A lot of people are missing the point of The Bride! because they don’t want to consider the price paid for our entertainment. This is possibly because, in service to its original concept, this barnstorming horror movie contains only two original ideas not directly lifted from other films. The first …
It’s 2014 and Nadia (Monia Chokri) and Céline (Ella Rumpf) were recently legally able to get married in France. Hooray! And anyone who’s ever heard a playground chant knows what comes after love and marriage. Nadia is pregnant thanks to IVF and a Danish sperm donor, but Céline will have …
It makes no sense when a movie spoils itself through its own marketing. The central relationship in Washed Up has a twist that you probably haven’t been able to avoid! This is a giant mistake, because most of the humour and a great deal of the charm comes in how …
If you think Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo’s aesthetics will get more refined after his films have, over the years, preferred a more digitized (read: pixelated, desaturated, out-of-focus) aesthetic, think again! His latest film, within a corpus of slow cinema experiments, What Does That Nature Say to You, contains many of …
Someday a movie in which a group of teenagers throw a mock funeral for a hamster, complete with stone-faced pallbearers carrying a small coffin past hordes of wailing kids dressed up to the nines, will deserve a bad review, but today is not that day. Black Burns Fast has an …
Grace Glowicki’s Dead Lover arrives as Frankenstein tales are having a real cultural moment. With Guillermo del Toro’s film released last autumn (and picking up three Oscars) and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride currently in cinemas, Glowicki’s picture as director, co-writer (with Ben Petrie, who also stars) and star may not …
“It’s a dating app for dead bodies”. Yep, that’s the main concept that drives Sarah G. Pierce’s debut novel, For Human Use. Basically, a charismatic (arguably) guy convinces the world that in order to prove you’re truly well adjusted, you need to enjoy spending time hanging out with dead bodies. For some reason, Tom …
In 1980 Lily Tomlin was faced with a dilemma. She was riding high after winning a Tony with her one-woman play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe and then starring in feminist revenge comedy 9 to 5, but then she had to do her next thing. …
The Brazilian director Gabe Klinger has built his career entirely in the United States. Based in Chicago, he directed the documentary Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater, Porto, and the short film Bergman’s Ghosts, a complementary work to Bergman Island, the Cannes film by Mia Hansen-Løve. For the first …
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 …
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die takes the worst nightmares of the current moment and turns them into comedy, but the kind of comedy where if you didn’t laugh you’d cry. This is done in the lighthearted comic blockbuster style best described as a mash-up where 1990s French horror-comedy Delicatessen …
The creative team behind Derry Girls returns with the comedy thriller, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. The show marks a darker shift for creator, writer, and executive producer Lisa McGee, with fans of her previous work likely expecting something darker. After the death of their school friend, flighty …
Whenever a new project from Sony Pictures Animation hits theaters, I’ll admit my heart rate picks up just a bit. Whether it’s the visual revolution started by the Spider-Verse franchise or the emotionally resonant storytelling in The Mitchells vs. the Machines, my expectations for any animation from this studio have …
In 1976, the genius puppeteer Jim Henson released his masterpiece The Muppets Show. Despite early versions of the characters in decades before, such as Kermit the Frog in a short-form production in the 1950s, the TV show popularized Kermit and his gang. Again, Henson crystallized himself in the American popular …
Unlike the experience I had yesterday with Mercy, I walked into the theater to watch Send Help with considerably high expectations. Not just because of the positive reception circulating among most of my colleagues and the general public, but because the prospect of seeing a master like Sam Raimi (Spider-Man) …
The Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason is one of the most fascinating voices in the current European cinema. Known for his 2022 film Godland (Vanskabte land), a project about a young Danish priest traveling to the remote parts of Iceland. It premiered at that year’s Un Certain Regard of the Cannes …
Originally titled Sehnsucht in Sangerhausen, which translates as “Longing in Sangerhausen,” Julian Radlmaier’s latest feature and Locarno 2025 in-competition entry Phantoms of July unfolds as a spirited absurdist dramedy set in the titular mining town that formed part of East Germany prior to reunification. It is the kind of movie …
Filmes de Plástico (which translates to plastic films) is a Brazilian production company based in the outskirts of Contagem, in the greater Belo Horizonte, one of Brazil’s largest capitals. The city is primarily a refuge for the working class, where rentals are less expensive than in the capital, which is …
In modern Ukrainian filmmaking, Valentyn Vasyanovych is one of the best-known names on the festival circuit. His films Atlantis and Reflection premiered at the Venice Film Festival. In this sense, the director has already been discussing the Russia-Ukraine conflict in his work. Reflection narrates the kidnapping of a Ukrainian surgeon …
The Romanian director Radu Jude is one of the most prolific filmmakers of our time. A member of the Romanian New Wave, a group of new voices in the mid-2000s, which generated great works from Cristian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, and Alexander Nanau. Since 2020, Jude has released 11 …