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From what I can tell, every type of genre exists within the indie film realm from all corners of the planet, and over the years we have witnessed some very impressive works, the one thing that usually drags a production’s impression down is the ‘artificial’ dialogue in the movie. It is strange that big-budget films […]

A proudly old-fashioned Gothic fable with grain and grit, the delectable “Vourdalak” is swift to announce in its early moments that we are in the hands of a skillful stylist. It’s pitch black and stormy when the tale begins. There is a knock on some door by a fearful man whose face we don’t see

This year, Pegasus was among the strongest competitors for the Spring Festival holiday in China, ranked alongside The Wandering Earth and Crazy Alien. Written by Han Han, Pegasus is more literate than other films competing at the box office which was his goal when making it. This is evident in the film as it detaches

Music, we are told, makes the people come together. Music, it so happens, makes the bourgeoisie and the rebel…okay, I’ll stop. But what, really, is the, or are the, function or functions or capability or capabilities of music? By simply using the word as the title for her new motion picture, writer/director Angela Schanelec invites

If you read my review of Sam Mendes’ 1917, you’d know I hardly ever go to the cinema unless the film piques my interest and at the beginning of March 2020, my husband and I went to watch an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. Our going out for a movie ended up being one of

In the words of Barbara Kruger of 1981, “You contrive elaborate rituals which permit you to caress the body of other males”. In the most extraordinary and intolerable ways possible, A Warrior’s Heart, meticulously performs those “elaborate rituals” through its brutish protagonist Conor, the short-tempered American high school student, and Kellan Lutz, the hot-blooded actor

As mundane as its title, with characters whose color-by-numbers personalities and motivations shift randomly to fit a predictable storyline, “A Family Affair” is a low-wattage rom-com. As with last month’s streaming romance “The Idea of You,” this film features a gorgeous Oscar-winning actress as a middle-aged woman falling for a much younger superstar performer, with

Penny Lane has long been one of our most fascinating documentarians in the modern era: her early works teetered between archival (“Our Nixon“) to anthological (“Nuts!”) to anthropological (“The Pain Of Others”). You never see her face or hear her voice; it’s just her ideas and her assemblage of footage into thoughtful, empathetic essays about

Owen Daybright is a ranch foreman for Colorado cattleman Arch Strobie, who happens to be Owen’s foster dad. While Owen is in the company of his foster brother Lee Strobie at a local saloon, they learn that Lily Fasken has given birth to a baby. The attending doctor explains that he was never summoned during

The first two-thirds of “A Sacrifice” are a largely leaden affair that offers viewers little that they haven’t seen before. It isn’t even awful so much as it is intensely forgettable the kind of film whose title eludes you even as you watch it. Unfortunately, it then proceeds to get infinitely worse in its final