Festivals
Sundance 2022 Review: NANNY, Immigrant Horror Elevated By Compelling Performances
Nanny, writer-director Nikyatu Jusu’s impressively-imagined, impressively crafted feature-length debut, brilliantly explores one aspect of the the 21st-century immigrant experience that’s too often left either unexamined or under-examined on film, TV, and cable. Wrapped inside cleverly executed supernatural/horror genre tropes with...
Sundance 2022 Review: MASTER, Campus-Set Horror Delivers More Ideas Than Scares
Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, and Talia Ryder star in the debut feature by director Mariama Diallo.
Sundance 2022 Review: DUAL, Triumphant Deadpan Satire
Riley Stearns directed the science-fiction thriller, starring Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul.
Sundance 2022 Review: WATCHER, Cautionary Tale Burns Slowly
Almost 70 years after Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window debuted in movie theaters, it remains the ur-text, the template or formula for practically every premise-borrowing film that’s followed in its wake. Any film, like writer-director Chloe Okuno’s (Slut) feature-length debut, Watcher,...
Slamdance 2022 Review: PARIS IS IN HARLEM, Mosaics of Life and Music
While there are a lot of laws enacted (and sometimes still exist) in cities that seem very odd and specific (I read once about a law forbidding people from hiding bees under their hats), some laws that seem strange on...
Sundance 2022 Review: ALICE, A Misfire By Any Other Name
Keke Palmer, Common and Jonny Lee Miller star in a drama, directed by Krystin Ver Linden.
Sundance 2022 Review: AFTER YANG, Profound Meditation on Loss, Grief, Family
Directed by Kogonada, the science-fiction drama stars Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith and Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja.
Sundance 2022 Review: EMILY THE CRIMINAL, Another Aubrey Plaza Showcase
Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi and Jonathan Avigdori star in a crime drama, directed by John Patton Ford.
Sundance 2022 Review: LIVING, A New Classic in the Making
Bill Nighy stars in an English-language drama directed by Oliver Hermanus, based on Kurosawa Akira's 'Ikaru.'
Sundance 2022 Review: EMERGENCY, Piercing, Trenchant Socio-Political Satire
There’s a moment in writer K.D. Dávila and director Carey Williams' (R+J) piercing, trenchant socio-political, feature-length adaptation of their award-winning Sundance Film Festival short, Emergency, where three big, tough-talking Black dudes drop all pretense of macho posturing once a drunk...
HONEYCOMB Trailer: Lo-Fi Remote Horror as Girls Find Their Magic
I couldn't be happier that we might be entering a golden age of films and television shows about girls gone wild - and I mean *truly* gone wild, alone in the wilderness, a danger to themselves and each other, finding...
Sundance 2022 Review: RESURRECTION, Stellar Rebecca Hall Shines in Twisty Psychological Thriller
In writer-director Andrew Semens’s (Nancy, Please) brilliantly twisty, disquieting psychological thriller, Resurrection, his first film since making his feature-length debut a decade ago, the central character, Margaret (an eerily transcendent Rebecca Hall) delivers a stunning, seven-minute monologue to an increasingly...
Rotterdam 2022: GIVE ME PITY! Teaser Riffs on Variety Shows With Something Sinister Lurking Behind The Scenes
A Primetime Saturday Night Network Television Spectacular starring Sissy St. Claire! Sissy St. Claire graces the small screen for her first ever television special, an evening full of music and laughter, glamour and entertainment! But Sissy’s live event quickly begins...
Sundance 2022 Review: SOMETHING IN THE DIRT, Rooms Within Rooms of Light and Shadow
Isolation can do funny things to the mind. Even if you like spending time alone, isolation, and the silence that comes with it, is something different. Rather than calm and contentment, it can breed fear, distrust, and obsession. It can...
Sundance 2022 Review: HATCHING, The Unbearable Weight Of Impossible Eggs-pectation
First time feature director Hanna Bergholm goes for broke in Hatching, a standout film in this year’s Sundance Midnight lineup. With a solid selection of thrillers and straight forward horrors, Hatching is definitely a contender for the weirdest film at...
Sundance 2022 Review: YOU WON'T BE ALONE, Impressive Malickian Horror
If you need any more evidence that the horror genre not only contains multitudes, but also remains incredibly malleable, look no further than writer-director Goran Stolevski’s stunningly realized feature-length debut, You Won’t Be Alone. A supernaturally-themed horror film with a...
Sundance 2022 Review: FRESH, Exquisitely Refined Culinary Horror
Epicurean horror has a long, if not always distinguished history on film, ranging from gnarly, gristly low-budget entries like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre through The Hills Have Eyes and Motel Hell (among many others), and more recently, Delicatessen, Hannibal...
Sundance 2022 Review: THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD Draws Thoroughly Modern Julie
Renate Reinsve stars in the new film by director Joachim Trier.
Sundance 2022 Review: SPEAK NO EVIL, When Being Polite Goes Horribly Wrong
Some people - your humble critic included - can find it very difficult to say no in social situations. Extricating oneself from uncomfortable circumstances can be a challenge, especially when it seems like the end of the unease is in...
Sundance 2022: Shudder Acquires Midnight Official Selection SPEAK NO EVIL
Shudder announced last night that the AMC streaming service has acquired the rights for Christian Tafdrup's psychological thriller Speak No Evil. A Danish family visits a Dutch family they met on a holiday. What was supposed to be an...
