Much of our lives are mundane. We wake, we eat, we work, we eat, we sleep, we wake. In a way, life is a recursive action, predictable and endless. Where many would see a paralyzing dread, director Tali Yankelevich sees… Read More ›
foreign film
“Luz: The Flower of Evil” offers a folk-horror tale that is both all-too-realistic and wonderfully fantastical.
Last year, Ari Aster set the bar high for “daylight” horror films with Midsommar, a terrifying fantasy that casts its disturbing events against a beautiful, blossoming, sunlit backdrop. The genre-play proved to be quite successful for Aster, although the effect… Read More ›
Crime drama “Invincible Dragon” proves to be vulnerable after all.
With turns in Ip Man 3 (2015), Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), and Master Z: Ip Man Legacy (2018), Max Zhang is slowly becoming recognizable in the stateside martial arts community. His movements are fast, his skill precise, and his presence… Read More ›
Jeon Gye-soo’s “Vertigo” offers sensory exploration of romance from the heights. [Fantasia Film Festival]
In a corporate world made of glass, steel, and concrete, Jeon Gye-soo’s atmospheric Korean language film Vertigo captures the agony of one woman’s emotional and physical isolation and the slow-budding connection she makes with a high rise window washer contracted… Read More ›
Expertly crafted in pieces, Korean mystery “Me and Me (사라진 시간)” does not combine to a satisfying whole. [Fantasia Film Festival]
When it comes to modern Korean horror (Parasite doesn’t count), there’s really a “before The Wailing” and “after The Wailing” period going on currently. Sure, there are still some fast-moving, breakneck horror being made in South Korea, but there has… Read More ›
“The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum” explores the price of turning a blind eye to yellow journalism and government surveillance
How often do you read or see something that excites you, titillates you, and perhaps even angers you? As we grow ever closer to a presidential election, it seems almost daily that such an occurrence happens. Articles, photos, and videos… Read More ›
“Sanzaru” is an intriguing slow burn, yet crashes in the landing. [Fantasia Film Festival]
Sanzaru is a film that might look like a film along the lines of The Dark & The Wicked in its rural set-up for a horrific force haunting a house, but off the bat, there’s something much stranger at hand…. Read More ›
A quiet film with fantastic suspense, “Wildland (Kød & blod)” is a different flavor of mafia movie. [Fantasia Film Festival]
Although the Fantasia International Film Festival was held virtually this year, it still featured an incredible lineup of wild and visceral films that celebrated everything gory and horrific. Many of the featured titles were loud and boastful with their colorful… Read More ›
Psychological thriller “Sleep” explores German cultural identity with a fairy-tale feel. [Fantasia Film Festival]
Dreams help us process unspoken emotions and desires in contained, temporary environments. Those who dream can escape reality, explore a path unchosen, and tuck the experience away in a safe box. In Michael Venus’s feature-length debut, however, the borders between… Read More ›
French Western “Savage State (L’état Sauvage)” is a stark, quiet, introspective tale of survival. [Fantasia Film Festival]
Fantasia Festival has provided a bevy of opportunities to showcase some truly great genre films, primarily focusing into the sci-fi/horror route of things. The grisly, spooky, and downright weird have been on full display since the start of the festival,… Read More ›
Darkly humorous “The Columnist” takes on social media trolls. [Fantasia Film Festival]
Internet trolls have long been the bane of social media journalists and content creators, but rarely do the victims of such attacks get a chance to face their opponents eye-to-eye. In Ivo Van Art’s Dutch language film The Columnist, this… Read More ›
Explore the depths of the oceans in director Ayumu Watanabe’s manga adaptation “Children of the Sea.”
One of the things I love about GKids Films, a distributor of Asian animated films, is the absolute variety and high quality of each production they release in the U.S. The films they release range from stop-motion (My Life as… Read More ›
Following the fish-out-of-water rom-com formula, “A Mermaid in Paris (Une sirène à Paris)” is a dazzling visual treat. [Fantasia Film Fest]
Multi-talented writer and director Mathias Malzieu, who is known for his success as a novelist and musician as well as filmmaker, returns to this year’s virtual Fantasia Film Festival with a delightful grown-up fairytale. Malzieu’s previous animated film, Jack and… Read More ›
Dark comedy “Marygoround (Maryjki)” takes viewers on the wild ride of menopause. [Fantasia Film Fest]
Among the types of people underrepresented in film, surely women over 50 would rate in the top 10. When they do emerge, such characters tend to serve as guides, champions, or foes to the main character. Whether spouting sage wisdom,… Read More ›
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s “Labyrinth of Cinema” is a fitting final opus. [Fantasia Film Festival]
There is no film more indicative of “you either love it, or you don’t” than Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s 1977 horror film, House. The surrealist and absurdist take on the typical haunted house story creates a film that defies all convention and… Read More ›
Sabrina Mertens’s “Time of Moulting (Fellwechselzeit)” lacks urgency within its coming of age tale. [Fantasia Film Festival]
Teen angst. Everyone has had it; hell, I still have it and I’m 24 (today is my birthday when this is published). It’s generally an integral part of our shaping as adults by going through the hormonal and emotional rollercoaster… Read More ›
Dark comedic thriller “Patrick” is so beautifully filmed, you’ll forget all the characters are nude. [Fantasia Film Festival]
One of film’s unique narrative strengths is the camera’s ability to manipulate perspective. A movie can put us behind the mask of a serial killer on Halloween or on the tip of a shark’s nose just before it attacks. Point-of-view… Read More ›
“Crazy Samurai Musashi” eschews bombast in favor of quiet restraint. [Fantasia Film Festival]
Long takes have become the new major flex a filmmaker can make in their films these days, from Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), to Sam Mendes’s 1917, even making its way into video games like… Read More ›
IFC Midnight’s “Sputnik” is the kind of slow-burn horror experience you long for theatrically.
I could name five French films that have released in the past year, the same with Korean, Chinese, German, Swedish, and Spanish films as well. However, despite being the largest country on Earth by landmass, I probably couldn’t name five… Read More ›
“House of Hummingbird” is an exercise in patience with a profound emotional payoff.
There’s something ubiquitous about adolescence that makes coming-of-age stories. It doesn’t matter what era or culture they derive or take place within, because there’s something universal, even in their specificity: the social awkwardness, the longing for connection, the need to… Read More ›