Reviews
The (aesthetic) Ballad of Suzanne Césaire
A short but beautiful surrealist film that breaks structure and form. I thought I might honor it’s brevity and anti-plot structure by doing the same for my review. All hail halation.
Reviews
All of our reviews, of everything, in one place.
Festivals
Seed of the Sacred Fig: nail-bitingly Poetic.
There are going to be moments so frustrating, so unashamedly long and tense to watch, that you are going to conteplate leaving the cinema. As someone seeing it from the other end - you have nothing to fear. The film very rarely will jump scare you, so now, with that
Reviews
Anora: Ani, are you OK?
OK. The moment you’ve all been waiting for. Anora does a great job of insisting you’re not watching what you think you’re watching. Aside from the impeccably kind and respectful handling of sex workers, you are going to be told, nay, rallied into ignoring your first instincts.
Festivals
Blitz: Hostile London
The first beat of Blitz immediately signals to you that you are in danger. Far away from heroic depictions of a London on the defensive, we are instead confronted with immediate and benign terror. Sure, it’s an air raid - but we’re following firefighters. And the enemy they
Reviews
Prima Facie: Voire Dire
TW: Sexual Assault, R*pe, the UK Justice System On the surface, this play is quite one dimensional - incredibly predictable, even. You know, even just from the warnings, what is about to happen. The play doesn’t need to surprise you to make you think, though. The story becomes
Reviews
The Outrun: Is your fate ‘Seal-d’?
There aren’t really ever going to be enough stories about addiction - but there certainly aren’t enough that are unglossed, unfiltered, and grounded the way that ‘The Outrun’ is. Aside from beautiful cinematography, and a star turn from Saoirse Ronan, the story is a patient one, and it
Reviews
A Real Pain.
Jesse asks, what does it mean to “feel your feelings”? From every angle - from the ancestral wound all the way down to the familial bond - from personal despair to community responsibility, what do we owe one another? And what do we suppress to ensure we keep the social
Reviews
Dahomey: a stamp in time
I don’t need to hear rapturous applause or raving reviews in the lobby to know a film’s importance. Dahomey serves a very specific, very important, very beautiful purpose - to document the moment the Beninoise got 26 of their Treasures back from the French, and the conversation they
Festivals
Los Tortuga - The Exiles: An exploration of all kinds of Growing Pains
Light Spoilers below. If you have South American heritage, this story will make sense to you. If you moved around a lot, this film will make sense to you. If you have lost someone this story will resonate with you. Los Tortuga/The Exiles deals with a family tree’s
Freedom Way - Sisyphus of Lagos
Light spoilers below. For those of us who have roots in or have experienced life in those parts of the world that are labeled ‘third world countries’ the experiences of the protagonists are nothing new. Corruption is ‘daily bread’ (that is a call-back to the title cards in the movie)
Festivals
Pedro Páramo
Famed Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto has made his feature debut, adapting ‘Pedro Páramo’, a story that influenced Gabriel García Márquez and Magical Realism. I have a hard time keeping track of characters in Magical Realist stories, and the film was no exception — in its fidelity to the source material, it left
Festivals
‘The Substance’: Misogyny Metastasises
Do not see this film if you cannot watch Body Horror or Gore. This is not a mild movie - there is more gore, guts, blood and mess than there is dialogue. Please, please, please, don’t see it if you can’t handle that. This is a film about