In her sophomore effort, Suzannah Herbert premieres her film Natchez at the Tribeca Film Festival. The documentary title borrows its name from the city in Mississippi. In the 1800s, it was the city with the most millionaires in the world; cotton plantations and the slave trade were the main commercial …
The movie with the best title at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is also the kind of movie filmmakers love to make: a movie about making a movie. But less joyously, the setting here is present-day Egypt, a nation not currently enjoying the delights of democracy. The creatives involved, beginning …
The French/Polish director Julia Kowalski recently premiered her Que Ma Volonté Soit Faite (Her Will Be Done). It is a Quinzaine Des Cineastes selection and the director’s sophomore full-length feature, Crache Cœur (Raging Rose). The film narrates the story of Nawojka (Maria Wróbel), a girl from rural France whose parents …
What is a “feel-good” movie? Is it just an uplifting story? Or something even more? That’s a tricky question that doesn’t have a distinct answer. Something that may be heartfelt to one person may be found schmaltzy and manipulative to another. Adding that idea to 2025 films makes the prospect …
Why is a movie about the aftermath of a Parisian career woman’s mental breakdown, set in a small town in eastern France, named after an area of the west coast of Ireland? Because in 1981 a French singer, Michel Sardou, had a massive hit with a song called “Les lacs …
It’s funny that the humble beginnings of Steven Spielberg — arguably the most iconic filmmaker working in Hollywood — can be traced back to Playboy Magazine. His directorial debut from 1971, Duel, began as a short story published in Hugh Hefner’s adult-oriented magazine. Author Richard Matheson (The Omega Man, Stir …
This Japanese movie is named after an art print a preteen girl buys her terminally ill father. This strange misdirection fits this quietly misguided film, about how that girl passes the time while her parents are too preoccupied for her. This includes some topics on the very edge of what …
Bold, primary colours take centre point within the animated tale Death Does Not Exist (La mort n’existe pas) which convey the film’s blunt messaging effectively. Political in nature and economic in scale, the film lays bare its stance within its opening sequence leaving no doubt about its eat the rich …
The 1980s were perhaps the best decade for high-concept, low-budget, effects-driven horror films. There are many examples, but one that has stood the test of time and become a cult classic for horror fans is Stuart Gordon’s 1984 feature Re-Animator. Based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, it tells …
Paul Mescal has the very rare talent of making unusually good choices. He has made a few damp squibs; nobody loved Carmen but me, and while his charisma carried his stage performance of A Streetcar Named Desire from London to Brooklyn, the whole show was misguided. That said, he has …
Japanese director Masayuki Suô’s 1996 romantic comedy, Shall We Dance? Follows Shohei Sugiyama (Kôji Yakusho), an accountant who is surprisingly discontented. Despite his successful career and a wife and daughter who love him dearly, there’s something missing in Sugiyama’s life. On his daily commute, he spies from the train a …
There is a certain charm in looking back at a film that you watched as a kid. 1995’s A Kid in King Arthur’s Court, from director Michael Gottlieb and writers Michael Part and Robert L. Levy, was an easy choice for family movie night. It stars Thomas Ian Nicholas as …
Film critics could argue that certain films prove challenging to review. Hearing that statement may lead fans to assume one thing: that a film is bad. Bad movies are the hardest to review because there’s only so much to say about them. That statement can be stretched further into the …
Director Gareth Evans made waves with his 2011 film, The Raid: Redemption, and its 2014 sequel, The Raid 2. Both films became modern-day staples of the action genre, delivering a one-of-a-kind experience. They are films that, 10+ years later, still have an impact on the cultural discussion of action movies. …
There was a period when Fox Animation Studios was producing high-quality animated kids’ films. The studio gave us Anastasia in 1997, and a few years later, gave us Titan A.E. A pull quote on the special edition DVD of the film proclaims it as “the movie Star Wars fans have …
The gift Iranian writer-director Jafar Panahi has given to us all is no accident. Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident uses a very simple scenario to ask unanswerable questions about what makes a person good. It does this by offering four people a chance many dream of: the …
You wait your whole life for two female directors to adapt books written by women about artists who are thunderstruck by the prison of motherhood, then two come along in the same year. In December 2024 Marielle Heller gave us Nightbitch, and now this year’s Cannes Film Festival has given …
Sirât is the rare movie that should be seen absolutely cold. I mean it, stop reading this review right now until after you have seen it, then come back for when you need someone to hold your hand afterwards. For Sirât manages to deliver one of the greatest shocks ever …
Everybody knows the greatest thing about Wes Anderson’s movies is their sense of style. Style is the tool he uses to bring lightness to dark and complex subjects such as grief, the creeping threat of fascism and being an insufferable young person. The staging and blocking, the centering of images, …
For his next trick – not his follow-up to Anora, since he did not direct – Sean Baker has co-written, edited and co-produced this Taiwanese movie about a family of three women trying to make it in Taipei. The director (and co-writer) is Shih-Ching Tsou, who has worked with Mr. …