A fully loaded SUV, parked on a Buenos Aires street, is the setting for 4x4, a Saw-inspired take on income inequality from Argentine director Mariano Cohn. A petty thief named Ciro (Peter Lanzani) breaks into the car to steal the stereo, only to find himself trapped when the owner (Dady Brieva) --...

Set in Alabama and focused on two idiots who panic after making a mistake, The Death of Dick Long laughs at its characters' follies but ultimately shows the kind of affection for them and their habitat that can only come from someone who grew up there. Director Daniel Scheinert (who co-made Swiss...

Hollywood biopics generally focus on the biggest and most renowned figures in the realms of entertainment. Everyone knows and loves Ray Charles, Elton John, and Tina Turner, so it only makes sense to tell their personal stories in a biography-style movie. But what of the artists who aren't...

The Golden Glove is the remarkably unpleasant true story of a German serial killer in the 1970s, told with matter-of-fact, steely-eyed brutality by Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin. Jonas Dassler is uglied up real good to play Fritz Honda, a hunched, oily psycho with a wispy mustache lingering...

(Screened at Fantastic Fest; release TBA.) We all have our own personal biases when it comes to movies. For example, I am instantly curious to see any H.P. Lovecraft adaptation -- partially because lots of his short stories and damn good but mostly because the man's work is notoriously difficult...

(Screened at Fantastic Fest; theatrical release TBA.) One simply cannot deny that the former Harry Potter, aka Mr. Daniel Radcliffe, has done a fine job of choosing unique, offbeat, and even downright weird scripts in recent years. Between Horns, Kill Your Darlings, and Swiss Army Man, it's...

Given the current sociopolitical climate and general state of the world, satire seems like a tall order. How can you comically exaggerate people and situations when everything that happens already feels like it’s already been exaggerated for comedic effect? But for that very reason, satire can...

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have been floating around the edges of indie sci-fi/horror for the last few years, writing and directing thoughtful under-the-radar films like Spring (2015) and The Endless (2018) that were acclaimed in certain circles but didn't get much mainstream attention. The...

You can tell pretty quickly that something is up with One Cut of the Dead. It starts in an old warehouse serving as the set of an amateurish, low-budget zombie movie, where the director, Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu), is having trouble getting convincing performances from his not-very-good actors....

The 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) felt unusually heavy with films concerning religion and its followers. Of the more than 30 films I screened, nearly a third grappled with what it means to be a person of faith or live in a world where religious institutions structure daily life....

I have a complicated relationship with the Telluride Film Festival. It's a world-class fest, usually playing some of the year's best movies, many of them world premieres introduced in person by their directors and stars, who are always humble and gracious. The venues, despite being commandeered...

“A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens,” wrote Dostoyevsky, “but by how it treats its criminals.” Genre cinema from across the globe often provides such insight through penalizing transgression rather than illuminating virtue. Across a number of titles at...

For someone as obsessively Type A as me, the lead-up to a film festival as compact and curated as Fantasia can prove quite nerve-wracking. As an event that unfolds primarily in two screening rooms conveniently located across the street from each other, the choices of films to see are limited to...

Is there such a thing as too much genre cinema? If so, then it would likely occur at Montreal’s Fantasia Festival, an over-three week long celebration of the bonkers and brilliant excesses taking place at the exciting edges of filmmaking. The fest’s 23rd edition begins July 11 with a slate of...

As is increasingly the case in modern cinema, groups underrepresented onscreen are having their stories told more frequently and more honestly than before. Women in particular were very well represented both in front of and behind the camera at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. As a result,...