By Elias Savada. A ridiculous, fun-filled romp about an illusion behind an illusion.” We’re overdue for some Sandra Bullock silliness. After her recent excursions in dramatic horror (Bird Box, 2018) and last year’s crime drama The Unforgivable, both direct-to-streaming on Netflix, she/we needed some big screen romantic comedy relief she […]
Trick and Treat: The Outfit Shines Brightly
By Elias Savada. Yes, there’s a theatrical cadence in the clever dialogue, but it’s such a highly original, suspenseful piece that it works magic as the characters move about their set.” Leonard Burling is a quiet, sad-eyed, precise, and observant man – an old-school, Savile Row cutter by trade, with […]
Embracing Multiplicity: Pushpendra Singh’s The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs (Laila Aur Satt Geet)
By Varsha Ramachandran. The pace, while slow, is steady, ensuring reflection without boredom, something to which the beautiful frames, colour combinations, and lilting score also contribute.” Director Pushpendra Singh’s second film adapting Rajasthani writer Vidaydan Detha’s works, The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs, which premiered at the 70th annual Berlinale, […]
Hard Times – Big Bad John: The John Milius Interviews
A Book Review by Matthew Sorrento. Oh, what can you do with a man like that?” John Cheever, “Goodbye My Brother” And what can we do with John Milius, a writer-director so stubbornly Right-wing in his views: do we urge viewers adamantly to embrace or to resist him? He’s undoubtedly […]
Worlds of Tiny Pain: On Laura Wandel’s Playground and Jay Rosenblatt’s When We Were Bullies
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Rosenblatt’s documentary is a frank self-assessment that resituates an otherwise easily forgotten misstep of youth in the context of the knowledge and experience of adulthood…. [while] When We Were Bullies strips away the soft surfaces of nostalgia to remind us with a near visceral intensity of the […]
Big, Bold, Brazen: The Batman
By Elias Savada. For those of you who wondered if another reboot could find itself an audience after Christopher Nolan did such a fine job with his trilogy, please wonder no more….” Nietzsche would have a field-day analyzing the latest reimagining of DC Comics’ masked vigilante. (Bat) Man might not […]
A Disaster Waiting to Happen: The Burning Sea
By Anees Aref. An activist film that also works as a solid piece of entertainment.” What would it be like to watch a pending natural disaster, only seeing it now, that is? That’s the feeling one gets watching The Burning Sea, a timely new Norwegian film directed by John Andreas […]
Enchanting But Overstuffed: Brian Petsos’s Big Gold Brick
By Elias Savada. Petsos likes to mix some old-fashioned, heavy-handed whimsy with oddball characters, then sprinkle in a ton of exuberance. Maybe too much.” You might recognize the name Brian Petsos, but most of you are thinking “Who?” After watching his feature directorial debut Big Gold Brick, you might be […]
A Birth Raising Social and Moral Dilemmas in Iran: Until Tomorrow (Berlinale 2022)
By Ali Moosavi. Asgari has delivered his most accomplished socially aware thriller.” Ali Asgari made his name in cinema by making short films. These films were often co-written or co-directed with Farnoosh Samadi and won many awards at various festivals. These successes did not go unnoticed by the US Academy […]
A Continual Journey: The Truth at Twenty-Four Frames Per Second by Anthony Slide
A Book Review by Tony Williams. It’s a quarter to three. There’s no one in the place except you and me.” What does one do in these pandemic times when travelling to the UK to interview surviving family members of a now forgotten British comedian becomes impossible, let alone finding […]