The Winter Lake angles for slow-burn thriller mode, but manages only to be slow as it brings little of substance to the table. Set in a…
Pixie delightfully channels Tarantino and Ritchie to playful, arch effect. After spending the last few years delivering stellar second-fiddle performances, Olivia Cooke steals the show in…
The Devil Below is unfortunately hamstrung by its shoestring budget and liberal cribbing of better horror properties. Being a horror fan is sometimes like taking a…
Shoplifters of the World is bad enough that all it really accomplishes is a reminder of how great The Smiths were. Set in 1987, Stephen Kijak’s…
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…
Violation is a stunning debut feature that matches its its thorny discourse with impeccable technical craft. Writer-director duo Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli have been making…
Nobody is an absolute blast of genre filmmaking and T-fueled ass-kicking glee. By now, it’s not really a stretch to assume that Bob Odenkirk isn’t just…
The Spine of Night The Spine of Night is a whole lot of movie. Despite the film’s relatively straightforward fantasy logline — sorcerer goes mad…
Fucking with Nobody For her sophomore feature, Fucking with Nobody, Finnish director Hannaleena Hauru opts to play an on-screen alter-ego of herself. Hanna is a…
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched In 2012, writer and film programmer Kier-La Janisse published House of Psychotic Women, a tremendous and essential text, part autobiography,…
City of Lies is deeply trite in its messaging, but given its prolonged stay on the shelf, isn’t as bad as you might expect. Arriving nearly…
Gaia There’s an ancient, malevolent force living in the depths of the forest in director Jaco Bouwer’s Gaia, a psychedelic bit of eco-horror that finds nature…
The “Zack Snyder cut” isn’t the holy grail of superhero cinema, but it’s at least a singular vision and a distinct improvement on the studio-bungled…
The Courier doesn’t rank among the spy film greats and misunderstands its own core, but it’s a diverting enough shadows-and-cigarettes throwback. The Dad Movie of 2021…
After being forced to cancel 2020’s festival in the eleventh hour in the wake of Covid’s proliferation across the U.S., SXSW returns in 2021. Adopting…
Keep an Eye Out is a mere blip of a film, but for fans of Dupieux’s deadpan gonzo schtick, there are small pleasures to be found.…
Rose Plays Julie ultimately relies too heavily on well-worn revenge tropes at the expense of any substantive study of identity. So cold and somber that it…
While frequently interesting to watch unfold, The Inheritance has no overarching vision and thus finds much of its potential political power muted. Inspired by both…
The spectre of doom looms over the besieged town of Srebrenica for the entirety of Jasmila Žbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida?, but the portended massacre only…
The Fever has plenty on its mind and is considerably weighty in its own right, but feels somewhat too indebted to obvious, superior arthouse touchstones. “They…
For better or worse, Yes Day is essentially what you expect it to be: a sweet, sitcom-styled family comedy. The new Netflix family comedy Yes…