Indie Reviews
Fantasia 2024 Review: RITA, A Magical Realist Tragedy From The Director of LA LLORONA
A young girl endures brutalization at the hands of her caregivers in a Guatemalan home for girls in Rita, director Jayro Bustamante’s eagerly anticipated follow up to the critically acclaimed La Llorona. Bustamante once again draws from his country’s dark...
Fantasia 2024 Review: CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS, A Plucky Podcaster Hunts A Serial Killer In Her Hometown
A true crime podcaster heading home for Christmas finds herself in the middle of a murder spree that she has to solve before she becomes the next victim in Alice Maio Mackay’s Carnage for Christmas. Mackay’s latest feature marks her...
Fantasia 2024 Review: FRANKIE FREAKO, Steven Kostanski's Chaotic Puppet Adventure Is Freakin' Great!
A painfully bland office worker gets his world turned upside down by a trio of tiny cosmic weirdos in Steven Kostanski’s latest gonzo comedy, Frankie Freako. After hit cult comedy gold with 2021’s Psycho Goreman, Kostanski and his usual bunch...
Fantasia 2024 Review: CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING, A Gleefully Gory Musical Ten Years In The Making
Bursting with ingenuity and good old fashioned, “come on pals, let’s make a movie!” can-do energy, Sander Maran’s debut feature, Chainsaws Were Singing, is a gleefully gory musical romantic horror comedy that really hits the spot and proves that sometimes...
Fantasia 2024 Review: SCARED SHITLESS, A Creature Feature Worth Taking The Plunge
A friend of mine, an astute and well travelled film-lover, once told me their ‘big theory’ of audience engagement for most movies: The viewer will like the movie more if the main character is simply good at doing their job....
Karlovy Vary 2024 Review: TROPICANA, A Middle Age Coming of Age With Seidlian Touch
Omer Tobi's debut feature sees a weary supermarket cashier in the Israeli desert embarks on an unexpected journey of self-discovery in the echoes of Ulrich Seidl´s poetics.
Karlovy Vary 2024 Review: GRAND TOUR, A Cinematic Travelogue Blending Past and Present
The Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes merges genres, time periods, and cinematic techniques to create a post-modern exploration of cinema's fluid nature, offering a sophisticated and reflective homage to the art form that challenges conventional narrative boundaries.
Fantasia 2024: THE SECOND, Short Film Short Review
Editor Tony Zhou and Illustrator Taylor Ramos are perhaps best known for their YouTube channel Every Frame A Painting, their video essay side-hustle away from their day jobs in the TV animation industry. Early pioneers in this space nearly...
CRUMB CATCHER Review: A Pitch To Die For
Ella Rae Peck, Rigo Garay, John Speredakos and Lorraine Farris star in the home invasion thriller, directed by Chris Skotchdopole, from Larry Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix.
LE SAMOURAÏ Blu-ray Review: On the Elegance of a Revolver
Every filmmaker wants the perfect opening shot; but then, can the rest of the film live up to it? Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samuraï is one such film, that gives not just an iconic opening shot, but many in between, with...
Neuchâtel 2024 Review: ENNENNUM Is Science Fiction At Its Finest
On Saturday the 13th of July, the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival had its closing ceremony, complete with the handing out of its awards. As a part of the Critic's Jury this year, we handed our award for best feature...
UHF 4K Review: Shout Factory Helps Bring Joy Decades Later
What can be said about UHF that hasn’t been said before? “Weird Al” Yankovic and his manager/the director of the film, Jay Levey, pulled off something that was originally released in 1989. Oh, simpler times. The film is a ridiculous,...
SING SING Review: Colman Domingo Leads Dynamite Cast in Stirring Prison Drama
Located just 30 miles from New York City on the Hudson River, the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a 200-year-old maximum security prison, incarcerates what the criminal (in)justice system considers the worst of the worst, repeat, violent offenders serving decades-long sentences....
Mediterrane 2024 Review: DEAR JASSI, Love, Social Class, and True Crime Mix
Director Tarsem Singh Dhandwar departs from his renowned visual opulence to explore a true crime story deeply rooted in the cultural fabric of Punjab in his latest cinematic venture.
DANDELION Review: The Road to Deciding Your Identity
KiKi Layne and Thomas Doherty star in writer/director Nicole Riegel's dextrous, musically-themed film.
THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT Review: Indie Dramedy About Grief, Hope and Effective Techniques for Alienating Neighbours
Directed by H.P. Mendoza, the film stars Grant Rosenmeyer, Paul Raci, Maggie Grace, Lucy DeVito, and Sendhil Ramamurthy.
JUNE ZERO Review: Never Again, and Yet
This is a good movie, objectively. The shots are creative, the actors talented, the story heavy. What do I mean by that? That at one point the carpet becomes a film reel, that June Zero weaves together three different perspectives,...
PARIS IS IN HARLEM Review: 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...
MAXXXINE Review: Ti West's X Trilogy Comes To An Entertaining But Overstuffed End
Writer/director Ti West closes out an ambitious trilogy of horror films with the Hollywood-set glam pastiche, MaXXXine. The final chapter in the series headlined by the marvelous Mia Goth, MaXXXine finds heroine Maxine Minx following her dreams of fame to...
Chattanooga 2024 Review: SOMNIUM, Where Ambition, Exploitation, and Desperation Meet
Chloë Levine stars in writer-director Racheal Cain's intriguing feature debut.
