WEREWOLVES WITHIN is a delight
Calling Werewolves Within the best video game movie ever made is damning it with faint praise. This is a genuinely charming character-driven horror-comedy with a phenomenal cast.
Category: Film
TIFF 2021: Terrorizers
This new Terrorizers has a large, but not overwhelming, ensemble cast, focusing on six teenagers in Taipei. It unfolds in chapters, each focusing on a specific character’s point of view, in turn recontextualizing our understanding of events. It’s a fascinating bit of audience immersion in that our expectations are consistently upended the further down the rabbit hole we go and the more characters we’re introduced to. In all, a riveting experience and the best film I’ve seen at TIFF so far.
TIFF 2021: Violet
A few years ago, I was shocked to learn for the first time that not everyone has an inner monologue narrating their life causally running in the background of their minds. You know (or maybe you don’t) – that voice that chimes in to dole out advice, snark, fear, and whatever else we’re thinking but can’t always vocalize. I’ve had one all my life and assumed it was a basic function of living, like hearing and smell. But estimates are that about half of us do, and half of us do not.
Violet is a movie crafted for that half of the movie that knows what the voice sounds like. Or for anyone else curious about how the other half lives.
TIFF 2021: Aloners
A strong first feature debut for writer and director Hong Sung-Eun, Aloners is the perfect ode to the universal feeling of loneliness and isolation that was so deeply intensified during the pandemic.
TIFF 2021: Petite Maman
Clocking in at around 70 minutes, this follow up from Celine Sciamma, the director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, was my most eagerly anticipated film of TIFF. Petite Maman explores family relationships, grief, and other emotional arcs through a more playful lens of a child.
THE CARD COUNTER proves mid-tier Schrader is still a high bar
More Light Sleeper than Mishima, but Paul Schrader’s latest remains worth seeing
HOLLER is achingly sincere
HOLLER, Nicole Riegel’s debut feature film, is a sharp drama about fighting for life on the fringes of society, one that hearkens back to classics like WINTER’S BONE.
SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS is Marvel at its least essential
The latest Marvel effort, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings continues Marvel’s Phase 4 woes.
A few good scares can’t save THE NIGHT HOUSE’s baffling narrative
The filmmaker behind The Ritual returns for a grief-soaked ghostly effort that ties itself up in unnecessary narrative contortions
PLAN B brings coming-of-age comedy back in style
PLAN B, a new teen coming-of-age comedy, is available right now on Hulu, and it is very much worth your attention.
THE SUICIDE SQUAD is the most “James Gunn” movie ever made
What does a superhero movie without the Pentagon’s seal of approval look like?
THE GREEN KNIGHT is the finest fantasy film in decades
David Lowery creates his proper follow-up to A Ghost Story with the masterful The Green Knight. Read our review!
FOR MADMEN ONLY can’t thread the needle between art and artist
But is a must-watch for fans of DC’s cult classic series Wasteland
CRUELLA and the bad thing about feeling good
CRUELLA is like THE RISE OF SKYWALKER: A mess of a movie that nevertheless provides a valuable lesson in how not to tell stories.
BLACK WIDOW is Too Little, Too Late
When then-Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter penned an email in 2014 listing examples of failed super hero flicks that were female led, it’s not hard to imagine he was debating the value of adding a Black Widow solo film into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.