June 12, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This Pixar sequel brings its protagonist into puberty and examines, with humor and poignancy, the complicated process of building an identity.
June 4, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence radiate real “I’d rather be playing golf” energy in this fourth entry of a played-out franchise.
May 30, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This biopic of the first woman to swim the English Channel is total Disney corn, but it goes down easy.
May 27, 2024
TFV Staff
Women’s films and issues held center stage at Cannes 2024, while outright political films and cinema’s elder statesmen fell out of favor.
May 23, 2024
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
In ‘Beating Hearts’, Gilles Lellouche has produced a gorgeous film that is an epic rumination on love, revenge, class, and the inescapable pull of a certain kind of romance.
May 19, 2024
TFV Staff
AL-TAKDIR is the first bilingual global source of Arab film and entertainment news and film reviews for both the region and international industry.
May 16, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Fails to meet the impossible task of matching, let alone surpassing, its legendary predecessor, but George Miller’s action sequences still pack a punch, even when they reek of déjà vu.
May 8, 2024
Alonso Duralde
If there’s a valid reason to return to this simian franchise, this latest entry never finds it, despite the craftsmanship on display.
May 1, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This valentine to action-packed moviemaking works best when it ignores the plot and focuses on stunt craft and the explosive rom-com banter between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
April 12, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Luca Guadagnino’s twisty, sexy, adult tennis saga entwines three players who understand each other (and themselves) on the court but have a harder time working outside the lines.
April 12, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Alex Garland can mount a battle sequence as well as any filmmaker working today, but the lack of political context and specificity undermines this ambitious film.
April 5, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Dev Patel makes a dazzling directorial debut that mixes stylish ultra-violence with a provocative political point of view.
March 28, 2024
Alonso Duralde
One of the better American Godzilla movies delivers the giant-monster-fighting goods, even if waiting for the grand finale occasionally feels like a chore.
March 20, 2024
Alonso Duralde
A franchise once built on comedy with some creepy ghosts on the side now feels more committed to nostalgic brand-building, sprinkled with forgettable scares and half-hearted attempts at humor.
March 6, 2024
TFV Staff
Brisk, exciting and genuinely funny, ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ is the highlight of this
long-running franchise, furthering the hero’s journey to enlightenment, working wonders
with its ensemble cast, and embracing the philosophical spirit of kung fu.
February 21, 2024
Alonso Duralde
The second chapter of Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptation delivers on the visual grandeur and political intrigue, even if the characters tend to be reduced to their plot function.
February 19, 2024
Stephen Dalton
Mischievous writer-director Bruno Dumont combines visually dazzling ‘Star Wars’ parody with small-town French farce in his admirably ambitious but muddled space opera ‘The Empire’.
February 17, 2024
Jay Weissberg
Olivier Assayas’s semi-autobiographical reverie ‘Suspended Time’ on his stay in the family home during lockdown, is likely his weakest work, playing like a parody of an intellectualized director’s banal ruminations.
February 17, 2024
Deborah Young
Corporate scientists use memory technology to bring back the dead for a brief reunion with their loved ones (played by Gael Garcia Bernal and Bérénice Bejo), in Piero Messina’s clever but often perplexing ‘Another End’, whose futuristic love story beyond the grave is a mighty challenge to unravel.
February 16, 2024
Deborah Young
A small jewel of an Iranian romantic comedy, ‘My Favourite Cake’ pits an older woman determined to find a measure of happiness against the restrictions of the Islamic regime and the loneliness of aging, while the film’s creators Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha have been banned from traveling to Berlin.
February 13, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Despite a tangled narrative web, this arachnid superhero saga makes a far better would-be tentpole in Sony’s Spider-verse than ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ or ‘Morbius,’ thanks mainly to Dakota Johnson.
February 7, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This female-gaze take on 1980s teen movies must have looked great on paper, but it never comes to life on screen.
February 3, 2024
Stephen Dalton
Rotterdam Film Festival’s 53rd edition balanced an uneven competition program full of sombre three-hour dramas with more adventurous sidebars, essay films, experimental video art and pop superstar guests.
January 31, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Yet another star-packed, high-gloss caper lacking in wit, stakes, charm, or a reason to exist.
January 30, 2024
Stephen Dalton
The feted Scottish film and video artist Rachel Maclean talks Barbie, James Bond, pink-punk maximalism and the subversive power of bad taste.
