International 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...
Amman 2024 Review: MY SWEET LAND, And The Usefulness Of Having Dreams
My Sweet Land of Sareen Hairabedian was one of the stronger films in a small but mostly strong feature documentary competition section of the 2024 Amman International Film Festival. The film gained not only the International Film Critics Fipresci Award...
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: GHOST CAT ANZU, Farts in the General Direction of Studio Ghibli
To the sounds of cicadas during a Tokyo summer, 11-year-old Karin and her father Tetsuya leave the city by train to visit a countryside temple where the caretaker is the grandfather she has never met. It is a grand old...
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...
STARVE ACRE Review: Great English Folk Horror
Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark star in this moody new British folk horror, directed by Daniel Kokotajlo.
Fantasia 2024: SINCOPAT, Short Film Short Review
During the opening credits of short film, Sincopat, many festival laurels are initially displayed onscreen. Then, following a loud ‘bang’ on the soundtrack, several dozen more appear. This is a first for me, but it is in sync with the...
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....
Anime Summer 2024: THE ELUSIVE SAMURAI, Reluctant Hero
The light-hearted historical action series is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS Review: Finding Acceptable Truth
Directed by Wei Shujun, the Chinese murder mystery questions what is considered truth in our complicated modern society.
FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE 4K Review: The Personal Is Political
Crushing almost sixty years of twentieth-century turmoil into less run time than the equally decade-skippy first season of HBO's House of the Dragon, Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine joins the Criterion Collection this week in a new 4K transfer. The...
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.
Fantasia 2024 Review: TATSUMI, A Gritty Yakuza Street Drama With A Broken Heart
I am happy that these kinds of gritty, but emotionally tragic crime films are still being made. Hiroshi Shôji’s Tatsumi is one of those skuzzy neighborhood dramas, the kind soaked in poverty, spit, blood, and tears. Where the crime feels...
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: ESCAPE ATTEMPT, Short Film Short Review
In the future Saul hitches a ride with Anna and Vadim, a young couple on their way off planet for a vacation. Saul requests that they simply drop him off at the nearest uninhabited planet. He says he's done with...
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...
Fantasia 2024 Review: 4PM, Where the Social Contract Is Weaponized
Jay Song’s two-hour implosion of the social contract, 4PM is delightfully frustrating, and terribly absurd. It is loosely based on the Belgian novel The Stranger Next Door, written by Francophone author Amélie Nothomb, and plays as if that scene from ‘The Burbs —...
Karlovy Vary 2024 Review: Political Satire RUMOURS Takes Surreal Turn
Guy Maddin teams up with Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson on a trippy political comedy in a dystopian predicament led by Cate Blanchett.
Karlovy Vary 2024 Review: PARTHENOPE, Fantasy of Womanhood Through Male Gaze
Paolo Sorrentino, the Oscar-winning Italian director, returns with 'Parthenope,' a visually opulent film that serves as both a love letter to Naples and a very male exploration of womanhood through the intertwining lenses of myth and modernity.
Fantasia 2024 Review: BOOKWORM, A Parenting Adventure In The Wilderness
Early on in Bookworm, a doctor struggles to have a conversation with a child about her injured mother. The medical professional tries to ease the child’s anxiety and kind of makes a fool of himself, because the young girl just...
