Gotham Chopra appropriates the classic language of IMAX documentaries in his free-flowing essay, Portrait of an Artist: Stephen Curry. What could’ve been a traditional piece of hagiography actually elevates its extreme glazing of Stephen Curry through a larger-than-life framing of a basketball giant as he accomplishes one of the greatest …
You won’t have to wait long for directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson to answer the question at the top of most audience members’ minds when diving into Wicker. An adaptation of Ursula Mills’ “The Wicker Husband,” the directorial duo, who are also a real-life couple, know that most moviegoers wonder how on earth Olivia Colman’s …
Alejandro G. Iñárritu might have won the discourse game with Digger, but Romain Gavras has won the metatextual satire on the climate crisis with Sacrifice. The critically maligned character study on a vacuous actor suddenly caught in the middle of a terrorist attack during a climate change convention was largely …
Some will debate the pertinence of a movie starting with a quote, but I found myself particularly amused by how Rob Savage’s Other Mommy begins with a line attributed to Aynar of Erebus, stating, “A chance to be human, the miracle that we mistake for the ordinary, is coveted by …
The camera never stops moving in Joko Anwar’s thrilling Ghost in the Cell. It moves and moves and moves and moves until it hits us with a sequence of gore so extreme, so visceral, that it will likely put off viewers who thought this genre offering would be more sophisticated. …
The language – and structure – of animated films needs to be reinvented within Hollywood. Stale stories are unfortunately plaguing our screens, despite formal inventiveness at almost every turn. Hollywood has released plenty of great animated offerings this year, but has any given the audience something truly different? Hoppers was …
Does anyone have reverence for Griffin Dunne’s Practical Magic? Scratch that – did anyone actively ask for a sequel to Practical Magic? Because, as far as I’m concerned, Susanne Bier’s Practical Magic 2 has no genuine justification for existing. It’s a toothless, unfunny, dull “comedy” that proves the detractors of …
“You see how this looks, right?” rehearses Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson), as he’s set to trap and apprehend a sexual predator who has been talking to a decoy for what will become the hit NBC television series To Catch a Predator. Throughout Lance Oppenheim’s depiction of the controversial “investigative journalist” …
The baby horror film hasn’t really evolved since Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. While still an influential text for many burgeoning filmmakers – despite Polanski’s persona non grata status within the creative community these days (and for good reason) – they seem only interested in ripping it off or creating their …
If you thought that David Mackenzie’s previous film, Relay, was stupid, you haven’t seen anything yet. In his latest disaster, Fuze, Mackenzie, and screenwriter Ben Hopkins somehow screw up a tried-and-true pressure-cooker that should elicit strong popcorn thrills and not total bewilderment. However, instead of sticking to the film’s original …
The signs were there when Sony transferred the rights to Tommy Wirkola’s Shiver – now called Thrash – to Netflix, which the streamer is now attempting to quietly dump a few weeks ago, with minimal promotional awareness. It’s strange, though, because Wirkola’s filmography is filled with impassioned genre works, from …
It’s been a while since such a well-mounted cast failed to meet the moment in an ensemble comedy quite like Jonah Hill’s Outcome, the actor’s sophomore outing into fiction filmmaking after his breakout directorial debut, Mid90s. That movie was (very) well received. This one will get the polar opposite reaction. …
If you think Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo’s aesthetics will get more refined after his films have, over the years, preferred a more digitized (read: pixelated, desaturated, out-of-focus) aesthetic, think again! His latest film, within a corpus of slow cinema experiments, What Does That Nature Say to You, contains many of …
Hasan Hadi’s The President’s Cake is a difficult film to watch. For 105 minutes, the Iraqi filmmaker’s directorial debut puts us in the middle of Saddam Hussein’s despotic reign and shows us harsh realities that many Western viewers are unfamiliar with. Even with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and economic sanctions …
Anyone who will discuss Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow will immediately recognize – and laud – that its politics are morally sound and cogent. It might even be an angrier film than you think, even if it mainly focuses on the distant relationship two young brothers, Akinola (Godwin Egbo), …
Ameer Fakher Eldin’s Yunan begins with the exasperated breaths of its protagonist, Munir (Georges Khabbaz), who, in the doctor’s office, is getting his lungs examined. Nothing is wrong with them, yet Munir consistently has difficulty catching his breath or even breathing normally. His doctor believes it might be psychological and …
The introductory section of Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister (La petite dernière) is slightly alienating, as it swiftly moves from one scene to the next, without an anchor point for the audience to latch onto, despite being adapted from Fatima Daas’ 2020 autofiction novel of the same name. However, our …
Who would’ve thought that the first studio production of the year would be a genuine heater, especially given that the January slate doesn’t usually promise a good time at the movies? Who would’ve also thought that a major Hollywood studio would greenlight what is essentially an exploitation film, promising a …
“The most detestable habit in all modern cinema is the homage. I don’t want to see another goddamn homage in anybody’s movie. There are enough of them when you’re unconscious.” – Orson Welles, 1982 Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus is a competently made movie. It has some of the most stunning cinematography …
After a botched limited theatrical release, Joachim Rønning’s Young Woman and the Sea is now available for all to view on Disney+. Strangely enough, the film never received any theatrical footprint in Canada, the next-door neighbor to the United States, and was announced as a ‘Disney+ Original’ when it made …