Tag: family
LEFT-HANDED GIRL Review: Vibrant Slice of Taipei Night Market Life
Shih-Ching Tsou directed and co-wrote Taiwan's official Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film; Sean Baker co-wrote.
WICKED: FOR GOOD Review: Follow-Up To Last Year's Smash Hit Fails To Justify Its Running Time
When studio executives, driven by commercial and not artistic concerns, decide to expand an adaptation of a beloved, long-running Broadway musical, the results will inevitably look and, more importantly, sound like Jon M. Chu’s (Crazy Rich Asians, Now You See...
Playback: Jafar Panahi, Cinema Under Pressure, from THE WHITE BALLOON to IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT
Jafar Panahi makes films under immense pressure. The Iranian filmmaker's conditions of censorship and surveillance have become the grammar of his storytelling. Out of those limits, he's built one of the most radical bodies of work, where love for one's...
Playback: Bill Condon, Spectacle and Secrets from GODS AND MONSTERS to KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
Bill Condon loves a spectacle, not just for the noise or the glamor, but for the ache that hides behind it. The lonely showman, the fading diva, and the monster who only wants to be seen; Condon tells stories where...
HALLOWIEBE Review: Fun Family Fodder
Halloween as a party has been on the rise in the Netherlands for the past decade, and though it is nowhere near as popular here as in the United States, it's still gaining traction fast. So while we have a...
Busan 2025 Review: In DEAR STRANGER, a Kidnapping Cracks Open a Troubled Marriage
Hidetoshi Nishijima and Gwei Lun-Mei star in director Mariko Tetsuya's suspense thriller.
Criterion in December 2025: SALAAM BOMBAY!, PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, and More
The Criterion Collection wants to make the month of December 2025 a bit more festive for physical media fans. Perfect for the season, Tim Burton's popular comedy sensation Pee-wee Herman's Big Adventure (1985) will arrive on 4K UHD, showcasing the...
Friday One Sheet: DEAR STRANGER
Simple line art, or is there more? The key art for Tetsuya Mariko's New York City-set drama, Dear Stranger, has a few interesting textural things going on beyond its doodle-in-the-margin first glance. First is the subtle texture, like a badly...
THE WIZ 4K Review: Looks Great Now, and Even More Deeply Weird
Diana Ross and Michael Jackson lead Sidney Lumet's deeply weird adaptation of the Broadway stage production on a sterling Criterion 4K disc.
KARATE KID: LEGENDS Review: Old-School Formula Reworked for the 21st Century
The 1980s were a veritable Golden Age for fans of The Karate Kid franchise. Beginning at the height of the Reagan Era with the John G. Avildsen-directed The Karate Kid in 1984, the loosely structured trilogy took Daniel LaRusso...
SEPARATED Review: The Past Is Prologue on US Immigration Policy
In the first half of the first Trump administration, several thousand children were forcibly separated from their parents in a ‘zero-tolerance’ deterrence policy that was cynically designed to discourage Latin American migrants from seeking entry into the United States of...
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...
Toronto True Crime Begins Year-Round Programming at Hot Docs, Starting With THE PEZ OUTLAW
The Toronto True Crime Festival is returning with year-round programming at the Hot Docs Cinema.
SPACKED OUT Review: Engaging, Provocative Coming of Age in Hong Kong
Almost 25 years later, Spacked Out, a coming-of-age social drama by Lawrence Ah-Mon (My Name is Fame, Gimme Gimme, Gangs), still feels as fresh, insightful, and provocative as it did when it was released just a few years after Hong...
HAUNTED MANSION Review: Second Adaptation of Theme Park-Ride Better Than The First
In another, better universe, this weekend – or possibly any other weekend between 2011 and the present – would have seen the much-anticipated, feature-length debut of Guillermo del Toro’s Haunted Mansion. Unfortunately, a long-gone nameless studio executive nixed del Toro’s...
Review: GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO, Stunningly Realized Stop-Motion Animation
There’s a moment in the stunningly realized Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio where the familiar title character (winningly voiced by Gregory Mann), newly granted a semblance of animated life by a compassionate supernatural spirit, attempts to greet his new “father,” Geppetto...
Camera Japan Rotterdam 2022 Review: THE GREAT YOKAI WAR: GUARDIANS
While Rotterdam's Camera Japan Film Festival sometimes mostly seems to consist of a wide variety of dramas, there are always a few crazy and/or spectacular titles to check out as well. And the festival scores big on both categories by...
Toronto 2022 Review: THE FABELMANS, Spielberg on Spielberg
Dreams are scary. In The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg puts his own childhood up on the big screen, through the Dream Factory, with the help many of his regular collaborators, screenwriter Tony Kushner (Munich, Lincoln), John Williams (Jaws, Indiana Jones, Jurassic...
Pretty Packaging: The FIREBALL XL5 Boxset Is Out Of This World
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson are known as legends in the field of science fiction television series, and rightfully so. While they are probably most famous for their live action series Space: 1999 and the puppet series Thunderbirds, they have been...
MUPPETS HAUNTED MANSION Trailer: The Muppets Halloween Special Screams on October 8th
In "Muppets Haunted Mansion" the Great Gonzo – world famous daredevil artiste, has done it all, seen it all, and survived it all. But on Halloween night, the fearless Gonzo takes on the greatest challenge of his life by spending...
