Light From Light is being billed as a paranormal ghost story, and while that description certainly isn’t untrue, it presents a conception far different from what writer-director Paul Harrill has in store. More than ghosts, the characters here are haunted by grief, questioning if…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into some DVD bargain bin assuming that those still exist by the time this sentence finishes. In other words, while the title of In Review…
Of the many fictional characters Steve Bannon compares himself to in American Dharma — Col. Nicholson from The Bridge on the River Kwai and Falstaff from Chimes at Midnight — the most blatantly ridiculous name mentioned is the Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger from the infamous YouTube video of the…
Ever since Eve’s Bayou, Kasi Lemmons has foregrounded the need for black adolescents to realize the importance of their influence and existence in a society fundamentally unjust to them. This specific thematic concern may situate her as uniquely qualified to tell the story of African American…
Before We Vanish by Lawrence Garcia Film
Feast of the Epiphany | Michael Koresky, Jeff Reicher & Farihah Zaman
In an independent film scene that too often evinces a paucity of imagination, Feast of the Epiphany — directed by Reverse Shot editors Michael Koresky, Jeff Reichert, and staff writer Farihah Zaman — displays a refreshingly protean ambition. The film leaps from a disorienting blend of actors’ screen tests and dramatic line readings…
Mati Diop’s debut feature Atlantics utilizes multiple narrative modes: social-realist drama, love story, detective procedural, ghost story, supernatural possession tale. And if the seams between these disparate elements are sometimes visible, it’s to the film’s benefit, marking this work as a very personal, lovingly handcrafted…
One day in November 1979, Philadelphian philanthropist and civil rights activist Marion Stokes felt a strange, deep-rooted fascination — this, while watching and following the chain of events announced on her television. TV, as a medium, acts as both a mirror and a window…
Naturally, there was quite a bit of excitement when it was announced that Terrence Malick would produce a documentary chronicling the life of Lil Peep, but alas, Everybody’s Everything is more directly aligned with recent documentaries Amy and Montage of Heck than, say, Song…
Agnès Varda’s documentaries have often incorporated her immediate periphery – friends (Jane B. by Agnès V.), family (Uncle Yanco), neighbors (Diary of a Pregnant Woman, Daguerreotypes), or strangers she finds particularly interesting (The Gleaners and I, Faces Places). While she often takes part in the films…
Before We Vanish by Luke Gorham Film
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open | Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers & Kathleen Hepburn
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is a less garish film than its prolix title would suggest: instead, co-directors Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn have actually delivered a determined study in interruption, understated but never relaxed. The film traces a single day’s intersection in the lives of two First…
