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...
Those fortunate enough to have seen Jim Cummings' Sundance winning short film, Thunder Road (2016), won't soon forget it. Some found it hilarious, some found it awkward, some found it hilariously awkward, perhaps in the vein of human train-wrecks like...
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...
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...
An undercover cop must fight for his life when he becomes an unwitting participant in a deadly game of cat and mouse in writer-director Jimmy Henderson's ambitious follow-up to prison riot throw-down Jailbreak, reworking Pichel and Schoedsack’s classic The Most Dangerous Game...
Part of the fun in attending festivals like Sitges is the experience of watching a movie without much knowledge about it and what to expect. So, before stepping inside the theatre to watch The Head, pretty much the only thing...
Sometimes a horror movie is so suspenseful that you don't recognize its flaws until later. A midnight viewing of Open 24 Hours not only kept me awake but on the edge of my seat for its entire running time. Director...
A young masterless samurai faces a crisis of confidence when he is called upon to defend a family of farmers from a marauding gang in Shinya Tsukamoto’s small scale samurai drama. Killing is the actor-writer-director’s first film since 2014’s remake...
14 years after his Palme D’Or winning Fahrenheit 9/11, documentarian Michael Moore seizes the opportunity to conveniently flip his title and train his satirical eye on American politics once again. Asking simply “How the fuck did this happen?!” Fahrenheit 11/9...
Ash is the Purest White is a full-on (un)sentimental melodrama in epic scale. It's perhaps Jia's most down to earth, character study work. The long stretch in the middle gains more poignancy as the film goes along and afterwords. Some people reinvent themselves along with the changing times and some people don't. Some things in them though, remain the same. Jia expertly juxtaposes these conundrums, reflecting the soul of a changing nation.
The North African nation of Tunisia finally makes its entrance onto the world genre film scene with Abdelhamid Bouchnak's moody chiller, Dachra. Borrowing liberally from cinematic folk horror traditions, Dachra takes on a not entirely unfamilar journey into a heart of...
When you think of Gilda Radner, are you overcome with a melancholy half-smile? Do you chuckle when you think of her SNL characters, Roseanne Roseannadanna or "Baba Wawa"? If so, Lisa Dapolito’s new documentary Love, Gilda is for you. Though...
Imagine you are the world's greatest soccer player. You create art with the way you move your feet, the way you touch the ball; it's like a dance that inspires tears of joy in the eyes of anyone who watches...
Any new Peter Strickland film is cause for celebration. The Berkshire auteur has delivered some of the most delightful unease (and wicked humour) in cult cinema since 2009's Katalin Varga. In Fabric is his most wildly fluctuating film, where the highs...
"Does it ever stop? The wind?" Two women converse over the natural elements and, although it isn't mentioned, the effect it has on their state of mind. This being sometime in the late 1800s, there is no television or radio...
Space is dark, a blackness that you cannot even imagine. And it is silent. Not middle-of-nowhere silent where there is still the occasional breeze that moves the sand or a sense of the air or sun which seems to have...
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