In The Great Pretender, Mona (Maëlle Poesy-Guichard) insists that her autobiographical play is honest but her ex-boyfriend (Linas Phillips) says it's "confessional.” “Is there a difference?” she asks. “Yeah, honesty is hard,” Nick replies, vocalizing a standout theme in the 2018 Tribeca...

Not only are the SXSW programmers an astute bunch of film enthusiasts who scour the globe for the finest in independent cinema … they also really dig horror flicks. Of course you'll always find a solid batch of scary, suspenseful movies tucked away in the "Midnight" section (every good film...

“Growing up can be a little bit scary and weird,” explains Kayla (Elsie Fisher) in one of the YouTube videos that frame Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade – and also, it seems, articulating one of the many running themes in this year’s SXSW Film Festival slate. That’s not terribly surprising, as...

On Saturday, March 10, every film that screened in The Paramount - SXSW’s premier venue in downtown Austin – was directed by a woman. It was representative of this year’s lineup, with the strongest showing (at 33% of features and 59% of shorts) of female filmmakers in the festival’s...

MOVIES: "American Animals" "Arizona" "Assassination Nation" "Beast" "Blindspotting" "Clara's Ghost" "An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn" "The Guilty" "The Happy Prince" "Hereditary" "Juliet, Naked" "Leave No Trace" "Madeline's Madeline" "Mandy" "Night Comes...

Like most film festivals, Sundance has a competition section. A lot of festival-goers are also sports enthusiasts, and this gives them something to gamble on. Winning the Grand Jury Prize is a figurative feather in a movie's metaphorical hat, sure to be mentioned in the film's marketing and in...

Last week was the fifth edition of Beyond Fest, Los Angeles’s most popular genre film celebration. Over the course of 11 days, the historic Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in the heart of Hollywood played host to a diverse mix of new, classic, and forgotten movies of the horror, action, sci-fi, and...

This year's Fantastic Fest was packed with surprises, sexual deviancy, revenge, and sorrow, and that was just on Twitter. The movies were likewise full of intrigue -- it was a good lineup, everything else aside ("How was the film festival, Mrs. Lincoln?") -- but the 13th edition of the Alamo...

We'll talk about the behind-the-scenes turmoil at Fantastic Fest in another wordpile. In the meantime, here are reviews of some of the notable films that played there. They don't have U.S. release dates yet (except as noted), but we'll let you know when they do. Tigers Are Not Afraid A tough,...

A certain breed of movie fan knows immediately why something called The Overlook Film Festival would be held at a place called the Timberline Lodge. The Timberline Lodge? In Oregon? Why, that's the place that stood in for the fictional Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's movie version of The...

Day 3: Saturday, Jan. 21 As you probably heard (unless Fox News is your only source of information), there were numerous large protest marches throughout the world today, as people took to the streets to register their dissatisfaction with the latest Underworld movie. No, I kid, it was about...

Listen! Do you smell that? It's the Sundance Film Festival, back for another year of showcasing new independent films and terrorizing the helpless town of Park City, Utah. The mood is slightly muted this year, partly because there wasn't much pre-festival buzz about any of the films, partly...