Indie Reviews
Review: MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON, Disarmingly Wonderful
Jenny Slate and Isabella Rossellini star in the best film of the year, directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp.
Review: In MAD GOD, Monsters Run Amuck
Master stop-motion animator Phil Tippett's unsettling, yet still somewhat perversely mesmerizing spectacle, is a marvel to behold.
Review: GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE, Let's Talk About Sex
You may not know the technical term, but I'm guessing many reading will know the sensation: skin hunger. Humans are social animals, and one of our social needs is touch, and the (hopefully) pleasant sensation it brings. Expanding that into...
Review: UNHUMAN, Breakfast Club Vs. Zombies
Unhuman is the latest low-budget horror film from the prolific Jason Blum and Blumhouse, and at first glance, there’s nothing particularly innovative about it. After all, there’s only so much you can do with zombie movies when that subgenre’s been...
Review: WATCHER, Slow-Burning, Giallo-Inspired Psychological Thriller
Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman, and Burn Gorman star in a thriller, directed by Chloe Okuno, and opening exclusively in movie theaters.
Review: THE TIME CAPSULE, A Missed Opportunity
Many of us dream of being young again, or at having a second chance at first love. Many of us have a crisis in our middle age, when certain dreams haven't come true and we have to completely re-assess where...
Cannes 2022 Review: JERRY LEE LEWIS: TROUBLE IN MIND, Great Balls of Fire and Brimstone
"I'm troubled, I'm troubled, I'm troubled in mind If trouble don't kill me, Lord I'll live a long time..." -Traditional In Ethan Coen's documentary debut, we learn that Jerry Lee Lewis not only outlived all of his rock and roll...
Review: MONTANA STORY, Relatable Family Drama Bolstered By Its Central Performances
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina Families. When they’re not literally or figuratively raising you up, they’re bringing you down. It’s nowhere near as simple as that...
Cannes 2022 Review: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE, The New Flesh Still Lives
There's a reason why Cronenberg is the first name in body horror - his, ahem, body of work, spanning several decades, has evolved from arguably the more explotative (Shivers, The Brood), to the more Romantic and deeply rich psychological/body horror...
Review: DINNER IN AMERICA, Heartwarming and Surprising
Kyle Gallner, Yancey Fuqua, Jennifer Kincer and Pat Healy star in writer/director Adam Rehmeier's comedy-drama.
Review: MEN, Alex Garland Descends Into Inscrutable Body Horror
A darling of the independent film circuit, Alex Garland’s latest mindfuck is his most confounding and inscrutable work yet. While Men is bound to spark conversations about male violence, toxic masculinity, and the fragile male ego from a large sector...
Review: EMERGENCY, Much More Than One Crazy Night
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...
Review: FIRESTARTER Fizzles
A family on the run, a little girl with immense powers she doesn’t understand and can barely control, and an evil covert organization desperate to harness the girl’s power for their own good. This is Firestarter, a new adaptation of...
Blu-ray Review: MISSISSIPPI MASALA, A Gorgeous Restoration of a Vibrant Romantic Drama
Romantic dramas are a bit too few and far between in recent years (at least good ones); have we become too cynical in the 21st century, has the burden of existence mean we too seldom scoff at those stories who...
Review: THE REVELATION Reveals An Emotionally Scarred, Scared, Scary Man
This April saw the return of the Amsterdamned Film Festival after two years of postponements and cancellations due to lock-downs. And what could be a better way to open such a long-missed event than with the world premiere of a...
Review: THE INNOCENTS, Beware, Children at Play
It can often be difficult to know when to trust a child; on one hand, we want to believe that children are innocent and good, and will tell us the truth. On the other, I've known plenty of children who...
Blu-ray Review: EYIMOFE (THIS IS MY DESIRE), Intimate Lives of Quiet Longing
African filma are sorely lacking in the Criterion collection, certainly not for lack of a quality cinema. And while most cinephiles might be familiar with the term 'Nollywood', the opportunities to see films from Nigeria, or many other African nations,...
Review: In MEMORY, Liam Neeson Returns to Familiar Action-Hero Mode
The return of Martin Campbell, the Brit director who successfully rebooted the James Bond franchise not once but twice (GoldenEye, Casino Royale), on opposite sides of the millennium and gave English-language audiences Antonio Banderas as the title character in The...
Review: THE AVIARY, The Inescapable Wilderness of the Mind
I'm normally loathe to begin a review with a dictionary definition, but I did find myself turning to Oxford on my shelf to look up the word 'cult': one of those things perhaps, like, porn, that we can't define but...
Calgary Underground 2022 Review: THE RIGHTEOUS Offers A Stark Portrait of Guilt
The Righteous opens with the funeral of a young girl. Her mourning adopted parents, an ex-priest and his wife, still maintain active ties with the biological mother. There is an awkward visit in the family living room, adorned with many...
