Review

By Elias Savada. An ugly, dirty war begets the airing of some nasty laundry. That’s the simple historical concept – and quite an emotional memory for the too many South Americans who suffered through the bad times – driving millions of fascinated fans to Pablo Trapero’s new feature The Clan (El […]

By John Duncan Talbird. First-time feature writer-director Chloé Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me opens and closes with the narration of teenage Lakota Indian Johnny Winter (John Reddy). The first image is of him barebacked on a horse, voiceover emotionlessly informing us about the wisdom he’s gained breaking horses: “Anything that […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) is a young bunny with big ideas. Living in the rural town of Bunnyburrow her parents expect her to follow in the family tradition, growing and selling various fruit and vegetables. But Judy yearns to go to the fabled city of Zootopia, where […]

By Elias Savada. Other than a kitchen catastrophe, there’s not a sloppy moment in Trey Edward Shults’ micro-budgeted, crowdsourced Krisha, an incredibly well-constructed debut feature that plays like a home movie gone awry. Considering that the director-writer-editor, just 25 years old, shot it over a mere 9-day period in his parents’ […]

By Elias Savada. The perception that people of significantly older age can’t control their destinies, particularly if dementia is knocking at their door, is expressively examined in Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan’s Remember, a substantially wobbly, yet incredibly persuasive Holocaust revenge thriller masquerading as a cross-country road movie. The award-winning Egoyan, known […]

By Paul Risker. I still recall the scene in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003) when the father tells his offspring that they cannot live separately of the world. It is a scene that has replayed itself numerous times in my mind since I first encountered what could be called Bertolucci’s […]

A Book Review by Tony Williams. This book falls into the now familiar category of Cityscape Studies but focuses on representations of Berlin from the period of Walter Ruttmann’s well-known documentary Berlin – Symphony of a Great City (1927) to more recent depictions of a landscape that has been drastically […]

By Elias Savada. The ominous hum of unease that saturates Swiss-born director Michael Krummenacher’s effective yet derivative German thriller Sibylle – being sold worldwide under the title Like a Cast Shadow – sounds distinctly familiar. Is it a doppelganger? A transference tale? A journey-into-madness melodrama? Take your pick. You might see pieces […]

By Elias Savada. Spiritual and haunting in its low decibel manner, the New England coming-of-age drama Neptune is an indie effort that follows a young teenager’s soul-searching excursion along a disconcerting and sometimes allegorical path. The film is a proudly-shot-in-Maine effort from Portland filmmaker Derek Kimball, making a solid, passionate feature […]

By Elias Savada. A semi-creepy opening sequence for director-writer Benjamin Meyer’s micro-budget feature directorial debut Fools had me wondering whether stalking can be an acceptable dating platform. Two people exchange glances and touch hands on a passenger pole aboard a Chicago El train. He moves his grasp higher. Her hand follows. […]