé Zhao's first feature film, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, showed the beautiful and difficult life of a young man on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; his relationship with his family, his clashes with white men, and...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Interview: Sergio G. Sánchez Talks MARROWBONE, The Fallibility of Memory, and the Spanish Fantastic

Spanish screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez is likely well known to many ScreenAnarchy readers; if not by his name, than by his screenplays, such as The Orphanage and The Impossible. He makes his feature film debut this month with Marrowbone, a...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: MARROWBONE, Hidden Secrets and Sibling Attachment

Sergio G. Sánchez is best known as co-writer of The Orphanage, certainly one of the best horror films of recent years, with its gothic setting, and themes of past traumas haunting the present. In his feature directorial debut, he returns...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE, Palpable Tragedy Brought to Wrenching Life

Lynne Ramsay's last two films (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin) have focused on individuals (in these cases, women,) who must contend with being the odd-person-out, someone with a secret they fear so dark and disturbing that it...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: THE ENDLESS, Fantastical, Intimate and Personal Horror

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's work has always been (at least in part) about intimacy and trust; particularly the intimacy of close relationships, and how problems manifest; and in the case of their films, they often manifest in the form...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

SXSW 2018 Review: OUTSIDE IN, The Struggle to Find One's Self

The work of Seattle writer-director Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister's Sister) is becoming synonymous with a certain corner of Americana: geographically the northwest of the USA, but also with middle-class (admittedly mainly white) people and their daily struggles with love,...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Spread Yourself Out and Watch Short Film SMEAR

A trip to the doctor's office is nevver very fun. Especially for women when it's time for a pap smear. It's an uncomfortable yet routine procedure. In the hands of UK director/writer Kate Herron, however, it sparked a hilarious idea....
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Boston Underground Film Festival: First Wave Includes REVENGE, PIN CUSHION, LIQUID SKY & More!

A shining beacon of the weird, the wonderful, the nasty, the niche, and the eclectic, Boston Underground Film Festival returns for its 20th edition next month, and has announced its first wave of feature titles. I had the great pleasure...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: NOVEMBER, Just the Right Amount of Weird

Thomas Hobbes' famous saying that the life of man is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" could have been the mantra for the life of the characters in Rainer Sarnet's November. Luckily, the film itself is fantastical, strange, beautifully shot,...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: THE LODGERS, Neo-Gothic Disturbances

The gothic has always been the cornerstone and mainstay of horror film: that place that is supposed to be the most secure and welcoming - one's home - is suddenly dangerous and uninviting. Irish director Brian O'Malley (Let Us Prey)...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

BFF GIRLS Teaser: Fighting the Tampon Monster!

When I heard that two rising stars of genre filmmaking, Jill Gevargizian (Call Girl, The Stylist) and Brian Lonano (Crow Hand!!!, Gwilliam) were teaming up to make a new short, I knew it was going to be special. And judging...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Attention Genre Filmmakers: New Scriptwriting Residency in Bruges

Hey there aspiring genre filmmakers! Do you have a feature-length script of the fantasy/horror variety? And does it feature a lead character from a less represented group (ie. female, LGBTQ+, from a minority background, or persons living with a disability)? Then indie...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

First Still and Synopsis for Claire Denis' HIGH LIFE

A new film by French auteur Claire Denis (Beau Travail, 35 Shots of Rum, White Material) is always cause for great anticipation. But perhaps even more with her latest film, High Life. While she has ventured into fantastic genre material...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: BLACK PANTHER, The King Has Arrived

Many people like to think that blockbuster and/or superhero movies are little more than fluff, an excuse to tap into a ready-made fan base and have some cool action scenes and colourful costumes to grab a large demographic market. But...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Deliciously Funny FEEDING TIME Now Available for Hungry Viewers

Babysitters have always been ripe fodder (metaphorical and literal) for horror films. Filmmaker Matt Mercer (Contracted, Beyond the Gates) takes this to a whole new level in his horror-comedy short Feeding Time. After playing at dozens of film festivals around...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Slamdance 2018 Review: INGRID, A Self-Fulfilling Life

Many of us have likely had the dream of packing it all in: the modern world, the rat race, the rampant consumerism, and heading to a cabin in the woods, to get as far away from civilization as is possible...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Slamdance 2018 Review: FISH BONES, The Moments Between

Do we know the important conversations in our lives when they are happening, or only afterwards? Do we contemplate what we need to understand when we're at the crossroads, or at more seemingly mundane moments? Can we only know ourselves...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Sundance 2018 Review: YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE, Masculine Trauma and Violent Retribution

Lynne Ramsay's last two films (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin) have focused on individuals (in these cases, women,) who must contend with being the odd-person-out, someone with a secret they fear so dark and disturbing that it...
by J Hurtado

Blu-ray Review: THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER, Another Idiosyncratic Masterpiece from Yorgos Lanthimos

There are very few filmmakers these days whose work is as immediately recognizable as Greek New Wave auteur Yorgos Lanthimos. From the moment he broke out on the international scene eight years ago with his arresting third feature, Dogtooth, Lanthimos...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Slamdance 2018 Review: THE RAINBOW EXPERIMENT, Educational Nightmares

I do not envy anyone working in the public school system in the United States. Teachers are overworked and underpaid, administrators are caught between helping the teachers and serving the parents; some students get lost in the shuffle, while others...