The Girl with the Needle (Pigen med Nålen) is based on such a well-known criminal case in Denmark that mentioning the name of one of the characters is a local spoiler. For the rest of us, the horror must unspool the old-fashioned way as we watch a young woman’s truly desperate …
There’s nothing like a sudden death to bring a community together, and there’s nothing like a tragedy to make people realize what’s truly important. This Icelandic movie, When the Light Breaks (Ljósbrot), is about the worst 24 hours in the lives of a group of young friends because, in the course …
In the horrible post-apocalyptic future depicted in the Mad Max movies, where people have names like The Octoboss and Toast the Knowing, it was downright revolutionary of Mad Max’s mother to name him Max. In Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, two of the evil sidekicks are named Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones) and, what …
Quentin Dupieux, the director of The Second Act (Le deuxième acte), who was also the writer, cinematographer, and editor of The Second Act, thanks his own brain in the credits. This is entirely what should be expected from Mr. Dupieux, whose works are – and this is meant as an extreme compliment – completely insane. He tends to work …
The Gutter, a bowling comedy from Yassir Lester (Marvel’s Armor Wars) and Isaiah Lester recently had its world premiere at SXSW in Austin. The film stars Shameik Moore, Susan Sarandon, D’Arcy Carden, Jay Ellis, Jackée Harry, and Paul Reiser, just to name a few. Moore plays Walt, a bartender and shoe de-roacher (exactly what you think) at the AlleyCatz bowling alley. Money problems …
Kristi Shimek is Arcadian’s editor and one of the people responsible for helping to create the post-apocalyptic tension in director Ben Brewer’s horror thriller. Arcadian is a story of survival, where ferocious creatures that go bump in the night are after a father and his twin boys. The film stars Nicholas Cage as the dad, Paul, with Jaeden Martell and Maxwell …
Sasha Nathwani’s brilliant coming-of-age film Last Swim is set in London during the sweaty swing of summer, as young astrophysics enthusiast Ziba (Deba Hekmat) has her eye set on experiencing a meteor shower in person. Last Swim chronicles a day with Ziba and her friends as they celebrate their A-level results amongst their fading youth. …
In Aesop’s Fables, a set of tales told to children to imbue them with socially correct morals, exists the story of “The North Wind and The Sun.” The iconic fable describes how the anthropomorphic entities of the Wind and the Sun argued between themselves on the best method in getting someone …
Stuntmen do very impressive work on movies, and the better they are, the less likely you are even to notice them. While rumblings about an Oscar for stunts finally being given out have led nowhere, the best boost to this particular section of the industry is the big-budget blockbuster The Fall …
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a British movie set at the seaside will be incredibly depressing, and on the surface, Silver Haze is another one of them. It’s done in the usual no-budget British style saved for working-class stories – handheld cameras following screaming families of dubious income smoking endless …
Everyone expects that the end of the world – or at least of civilization as we know it – will come about in a big, transformative way. An extinction event or an apocalyptic end to all we know and love has been predicted by many science fiction stories and zombie …
Fish out of water comedies are fun because it’s inherently interesting, and often quite funny, to watch people try to adjust to a life they’ve never known. In some cases, it’s the chance for someone to experience unprecedented luxury and comfort without ever having been able to fathom that kind …
The Scottish comedian Janey Godley is from Glasgow, so of course a new documentary about her life would be the closing gala of the Glasgow Film Festival. But when a person’s life has been as troubled as Ms. Godley’s, a documentary needs to address those troubles directly instead of letting circumstances do the …
In 2020, Ray Yeung’s film Suk Suk (Twilight’s Kiss) was nominated at the Hong Kong Film Awards, with lead actor Tai-Bo taking home Best Actor. However, due to the pandemic, the film never found international audiences. Now, four years later, Yeung hopes to bring his next feature, All Shall Be Well, to more audiences this time around. The film …
Anyone who was alive on New Year’s Eve in 1999 remembers that the world was supposed to end, and there was a lot of panic about it. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but there’s a universe in which things could have played out differently, which is vividly imagined in the directorial …
The G, from writer-director Karl R. Hearne, is an unusual crime thriller in that its central character is a woman in her sixties and the insults of aging are central to the crimes at its core. But the unusual intelligence of The G is that it knows that physical weakness means little if …
Punctuation can speak volumes. The latest feature from writer-director duo Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman – Coup! – joins the ranks of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! and Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! in adding an exclamation point to a punch title, immediately suggesting a zany, irreverent take on social paranoia during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. As the world recovers from war …
Some of film history’s most iconic works take place across one eventful day or night. Tummy Monster easily fits this model, taking place in one location over a night that goes from ordinary to extraordinary with alarming speed. Tattoo artist Tales (Lorn Macdonald) is just about to close up shop …
Twenty-four hours in one lawyer’s chaotic personal and professional life comes to a head in Selman Nacar’s sophomore feature. Hesitation Wound (Tereddüt Çizgisi) clocks in under 90 minutes, but the fullness of its action and the richness of its moral dilemmas, characterizations, and performances gives it the weight of many longer features. Canan …
The year is 2041, and death before one’s time does not necessarily mean the end of one’s life in Robert Hloz’s sleek sci-fi thriller. Restore Point takes its title from this new technology, managed in a central database in a nondescript metropolis of tarnished chrome (perhaps Prague in the future, though signs of its …