Angel Studios’ recent movie, Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot is not immune to the studio’s typical criticism (yes, it uses children suffering as a tool to proselytize Christianity), but the film isn’t as bad as its detractors say it is, nor is it as good as its …
Musician and filmmaker H.P. Mendoza’s newest release The Secret Art of Human Flight looks like a B-movie and has an absurd premise usually seen in average-quality YouTube shorts. Known for his skill directing small-budget movies, Mendoza manages to take a film that even at its premise, teeters toward collapse and …
So, in most places, growing up, there are usually books that are required for reading in school. Here in the U.S., you’d find books like Catcher In The Rye, Of Mice And Men, The Great Gatsby, as well as books by Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens and such among those reading …
The cinematic format holds the privilege of imagining numerous variables of what the future may be like. The screen platforms artists to compose frames through camera lenses to reflect on the present and create a future through imagery. In this sense, the French director Aude Léa Rapin, who previously directed …
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of the most prolific directors in world cinema. This year, he premiered Chime at the 74th Berlinale. The French remake of his 1998 film, Serpent’s Path, went to the San Sebástian Film Festival. Concluding his year, Cloud debuted at the Biennale di Venezia, and Japan selected …
The gauchos are cowboys and cowgirls living traditionally in South America. Their values as a community are to live respectfully in harmony with nature. In the late stage of capitalism, where financial institutions and capital are the focus of humanity, the Gauchos look back at the root of their history …
The typical Netflix action thriller and neo-western can fall into two distinct categories. The first involves straightforward generic and forgettable procedurals. Such films simply go through the motions of the genre, delivering stories and bland action sequences seen time and time again. The other involves something much darker, going against …
Carry-On is the latest thriller from Netflix and stars Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, and Jason Bateman. We’re well past the golden age of Die Hard knockoffs but the formula remains a very reliable one for making high-grade B-movies if you can assemble the right team to make it. Jaume Collet-Serra has …
2017’s The Greatest Showman is a musical drama whose popularity I struggle to understand. For all its huge setpieces and hyper-stylised choreography its narrative and thematic substance was cloying and often faux, with overwhelmingly bland songs – minus Rewrite the Stars – to boot. Director Michael Gracey at last returns …
The line between a successful career and homelessness grows thinner every year. This, along with themes of familial strife, motherhood, and finding your sense of self, is present in Vivian Kerr’s directorial debut, Scrap. When Beth (Vivian Kerr) loses her job, she finds herself and her daughter Birdie (Julianna Layne) living …
The year I got divorced my job sent me to a career event for women in our line of work that purported to be a fundraiser for a domestic abuse charity. What it actually entailed was a group of wealthy women reassuring each other, with no sense of irony, that …
Director Alice Maio Mackay sits down to chat over zoom with Alise Chaffins about the comedy-horror film Satranic Panic. The Interview with Satranic Panic’s Alice Maio Mackay [Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.] Alise Chaffins: I was super excited to watch this, mostly just because of the …
Musical horror comedies have long been a place to explore gender-expansive themes. Obviously, one of the most famous is the 1975 cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but there have also been cases made for Little Shop of Horrors to be a trans allegory. Genre films are meant to push boundaries, so seeing …
On the 26th September 2021, screenwriter Russell Hainline posted on Twitter: “Just had the best idea for a Hallmark Christmas movie holy sh-t holy sh-t holy sh-t.” On the 13th November 2024, Netflix released the end result of this tweet: Hot Frosty. Mr. Hainline’s tweet made allusions to Hot Frosty …
Halina Reijn, the director behind 2022’s wildly entertaining Bodies Bodies Bodies, returns with Babygirl, an erotic drama starring Nicole Kidman. Kidman, now 57, has never shied away from taking on racy material, but her role as Romy, an aging CEO for a growing artificial intelligence company, is her most daring …
Nickel Boys, an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, has attempted to meet the current moment by telling a story of horrendous racism and child abuse with neither racism nor violence in it. This is worse than the biographies of Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King, Jr. …
After two monumental entries into the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi had a lot riding on it. Trying to stick the landing is always a high pressure job but with this final piece of the original trilogy, we are thankfully in luck. While it’s not as airtight of …
If anyone suspected that the success of George Lucas’s Star Wars was a fluke, then the 1980s Irvin Kershner-directed The Empire Strikes Back smothered these allegations. It maintains the imagination and splendour of the original while adding narrative twists and new character dimensions to the mix. But while it is, …
In 1977, blockbuster cinema changed forever with the release of George Lucas’s Star Wars. While Steven Spielberg’s Jaws spawned the term blockbuster, Star Wars came to define the genre with its humongous popularity, critical acclaim, and financial success, which was unlike anything cinemas had seen at that point. Nearly fifty …
The problem with The Problem with People is that it is so determined to be light-hearted in how it deals with an unpleasant aspect of human nature – our talent for conflict – that it is neither realistic enough nor cheerful enough. It works very hard both to provide enough …