by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: THE BEGUILED, Sofia Coppola's Gorgeous and Campy Romp

Sofia Coppola is a filmmaker whose work I've appreciated from a distance. I know she's a great director, but apart from Marie Antoinette, her stories of rich white people and their troubles has held little interest for me. But as...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: MAUDIE, Art and Beauty in the Smallest Places

Biopics of visual artists are (or can be) some of the more interesting of that mode of film: it's fairly simple to show a painter creating their work, or show the inspiration for that work. Too often, artists who are...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: THE WEDDING INVITATION, Clichéd but Charming Romcom

Comedies centred around women who are less than elegant, who can swear as well as any sailor, or whose ineptitude in matters of the heart and the body are gaining more traction these days (see Bridesmaids and Rough Night). Rainy...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Attention Filmmakers! Submit to Trieste Science+Fiction Film Festival

Calling all filmmakers with new science fiction, horror, and fantasy films, feature and short! Italy's premiere genre film festival will be taking place in Trieste, October 31st - November 5th, and they want your films. I was honoured to serve...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Lighthouse Film Festival to Feature FITS AND STARTS, KING OF PEKING, MAN UNDERGROUND & More

People of New Jersey and surrounding environs: the wonderful Lighthouse FIlm Festival is coming your way, and it's got a stellar lineup to keep you well occupied next weekend. Running Thursday June 8th - Sunday June 11th, in and around...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: SAMI BLOOD, An Eye-Opening and Disquieting Tale

I doubt there is a country in the world that doesn't have (or has had) an indigenous population, and a population that has been sevrely mistreated, either by genocide, the confiscation of lands, exposure to disease, or forced assimilation. In...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Cannes 2017 Review: THE BEGUILED, A Campy Anatomy of Lust

Sofia Coppola is a filmmaker whose work I've appreciated from a distance. I know she's a great director, but apart from Marie Antoinette, her stories of rich white people and their troubles has held little interest for me. But as...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Cannes 2017 Review: THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER, Love Can Make Us Cruel

Human beings can be kind, generous, and loving. But they can also be self-indulgent, vicious, and cruel. We all want to believe that, under certain circumstances, we would sacrifice and fight for the lives of our loved ones. But would...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Cannes 2017 Review: FACES PLACES, A Delightful and Poignant Capture of Working Life

The Grand Dame of French cinema, Agnès Varda's work has ranged from the New Wave in Cleo from 5 to 7, to feminism and friendship in One Sings, The Other Doesn't, to documenting the life of the poor in The...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Cannes 2017 Review: THE RIDER, Elegaic and Intimate Portrait of Suffering and Cure

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

THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM Trailer Takes Us to Theatre of Blood

One of my favourite films at TIFF 2016, The Limehouse Golem, directed by Juan Carlos Medina and written by Jane Goldman, takes us to the bloody streets and raunchy theatre halls of late 19th century London. Rich in detail and...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

LOEV Releases New Poster for Netflix Launch

Loev, Sudhanshu Saria's debut feature film about two men who move between friends and lovers in India, has been making the festival rounds for the past 18 months, including winning Audience Awards at Frameline and TLVFest. In my review from...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

THE DARK TOWER Trailer: The Gunslinger Chases...

While perhaps not as widely known as many of the big blockbuster movies coming out this summer, the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King's epic novel series has its fandom who are finally being awarded the first trailer. You can count...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

THE ENDLESS, COLOSSAL, THE BAR and More at Neuchâtel 2017

In the early days of summer, on the shores of a beautiful Swiss lake, comes one of the best genre festivals in Europe. Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival has become a premiere destination for the cream of the crop of...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: THE HANDMAID'S TALE, Powerful and Terrifying Television

I doubt (or at least I hope) that Bruce Miller, Reed Morano, and the rest of the team behind the new adaptation The Handmaid's Tale were unaware of how close the possibility of this scenario would be in contemporary America....
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

OKJA: Meet Lucy Mirando, Hear Her Corporate Message of Joy

With its world premiere at Cannes Film Festival just a few weeks away, Netflix seems to be throwing a lot of support behind Okja, the latest from Korean director Bong Joon Ho. After a trailer release a few weeks ago,...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: BELOW HER MOUTH, Explicit Sex, Disappointing Story

Certainly, we need more films about women from women's perspective, and more films about lesbian love/sex/relationships told from that perspective as well. Unfortunately, such efforts do not always make for great films. Such is the case with Below Her Mouth....
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Review: A DARK SONG, Digging Into the Lonely Heart of the Occult

All deaths are hard to deal with, but I would argue there is nothing worse than losing your child (after all, a parent is not supposed to outlive their children). Certainly, when we lose a loved one of any kind,...
by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

Tribeca 2017 Review: THE ENDLESS, Monster with a Movie Camera

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

Watch Creepy Short ABDULLAH, Enjoy Death Waltz Recording

One of the joys of programming short films is seeing how they travel the world, engaging with diverse audiences, and eventually becoming available for everyone to enjoy. Such is the case with Abdullah, written and directed by Evrim Ersoy (currently...