Imagine a post-apocalyptic Stand By Me where queer girls rule and save the day, and you have a vague idea of the aesthetic of the Canadian uber-indie thriller Riot Girls. The film is filled with up-and-coming female filmmakers, including director Jovanka Vuckovic, writer Katherine Collins, producer Lauren Grant, and a host of other below-the-line artists, including cinematographer Celiana …
To the manor bored aka Dame Maggie Smith saves Downton Abbey You don’t really know the fans of Downton Abbey until you sit in a darkened theater as the first strains of the theme song start playing, to a bust of applause, and even a few gasps. Thus begins the feature film that feels like …
There is much to love about Vita & Virginia, the new release directed by Chanya Button, and co-written by Button and actress Eileen Atkins. Atkins adapted the story from her successful stage play, in which she starred as famed writer Virginia Woolf opposite Vanessa Redgrave, who portrayed her lover, socialite and intellectual Vita Sackville-West. Much like …
Did the world need the 21st century version of Sophie’s Choice? That movie was considered one of the best of the decade, but viewers could only watch it once. Enter The Nightingale, ready and more than able to take that position for the next 100 years. Chilling, haunting, bracing, repulsive, heartbreaking…these are all apt descriptors of various …
Loss changes us. Sometimes we face that, sometimes we don’t. That’s something new indie release and winner of the audience award at the Brooklyn Film Festival Above the Shadows explores. A fantasy anchored in the reality of 21st century daily life, it is the story of Holly, (Olivia Thirlby) who, after losing her beloved mother, fades out …
Men in Black International goes global some seven years after MIB: 3 seemed to bid adieu to the franchise, with two very winning stars and one tired, uninspired script. The impossibly cool Tessa Thompson as Agent M and preternaturally beautiful Chris Hemsworth as Agent H drag us through what is essentially the same plot as …
Olivia Wilde is proving to be the blueprint for successfully segueing from acting into directing with the buzzy new coming-of-age comedy Booksmart, releasing wide this weekend through patron saint indie studio to female filmmakers, Annapurna. If any film should bring the indie studio solidly into the black, this hilarious, heartfelt celebration of feminist teenage badassery …
The latest foray into the magical wizarding world, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, is brought to us by J.K. Rowling. As the film’s screenwriter, it might be proof positive that she is indeed a muggle, and not a witch in disguise. It’s not the acting or the world-building, the beasts, or the special effects …
Sometimes a torrid thriller is just the thing, but they’re so rare these days. Do you miss Joan Crawford and Hope Lange and all those trashy melodramas of the 50s, even though you weren’t alive back then? Me, too. Thank the cinematic gods for director Paul Feig, who helms A Simple Favor, a film based …
What can one say about The Bookshop, a movie that stars Emily Mortimer, and cinematic treasures co-stars Bill Nighy and Patricia Clarkson? It’s a bit like PBS version of a superhero movie…The Bookshop is directed by Isabel Coixet, who wrote the screenplay from the classic 60s novel by Penelope Fitzgerald. In 1959 England, widow Florence …
