No. 1 Chung Ying Street is the latest from director Derek Chiu, a well-established figure in the Hong Kong film industry. The movie takes place during two periods of political unrest in Sha Tau Kok, a neighborhood that borders mainland...
Xiayin (Huang Lu) is a journalist in Nanjing, living with her professor husband and her dog, and expecting her first child. Increasingly frustrated by the restrictions put upon her reporting by her supervisor, she goes against his wishes to investigate...
Just when you thought things couldn’t get better Saskatoon Fantastic (November 14th - 18th) unleashes a final wave of awesomeness on movie-loving audiences. The exquisite 2018 lineup already boasted no shortage of international favorites - with films like Climax, Tigers...
I cannot rave enough about Ron Mann's new film, Carmine Street Guitars. I first fell in love with the film when I caught it at the Vancouver Film Festival, where I had the pleasure of hanging out with Ron for...
The Darling finds a young Korean actress, Lee Sun-hwa (played by Jang Jieun), spending some time abroad in Vancouver, ostensibly to visit her sister and brother-in-law. As she takes in the sights and interacts with the locals, it becomes clear...
Jonah Hill’s directorial debut may be called Mid90s, but that doesn’t mean you need to consider the decade the object of your specific nostalgia to feel this film deeply. As it happens, the film does speak to my exact zeitgeist,...
With the year’s end already in sight, another cycle of European fantastic film festivals has also reached its conclusion. Last week during the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival, Gaspar Noé’s Climax was the lucky recipient of this year’s Méliès D’Or....
After having its world premiere at Fantastic Fest, Feral is celebrating its Mexican premiere in November as part of the 2018 edition of the Los Cabos International Film Festival. Directed by Andrés Kaiser, Feral mixes the (fake) documentary and found...
It’s the most, wonderful time, of the year. In two weeks I will be returning to my happy place, CDMX, for the 2018 edition of the Morbido Film Fest. As always mi Familia de Morbido have put together a...
While Spain is slowly emerging from the economic crisis of the early 2000s, it still hasn't recovered completely, and even the most skilled worker can face themselves with extreme circumstances for which they need money. A lot of it. Now....
Arriving hot on the heels of Eric Matti’s similarly plotted but decidedly more entertaining BuyBust, Brillante Mendoza’s Alpha, the Right to Kill is a down and dirty frontline take on Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial war on drugs. Seen from...
It may not sound like groundbreaking stuff - a quaint documentary about a custom guitar shop in the heart of Greenwich Village - but make no mistake, Ron Mann’s latest laid-back documentary, Carmine Street Guitars, is the most unassuming, sneakily...
An editor looks through reels of a gay porn film, making decisions about what to cut, with the image of a beautiful young man flashing before her. At the same time, this young man is at a club, surrounded by...
Full disclosure, I am not familiar with the manga Liverleaf (or as it is called in Japan, Misumisô) was based upon. With that, I fear some of my criticisms may be pointed to the source material and not the film....
With Image Book, there seems to be a concerted effort for Godard to point us in the direction where he sees a corner of the world that is underexposed, underseen and misrepresented by the western world.
Edge of the Knife (aka SGaawaay K'uuna) is a film whose reputation will precede it, but for all the right reasons. Its existence marks the first ever feature entirely in Haida, an indigenous language that is spoken fluently by less than...
The first scene of Keep an Eye Out, another crazy film by France’s Quentin Dupieux, evokes that memorable speech from Rubber about how all the great films have stuff with "no reason" to be. That’s because in said sequence, we...
Ho Wi Ding’s noir-tinged triptych details three nights in the life of troubled Taiwan police detective Zhang Dong Ling, as his turbulent personal life repeatedly triggers eruptions of murderous violence. Winner of the Platform Prize at this year’s Toronto International...
Matt Dillon commits fully to the role of serial killer Jack, who works as an engineer and suffers from crippling OCD, among other psychological issues. Like a square version of American Psycho's Patrick Bateman, Jack gleefully embraces his dark nature and never tries to thwart his heinous impulses.
I’m writing this review from a friend’s kitchen where I’m staring at a very apropos Jack Kerouac magnet that quotes him saying “All I have to offer anyone is my confusion.” In digesting the Ingmar Bergman doc I’ve just seen,...
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