By Jonathan Monovich. The 4:30 Movie pridefully asserts its fandom.” In The 4:30 Movie, Brian’s (Austin Zajur) life – like that of his friends Burny (Nicholas Cirillo) and Belly (Reed Northrup) – revolves around his time spent at his local theater, Atlantic Cinemas, where he dreams of becoming a filmmaker. […]
Skeletons in the Basement: Daniel Lasker’s Hidden Within (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr. I hope we get more Zimbabwean horror movies in the future, and that they’re much better than this one.” It gives me no pleasure to announce that Daniel Lasker’s Hidden Within (2023) is a disaster. Made in Zimbabwe, the actor’s feature directorial debut concerns people and […]
Space and Its Limitations: Yang Zhengfan on Stranger
By Yun-hua Chen. I was initially attracted to the concept of space, but space brought many limitations, which I actually like because they encourage exploring more possibilities.” Composed of snippets that capture different hotel rooms inhabited by various “strangers”, Chicago-based Chinese director Zhengfan Yang is acutely sensitive to how spaces […]
Walking Over Time and Space: Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka (2023)
By Andrew Montiveo. Alonso has much to say with Eureka – about indigenous cultures, capitalism, history, and progress…. While the filmmaker seems intent on challenging his audience visually, this very challenge complicates his stated goal of amplifying indigenous voices.” Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka (2023) is a film that resists easy categorization. […]
All the Fear Looking Back at You – Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay
A Book Review by Matthew Sorrento. The supplementary footnotes included in Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay should launch more needed commentary, showing that a scholarly monograph on the film is already overdue….” In his very informative and enjoyable 2008 autobiography, X Films, Alex Cox finishes a discussion of his cult […]
To Fully Live Out Their Lives: Theo Cuthand on The Lost Art of the Future
By Àbigaïl Yartey. When I was starting out as a queer indigenous filmmaker in the 1990s, there wasn’t a lot of us making work. Since then, there has been a lot of people who’ve gotten into this arena….for me it was wanting to bring back queer elders, or queer people who […]
The Rhythm of Real Life: Michał Chmielewski on Roving Woman
By Savina Petkova. I think in the long take, we observe the rhythm of real life…. if we would cut between different emotional states, it would be artificial.” It would be reductive to call Roving Woman, the debut feature by Polish filmmaker Michał Chmielewski simply a road movie. That it […]
We Need to Talk About Yu-ning: Nelicia Low on Pierce
By Yun-hua Chen. We are nothing if not thorough in our deception of others.” –Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer Nelicia Low’s Pierce is a poignant portrayal of deception, a kind of deception that one falls into willingly out of blood bonding, also reminiscent of We Need to Talk […]
Clawing the Surface: Mary Dauterman’s Booger
By William Blick. A visceral metaphor for grief in an impressive low-budget indie debut…..” Mary Dauterman’s first feature length film, Booger, comes across as a cinematic exercise of sorts, i.e., a visceral metaphor for grief in an impressive low-budget indie debut. Not quite gory or suspenseful enough to satisfy the hardcore/ […]
Odd Blends, in Earnest: More Selections from TIFF 2024
By M. Sellers Johnson. Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light imparts a warm, humanist embrace that is as humorous as it is earnest, while Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl offers an odd blend of irreverent comedy and sharp drama….” Late summer in Ontario signals the annual return […]