Films based on true stories are always a difficult prospect for audiences. While most cases are effective portrayals of real events, other “true stories” can be more fabrications. Movies like I Swear operate somewhere in the middle. I Swear follows John Davidson (BAFTA winner, Robert Aramayo), a child diagnosed with …
Filipino filmmaker Jerrold Tarog’s historical biopic trilogy, which began a decade ago, may just have run its course with Quezon, notwithstanding the latest installment’s prescient coda. The movie first played in Philippine theaters in October last year and screened in the Limelight program of the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam, …
There is a small rural enclave in southern Philippines called Sitio Masalay, whose fields were turned into a horrific site of carnage one fateful day in November 2009, summarily taking 58 innocent lives. In the aftermath, only 57 bodies were found, and one remains missing. Director Carl Joseph Papa presciently …
Even if he wasn’t dying from colon cancer, André Ricciardi would make a fascinating subject for a documentary. Tony Benna’s André Is an Idiot shows this clearly by giving us a look not just at his disease, but at the totality of his life, making this film a joyful celebration …
Few authors from the 20th Century are more influential than Franz Kafka. The Czech writer did not receive the recognition he deserved throughout his life, as detailed in the introductions to his books. Each new edition of his masterpieces, such as Metamorphosis, gets a deep explanation of how Kafka’s success …
There are a few artists who make a generational impact. A work that influences and emotions for multiple decades, even if they are not with us anymore. It is the outstanding beauty of artistry that breaks the geographical and time barriers. An accurate example of that concept is Selena Quintanilla, …
Richard Linklater brought two films to the festival crowds this year. The first being Blue Moon, a drama about the tragic Lorenz Hart, whose professional relationship with Richard Rodgers has mostly been lost to history. The second is Nouvelle Vague, a loving ode to French New Wave cinema. Both are …
“Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either.” With these words early in his presidency, James Garfield may have sealed his fate. Shot by Charles J. Guiteau and dying six months after taking office in 1881, the United States …
It’s something of a surprise that Roofman has done the festival circuit. It’s the kind of comfortable movie that Hollywood used to churn out by the dozen: casually dripping with stars, a plot that handles serious issues with a light touch, product placement that combines the American fervours for nostalgia …
It is always, always interesting to see art about the making of other art. The choices people make, why those choices resonate, whether those choices were deliberate or accidental, and how much people get into their own way is always fascinating to watch. It certainly helps if you have a …
In 2021 a small French movie called The World After Us played the festival circuit because it was one of the first modern movies to address life in the modern gig economy. It was a direct precursor to At Work, in that they are both about a novelist in Paris …
Every episode of House of Guinness, Steven Knight’s newest television creation for Netflix, begins with a disclaimer and promise: “This fiction is inspired by true stories”. While based on many real people and events of 1860s Dublin (and further afield), House of Guinness is first and foremost concerned with being …
It is so hard to figure out how other people think that a movie like Silent Friend, which lays it all out step by step, is just so incredibly cool. The fact that it is hooked onto a real tree in a real place – an enormous ginkgo tree in …
Few national authors have the same clout and immediate recognisability as Scottish author Irvine Welsh. Paul Sng’s documentary Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough – co-written by Sng and Welsh – opens with a laundry list of ways Welsh and his work, definitions of national treasures, has reached adoring audiences …
We live in a cinematic era fascinated by the origin stories of founders and their revolutionary creations, but not all of them seem as urgently relevant as that of Whitney Wolfe and Bumble. The promise of exploring the creation of a dating app designed as an antidote to the toxic …
This movie, for which the English title should be My Tennis Coach and it’s weird that it isn’t, is an affable Italian road movie about the coming of age of a wannabe tennis player. The entire thing is built around the nuclear-level charm of Pierfrancesco Favino (who previously worked with …
Academy Award-winning director Kevin MacDonald has returned to documentary filmmaking after a series of fiction works, including The Mauritanian and How I Live Now, among others. His last three works were documentaries: High and Low – John Galliano, Last Song From Kabul, and One to One: John & Yoko. In …
Nearly a decade ago, American alternative artist and provocateur Joe Coleman painted a door-sized, hyper-detailed self-portrait titled “Doorway to Joe,” which reflects his personal lore, uninhibited fantasies and fetishes, and penchant for the divine and the profane. Later, he figured that the project called for a seven-foot companion portrait of …
Since his debut album, Empty Sky, in 1969, Sir Elton John has sold over three hundred million albums worldwide. His immense discography with thirty-two studio albums and plenty of live, compilation, and soundtrack records have put him upon the title of one of the biggest rockstars of his generation. In …
At times it’s best to encounter a movie as a blank slate, even for film critics like me who have never been put off by any ounce of spoilers. If anything, there’s a different kind of pleasure that arises from experiencing something for the first time, and it’s often ambrosial …