Throughout the history of mankind, there have been several instances where humans have found themselves facing a lot of peculiar situations. As per mythology, crime and corruption reached levels that even the gods had to come down to the planet to restore balance, and that’s what is about to happen …
Bella’s problems continue in Eclipse. Edward has returned to her, and that heals one hole in her heart. But it’s caused a seemingly insurmountable rift between her and Jacob, which opens a whole new one up. On top of that, a vampire seems to be hunting her again, and Alice’s …
Twenty years ago, Stephenie Meyer released Twilight and threw a bomb into the teen romance scene. Twilight could have been the end of the story, but honestly, there were some unanswered questions that readers needed answered, so less than a year later, she released New Moon and created more questions than answers. [Warning: …
Teenage self-assurance takes a serious hit in Stereo Girls but its sense of friendship and fun is strong enough to go to some dark places without losing its way. It’s an even bigger joy to see a movie about teenage girls who have such a strong sense of themselves, even …
I got married for the first time when I was 23. I was pregnant just a few months later, and that kid recently celebrated his 27th birthday. I’m no longer with my first husband, and it’s always interesting to consume media that helps me continue to process that split, even …
In their first directorial effort as a directing duo, Nicole and Valentina Bertani debut at the Concorso Internazionale of the Locarno Film Festival with Mosquitoes (Le Bambine). In 2022, Valentina screened her first film, The Crown Shyness (La timidezza delle chiome) at the Giornate degli Autori of the Venice Film …
Twenty years ago, Stephenie Meyer wrote a story of teenage love and changed everything we know about vampires. Edward is a vampire with a conscience, and Bella is a human with no sense of self-preservation. He is the most dangerous thing on Earth for her, and they can’t stay away from …
Playing in the Orizzonti competition program at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival, Thai director and screenwriter Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s latest vision Human Resource doubles as an intimate character study and a meditative portrait of contemporary Thai life mapped through the soul-sapping mechanics of corporate grind, a kind of a white-collar …
Writer-director Mihai Mincan told the room at the Venice Film Festival that the idea of Milk Teeth came from a real case of a girl who disappeared carrying a bucket of walnut shells to the garbage. His movie also makes an interesting companion piece to another film from the festival, …
Writer-director Shahad Ameen begins her movie with the last thing you’d expect from a story set in Saudi Arabia: snow. The message of this image is clear: if stereotypes are all you know then you know nothing at all. And as we follow three people on a secret, dangerous journey, …
The filmmaking trio of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker (better known as Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker or ZAZ) made their mark on cinema early in their careers. They began with The Kentucky Fried Movie, an anthology film of sketch comedy that did quite well critically and commercially, and …
No deer longs for the hunter’s arrow, and no art designed to maintain the status quo is ever as good as it thinks it is. Say what you will about Luca Guadagnino, he has made three solid movies in the last eighteen months, a level of career output rarely seen since …
I stumbled upon Demon Slayer when it first premiered in America back in 2019, thanks to a friend who was obsessed with anime. While I cut my teeth on series such as Pokémon, Digimon, and Sailor Moon as an adolescent, it had been decades since I actively chose an anime to watch in my …
After copping the Pardi di Domani best direction award for his short film Making Babies (Faire un enfant) in 2023, Canadian screenwriter and actor Éric K. Boulianne made his return to the Locarno Film Festival for his feature directorial debut Follies (Folichonneries), which just had its world premiere in the …
Playing out of competition at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival, Nova ‘78, from the directing duo of Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias, functions both as a moving paean to the enduring greatness of eminent writer and iconoclast William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) and an electrifying snapshot of a bygone period of …
Juror #2 could not have come out at a stranger time in world events towards the end of 2024. As a director, Clint Eastwood’s interests have been captured by the contradictions of life and justice in the United States: there are often clear-cut guilty and innocent parties, but who prevails …
Nicholas Hoult had a theme in 2024. The Order, director Justin Kurzel’s latest dramatic feature based on true events, puts his character in a very similar situation as in Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2. Both Bob Mathews (The Order) and Justin Kemp (Juror #2) are morally compromised men making bad (desperate, …
There are other directors who are better, there are others who are more stylish, but there is no director anywhere in the world who is more interesting than Werner Herzog. He was once shot on camera during an interview for British television and actually called the wound “insignificant” as the …
The first episode of Mike Judge’s King of the Hill aired just a week after my first husband and I got married. We were big Judge fans from years of Beavis and Butthead, and we thought that this new show looked interesting. I always loved it and appreciated the way that the Hill family cared about one another. A few years ago, I rewatched the first season and was …
In the following effort for the Croatian director Hana Jušić, she presents God Will Not Help in the Concorso Internazionale of the 2025 Locarno Film Festival. Following her debut at the Venice Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori with Quit Staring at My Plate, the Croatian author takes a look at the …