Review

By John Duncan Talbird. New Zealand has given the world actors Sam Neil and Russell Crowe and directors Jane Campion and Peter Jackson. But above all others, I would have to express a soft spot for New Zealander Jemaine Clement, one half of the folk pop comedy duo, Flight of […]

By William Repass.  In today’s economic and political climate, it can be tempting to dismiss film as merely spectacle: a flimsy replacement for or deflection from lived experience that nonetheless empowers and enriches the few at the expense of the many. Even accomplished films, if we step back and consider […]

By Elias Savada. I like looking at mountains. From a safe distance. Or on my computer screen saver. Occasionally, from above, in a well-protected, warm airplane. And, of course, from the comfort of a nice secure seat in a earthbound movie theatre. I’ll leave the climbing of such extreme big […]

By Devapriya Sanyal. Beginning in 2012, the Indian film audience has been treated on and off to a number of excellent biopics – the topics being covered in these films varying greatly, both in terms of subject matter as well as treatment. Ketan Mehta’s Manjhi: The Mountain Man is one […]

By Elias Savada. Aviva Kempner has struck again. A Jewish liberal landmark in Washington for many decades, she has forged a multi-faceted career that includes making documentaries that focus on people and events Jewish. The Washington Jewish Film Festival was started by Kempner in 1990 (she’s still on its advisory […]

By Elias Savada. The more you laugh at David Gold, the more you want to smack him on the side of his loopy head. He’s the central character in Guidance — the feature debut from Canadian writer-director Pat Mills (who also stars) — and the world is his Goliath. His […]

By Cleaver Patterson. It sounds odd that the screening for a film which is not primarily horror – at least in the generally accepted sense of the word – was the first to sell out at a festival dedicated to the genre.  However that’s just what happened when tickets for […]

By Elias Savada. Joe Swanberg apparently hasn’t stopped mumbling yet. Known for his mumblecore films — micro-budget affairs shot on video with lots of actor improvisation — Swanberg has barely inched toward making more formal movies, starting with the craft beer romance Drinking Buddies a few years back. Growing more […]

By Elias Savada. Somewhere out in the middle of America, amongst the Colorado cattle fields and its arrowhead-laden landscape, we find Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and his long-haired buddy Harrison (Hay Wellford) roaming the plains. These ten-year-olds are either innocent pioneers out for a long, extended walk or have left home […]

By Brandon Konecny.  In his foreword to William Faulkner’s novel Absalom, Absalom! (1936), John Jeremiah Sullivan points out that “a fundamental law of storytelling is: withhold information.” By this he means that instead of front-loading a story with character information—a charge of which a substantial amount of today’s screenwriters are guilty—a […]