December 5, 2021
Stephen Dalton
A Chilean family sail into stormy waters in director Nicolás Postiglione’s tense, gripping, politically charged suspense thriller Immersion.
December 2, 2021
Deborah Young
Jane Campion’s bold cinematic interpretation of Thomas Savage’s novel about cattle ranchers in 1920’s Montana is a sensuous, aestheticized Netflix release, whose meticulous detail and gay subplot are admirable but a little tiring.
November 24, 2021
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
Mali-born filmmaker Seydou Cissé comes at the theme of African immigration through the lens of spirituality.
November 23, 2021
Jordan Mintzer
In his skillfully helmed first feature, Isaac (Izaokas), Lithuanian writer-director Jurgis Matulevicius delves into his country’s turbulent past under both Communism and Nazism, following a trio of friends in the 1960s whose lives are overshadowed by a massacre that took place during WWII. Mixing historical fact with an existential crime story, the film is bathed […]
November 17, 2021
Jordan Mintzer
Filled with enough gyrating dead corpses to cast the next Zack Snyder movie several times over, director Péter Bergendy’s Hungarian horror flick Post Mortem is high on gore and jump scares, low on convincing storytelling and originality. It displays a solid level of craft, especially the heavy use of visual and makeup effects, but otherwise […]
November 12, 2021
Deborah Young
Bahman Ghobadi’s latest Kurdish story, shot in Istanbul, hovers between tragedy and humor without hitting the emotional high note it aims for.
November 4, 2021
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
Moumouni Sanou’s award-winning documentary about the reality of working girls in Burkina Faso is marred by its lack of discretion.
November 3, 2021
Stephen Dalton
Feted Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest Oscar contender is a classy but underpowered drama about moral complexity and social media shaming.
November 1, 2021
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
A Ghanaian woman makes an anti-migration decision her friends and family disagree with.
October 25, 2021
Stephen Dalton
Controversial LA musician Annie Hardy plays an obnoxious American tourist battling demonic forces in the English countryside in director Rob Savage’s profane, provocative, hilarious found-footage horror comedy Dashcam.
October 23, 2021
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
Jeremiah Lemohang Mosese has made a masterpiece that showcases the great talent of the late Mary Twala and announces his own genius.
October 21, 2021
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
Chuko and Ari Esiri’s Eyimofe, which is competing at Fespaco, combines two semi-overlapping stories of Nigerians on the edge. The first story is titled Spain, the second Italy. The idea in both titles is destination. In both stories, the Nigerian characters have come to believe that another life, one of happiness and devoid of material lack, […]
October 19, 2021
Jordan Mintzer
You don’t need to hold a doctorate in Freudian psychology, or to have labored through all 750 pages of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, to know that big towers built by ambitious men usually are, in one way or another, substitutes for their penises. And yet, in the highly romanticized biopic Eiffel, director Martin Bouboulon spends […]
October 5, 2021
Deborah Young
The conservative new social order sidelines an old-school zookeeper in Emre Kayis’s closely observed, metaphoric first feature about Turkish society, winner of the Fipresci award in Toronto.
September 28, 2021
Deborah Young
Three little girls grow up in a village terrorized by the drug cartels in Tatiana Huezo’s dreamy and terrifying first feature, which won San Sebastian’s Latin Horizons crown.
September 25, 2021
Deborah Young
Trapped in a violent family, a young woman rebels in Alina Grigore’s assured and absorbing first feature, another gift from contemporary Romanian cinema.
September 18, 2021
Deborah Young
The life of English poet Siegfried Sassoon movingly expresses the traumas of war and love in one of writer-director Terence Davies’ finest creations.
September 14, 2021
Stephen Dalton
A wealthy young Polish couple are forced to confront their own moral bankruptcy during a luxury Italian vacation in Silent Land, Aga Woszczy?ska’s elegantly bleak exploration of First World Problems.
September 6, 2021
Deborah Young
ORIGINALLY REVIEWED SEPT. 7, 2021 Ukrainian filmmaker Valentyn Vasyanovych follows up his Venice Horizons-winning ‘Atlantis’ with ‘Reflection’ (‘Vidblysk’), a perturbing true horror tale of his country’s war with Russia.
