Cannes 2013 Review: Anurag Kashyap's UGLY Is a Riveting Thriller About Awful Things

Anurag Kashyap's follow-up to the widely admired Gangs of Wasseypur announces itself with a cacophony of discordant noise screeching over an attempted suicide. It's almost as if Kashyup decided to warn viewers up front, this one won't be easy. And,... More »
  

Review: HANNIBAL S1E08, FROMAGE (Or, Everyone's Getting Friend-Zoned And Are None Too Pleased About It)

This week's gruesome discovery is the body of an orchestra member left at center stage. His throat and neck have been cut open, the neck of a cello has been stuffed into his mouth, and his vocal chords have been... More »
  

Cannes 2013 Review: Ozon's YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL Finds New Problems With Sexual Awakenings

Just when it seemed that every single movie about teen girls coming to terms with their sexuality had already been made, here comes François Ozon's Young and Beautiful (Jeune et Jolie), a well-observed, often fascinating exploration of a 17-year-old girl's willful entry... More »
  

Review: SCATTER MY ASHES AT BERGDORF'S Glories In Rare Luxury

If I whisper "Bergdorf's" in your ear and you experience a spontaneous orgasm, have I got a movie for you! Actually, calling Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's a "movie" would be misleading, much less labeling it a "documentary." The title... More »
  

Review: 33 POSTCARDS Gently Tugs On Heartstrings

33 Postcards is a film of special significance, as it marks the first official collaboration between China and New South Wales, Australia. At the 2011 Sydney Film Festival, where it had its world premiere, it won the Community Relations Commission... More »
By Hugo Ozman   
  

Review: Eco-Doc ELEMENTAL Brings Global Catastrophe Down To A Personal Level

Fresh from garnering two Social Impact Media Awards (Special Jury Prize, Best Editing), Gayatri Roshan and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee's Elemental opens May 17 in New York City with subsequent rollout to San Francisco, San Rafael, Washington D.C., Austin, Portland, Bellingham, and... More »
  

Review: PIETA, Searching For Humanity In An Unspeakable Monster

Throughout his career, Korean auteur Kim Ki-duk has been a director known to explore the extreme poles of human experience. The divide in his work, in the style and content of one film to the next, is often so sharp... More »
By Todd Brown   
  

Review: FRANCES HA, Adrift In The Big City, Colorful Self-Deception Intact

Noah Baumbach has been a polarizing filmmaker since he burst onto the scene with his first high-profile feature, 2005's The Squid and the Whale. Aside from launching Jesse Eisenberg's career, that effort also familiarized the film world with Baumbach's quirky... More »
  

Review: BLACK ROCK, A Survival Thriller With Too Few Thrills

In her first directorial turn, actress Katie Aselton impressed indie audiences with her relationship comedy The Freebie. Looking to go in a completely different direction with her sophomore effort, Aselton and husband Mark Duplass worked up the outline for a... More »
  

Cannes 2013 Review: THE BLING RING Pawns Character for Coolness

It's difficult to talk much about Sofia Coppola's latest The Bling Ring without address this year's other cute-teens-as-criminals film Spring Breakers -- so let's just get the comparisons out of the way right off the bat. While both films... More »
  

Jeonju 2013 Review: Lee Sang-woo's Thrilling EMERGENCY EXIT is a Poetic Gutpunch

Every year, the Jeonju International Film Festival commissions a pair of omnibus features. The longest-running and most famous of these is the Jeonju Digital Project, which has featured a number of star Asian directors over the years. The other is... More »
  

Blu-ray Review: TOKYO MAGNITUDE 8.0 Is Tragedy Animated

Japan's psyche was deeply affected after the Fukushima catastrophe and the effects of this have been increasingly felt in a lot of post-trauma works of fiction since. However there's one work of fiction that aired only 18 months before the... More »
  

DVD Review: HAIL Experiments, Causes Headaches

Hail is not a pleasant film - it is in fact alienating and dismisses the concept of an audience as the film is clearly not made for them. It immerses you into a mire of ugly imagery aided by scattershot... More »
  

Review: GAME OF THRONES S3E07, THE BEAR AND THE MAIDEN FAIR (Or, Stumpy Grows A Conscience And Does Something Entertainingly Stupid)

A note to whoever wrote Sansa's dialogue in this week's episode of Game Of Thrones: Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Listening to Sansa describe herself as a stupid little girl - arguably the biggest moment of insight... More »
By Todd Brown   
  

Tribeca 2013 Review: Does MR. JONES Take Found Footage Horror To A New Dimension?

"Scott is a filmmaker in need of inspiration..." in a film whose very genre is in need of inspiration: found footage horror. The TFF festival guide bills Mr. Jones' writer/director, Karl Mueller, as someone who has "taken the found footage... More »
  

Review: GO GOA GONE Goes Great Guns, Gets Gasps And Giggles

Color me genuinely shocked. I went to to Bollywood's first zombie comedy with very low expectations and came out completely enthused about the finished product. Directorial team Raj & DK took a lot of very broad references and influences and... More »
By J Hurtado   
  

Review: DOCTOR WHO S7E13, NIGHTMARE IN SILVER (Or, An Underwhelming Episode Sees The Doctor Battle Cybermen While Irritating Kids Tag Along)

Neil Gaiman's previous scripting effort, "The Doctor's Wife," is acknowledged as one of the strongest episodes of recent Doctor Who, effortlessly feeling like something that fits very naturally into the show's past while giving us a fresh spin on something... More »
  

Review: I DECLARE WAR Goes To Battle With Boys And Bullying

One weekend day a number of the nerdier kids from the local middle school gather their sticks and twine and balloons filled with red dye, and head into the local woods to play capture-the-flag. Oh, those tweens today with their... More »
  

Review: COMMUNITY S4E13, ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO FINALITY (Or, Is It?)

It was in the season 3 episode Documentary Filmmaking: Redux that we saw a hilariously outdated video promoting Greendale Community College. In this video we saw a hopelessly hokey basketball player say "Why Go Greendale? Just because!" That episode, written... More »
  

Review: HANNIBAL S1E07, SORBET (Or, Hannibal Prepares Quite The Feast And You're The Main Course!)

I'm burning the candle at both ends this week, putting in 60+ at the day job and watching my hockey teams of choice get eliminated from the playoffs one by one (I held off watching this week's episode for a... More »
  
 
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