January 29, 2024
Stephen Dalton
The iconic Blondie singer narrates and appears in Kramer’s new documentary ‘So Unreal’, a mind-bending deep dive into prophetic cyberpunk cinema.
January 23, 2024
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
Johan Grimonprez’s complex, cacophonous ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ is a feat of design, narration, sound, and cinema about an important chapter in Congo’s tragic relationship with the UN, the U.S., and Belgium.
January 15, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Cold-War-in-space thriller benefits from a lean-and-mean B-movie sensibility crossed with seamless effects work and potent performances.
January 10, 2024
Alonso Duralde
A pleasant-enough musical reworking of the 2004 comedy, hitting the big screen on its way to becoming a slumber-party staple for decades to come.
January 4, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This haunted-swimming-pool thriller goes from creepy to ridiculous and back again, but as January-dumped horror films go, it’s a cut above.
December 20, 2023
Alonso Duralde
From personal journeys of discovery to man’s inhumanity to man, the stories shared in the films of 2023 speak to our moment in history and will continue to do so for generations to come.
December 19, 2023
Alonso Duralde
Alice Walker’s saga of sisterhood and survival becomes a rousing and heartfelt screen musical.
December 4, 2023
Alonso Duralde
Musical prequel manages to find the sweet spot between the wicked psychedelia of the original Willy Wonka and the feel-good delights of the director’s Paddington movies.
December 2, 2023
Alonso Duralde
More a retrospective documentary than a traditional concert film, this souvenir of Beyoncé’s recent smash tour will delight fans who want a peek behind the scenes even as those peeks occasionally distract from the artist’s extraordinary stagecraft.
November 27, 2023
Alonso Duralde
What was clearly designed to be a victory lap for Disney’s 100th anniversary will be mostly forgotten by the time the studio turns 101.
November 15, 2023
Alonso Duralde
While this sumptuously mounted production delivers as a sweeping war epic, one hopes Ridley Scott’s promised director’s cut will fill in the emotional and historical blanks.
November 9, 2023
Alonso Duralde
This tedious, overlong prequel sheds little new light on the Hunger Games universe, although Viola Davis and Jason Schwartzman camp it up with gusto.
November 8, 2023
Alonso Duralde
This admirable attempt at subverting superhero-movie formula and tone should have soared beyond where MCU movies typically go.
October 26, 2023
Alonso Duralde
This video-game adaptation never lives up to its premise’s potential as either a scary movie or an exercise in absurdism.
October 14, 2023
Alonso Duralde
Nearly three hours of Taylor Swift in concert might be too much of a good thing for newcomers, but devotees will wish this beautifully shot and edited performance doc had been even longer.
October 13, 2023
Carmen Gray
A hard-hitting immersion into life and death under Russian invasion in eastern Ukraine, ‘White Angel – The End of Marinka’ is seen through an evacuation team’s GoPro helmet footage.
October 10, 2023
Carmen Gray
Maria Fredriksson plunged into the doc-making deep end for her debut feature ‘The Gullspång Miracle’, screening at DOK Leipzig.
October 4, 2023
Alonso Duralde
It takes a village to perform an exorcism, and it takes the power of Ann Dowd and Ellen Burstyn to make this familiar material compelling.
October 2, 2023
TFV Staff
This year’s San Sebastian was a sunny festival filled with discoveries.
September 28, 2023
Lucy Virgen
Revered Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice receives the Donostia Award at SSIFF.
September 26, 2023
Alonso Duralde
While lovely to look at, Gareth Edwards’ latest doesn’t make the case for why we should stop worrying and learn to love AI.
September 25, 2023
Deborah Young
Spanish director Isabel Herguera’s exhilarating and imaginative animated tale about a roving artist is sparked by real-life Bengali feminist thinker Rokeya Hossain and her 1905 story about Ladyland, a country run by women.
September 22, 2023
Alonso Duralde
If Expend4bles were any more by-the-numbers, it would have a numeral in its title. Oh, wait.
September 17, 2023
Stephen Dalton
Germany’s premiere festival platform for rule-breaking indie cinema celebrated its 30th edition with audacious acid-punk UFO comedies, bleak kidnap thrillers and a ground-breaking peek into the multiverse.
September 10, 2023
Alonso Duralde
Branagh’s most successful Agatha Christie adaptation to date finds mystery and suspense in period, setting, and another distinguished ensemble.
