Reviews
SWEETNESS Review: Ain't She Sweet? The Nightmares Come Later.
Kate Hallett and Herman Tømmeraas star in writer/director Emma Higgins' completely unhinged, uniquely stylish, and intense thriller.
A CHINESE COURTESAN Double Feature Celebrates Seduction and Savagery
Imprint Films brings a Shaw Brothers double feature filled with sex and swordplay.
Available Light 2026 Short Film, Short Review: MY KNITTING CIRCLE
Perhaps the most cozy short film on the festival circuit this year, My Knitting Circle puts on the kettle for a cup of tea and surveys the fibrous wares and spinning equipment of Itsy-Bitsy Yarn Store. A small group of...
Sundance 2026 Review: THE GALLERIST, Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega Co-Star in Ambitious Art-World Satire
Art-world satires come (The Square); art-world satires go (Velvet Buzzsaw). Few, if any, art-world satires leave any impression whatsoever beyond the transient or the ephemeral. Writer-director Cathy Yan’s (Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn,...
Sundance 2026 Review: HANGING BY A WIRE, Fascinating Documentary Leaves You Wanting More
On the morning of August 22nd, 2023, eight young men, six of them still in school, climbed into a cable car to traverse a valley 900 feet above the remote foothills of Pakistan, a trip the young men took at...
Rotterdam 2026 Review: I SWEAR Is The Ultimate Crowd Favorite
This year's winner of the Audience Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam is I Swear, Kirk Jones' biopic about John Davidson. To say it is a crowdpleaser is an understatement: from hundreds of votes, the film got a mean...
Available Light 2026 Review: BEYOND THE LEFT HAND PATH, Or, A Temple of Set Guide in How to Live a Full Life
James C. Kirby was an intense man. He lived not one life, but several: A priest of the Temple of Set, a hotel chef, a social worker for traumatized men, a craft jeweller, and the former owner of Canada’s...
DRACULA Review: Slick, Horny, and Surprisingly Silly
Caleb Landry Jones, Zoë Bleu, Matilda De Angelis, and Christoph Waltz star in director Luc Besson's new, romantic version of the classic tale.
Sundance 2026 Review: TO HOLD A MOUNTAIN, Farmers in Montenegro Fight for Their Land
Directed by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić, the documentary follows what happens when residents fight back against politicians.
Rotterdam 2026 Review: FISH, FISTS AND AMBERGRIS Hits All Of Its Targets
The International Film Festival Rotterdam doesn't just do the no-budget debuts of beginning directors, it also allows glimpses of what is hot in other countries. This is the festival where we got introduced to the Korean classics of the past...
Rotterdam 2026 Review: BAZAAR (MURDER IN THE BUILDING), Funny Hitchcockian Shenanigans
Time flies when you're having fun, and that saying applies to the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Last Saturday there was the screening of the closing film already, the world première of Rémi Bezançon's Le Crime du 3e Étage, to be...
Sundance 2026 Review: GHOST IN THE MACHINE, A Must-See AI Primer
Valerie Veatch directed the "mind-expanding, investigative essay" documentary.
Sundance 2026 Review: I WANT YOUR SEX, Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman Headline Gregg Araki's Welcome Return to Filmmaking
Between 1987 (Three Bewildered People in the Night) and 2010 (Kaboom), queer filmmaker Gregg Araki wrote and directed 10 films, solidifying his status as a New Queer Cinema visionary with few, if any, peers (only arthouse favorites Derek Jarman and...
Sundance 2026 Review: THE INVITE, Who's Afraid of Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen?
When we first meet Joe (Seth Rogen), a failed musician turned conservatory music instructor, in director Olivia Wilde’s (Don’t Worry Darling, Booksmart) superbly engaging third film, The Invite, he’s mired in a miasma of self-doubt, disappointment, and frustration. Indifferently...
Rotterdam 2026 Review: MI AMOR
The International Film Festival Rotterdam is host to many beginning directors, but that doesn't mean there are no regular returning guests. Writer, director and actor Guillaume Nicloux has visited the festival several times in the past 30 years, and for...
Sundance 2026 Review: NIGHT NURSE, Promising Psychosexual Thriller Dissipates Into Abstraction
Filmmaker David Lynch (Lost Highway, Wild At Heart, Blue Velvet) may have left this mortal plane for the next, but his influence — not to mention his filmography — survives in the work of filmmakers who found a kindred spirit...
Available Light 2026 Review: TRACY & MARTINA GOIN' OUT WEST Lovingly Mocks A Refined Flavour of Canadian Delusion
Canada is far from the only country that has a tradition of lovingly mocking some of its stranger, often poor and delusional, white-trash subcultures (I am looking at you Australia, New Zealand and Britain). However, the Canadian flavour often takes...
Sundance 2026 Review: EVERYBODY TO KENMURE STREET, Collective Presence Stalls the System
Director Felipe Bustos Sierra documents a spontaneous act of civic resistance in Glasgow, examining how collective presence can momentarily disrupt the mechanisms of state authority.
Rotterdam 2026 Review: ROID, An Ode to the Bengali Landscape and Its Cinema
Director Mejbaur Rahman Sumon's evocative tale from the Bengali countryside about love and fate, echoing the freshness of Satyajit Ray's cinema.
THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 3 Review: It Ends with a Woodchipper and No Bang
Director Renny Harlin's "new and hopefully final installment."
