Watch The First Trailer For SXSW Winner SHORT TERM 12

Destin Daniel Cretton's naturalistic drama Short Term 12 premiered at this year's SXSW to the buzziest of buzz and then went on to win both the Grand Jury and Audience prize there. The film continues on the festival circuit this... More »

By Ben Umstead

SXSW 2013 Review: GOOD VIBRATIONS Is The Best Punk Film Since 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE

Yeah. I said it: Good Vibrations is the best and truest film about punk music and culture since Michael Winterbottom's critically acclaimed look at early 80s Manchester, 24 Hour Party People. Lisa Barros D'Sa & Glenn Leyburn's new film is an absolute... More »

By J Hurtado

SXSW 2013 Review: HOLY GHOST PEOPLE Sadly Slips From Scary To Silly

For the first hour or so Mitchell Altieri's Holy Ghost People is a tense backwoods thriller centered around a small charismatic Christian community somewhere in the Appalachian mountains. Once that hour is up, though, things turn a bit wacky and... More »

By J Hurtado

SXSW 2013 Wrap: Twitch Puts A Bow On Austin's Big Fest

The SXSW mayhem has come to an end and most of Austin has about shaken off the hangover. There was a ton of fun and plenty of great films on display at SXSW 2013. We had it all covered... More »

By Ryland Aldrich

SXSW 2013 Interview: Twitch Talks to the Mooninites Behind LUNARCY!

Lunarcy! is a charming and humorous story of four eccentrics who've dedicated their entire lives to the Moon. We've got Christopher Carson, the young founder of the Luna Project and a supporter of abandoning Earth forever in favor of... More »

By Lainna Fader

SXSW Review: DRINKING BUDDIES Brings Joe Swanberg to the Big Time

Joe Swanberg's career as a filmmaker has gone through several phases, all without his name being known to more than a tiny fraction of the movie-going public. The inadvertent and unwilling godfather of the "Mumblecore" sub-genre (in which listless twentysomethings... More »

By Eric D. Snider

SXSW 2013 Review: KISS OF THE DAMNED Intricately Apes Classic Eurohorror, Warts And All

There are few subgenres of film quite as specific and instantly recognizable as '70s Eurohorror. Filmmakers like Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, Jose Ramon Larraz and a few others left an indelible mark on the international horror market. Their creations were... More »

By J Hurtado

SXSW 2013 Review: DOWNLOADED is a Fascinating Look at Our Wired Times

Downloaded is a great documentary for many reasons. The greatest of these might be its effortless and uncanny ability to throw into stark relief just how massively the world of computers and the Internet has radically changed in just... More »

By John Jarzemsky

SXSW 2013 Review: MAIDENTRIP is a Beautiful Celebration of Youth

You may have already heard this story: A fifteen-year-old girl wins a legal battle versus the Dutch government to stay in the custody of her parents and is therefore able to set out on her 40-foot sailboat in an... More »

By Ryland Aldrich

SXSW 2013 Review: HAUNTER Delivers an Enjoyably Tame Ghost Story

Time is a fluid thing in the atmospheric Haunter, but it's set mainly in 1985. It's the day before Lisa's 16th birthday. It has been for a while. Lisa (Abigail Breslin) and her wholesomely plain family -- mother (Michelle Nolden),... More »

By Eric D. Snider

SXSW 2013 Review: GROW UP, TONY PHILLIPS is More Wholesome Fun from Hagins

Emily Hagins has already made quite a name for herself in the Austin film scene with three full leangth features including 2011's indie hit My Sucky Teen Romance. In her fourth feature, Grow Up, Tony Phillips, Hagins shows more... More »

By Ryland Aldrich

SXSW 2013 Review: HOURS Makes the Mistake of Putting All Its Dramatic Weight on Paul Walker's Shoulders

All human beings have a talent for one thing or another, and Paul Walker is a human being, so Paul Walker undoubtedly is good at something. But whatever it is, it's not acting. Acting is not the thing Paul Walker... More »

By Eric D. Snider

SXSW 2013 Review: GO FOR SISTERS Is an Easy-Going Character Drama from John Sayles

Few filmmakers are more legitimately "independent" than John Sayles, who has now written and directed 18 features since 1979 (Return of the Secaucus Seven) without studio backing. His latest, the affable character drama Go for Sisters, while not an outstanding... More »

By Eric D. Snider

SXSW 2013 Review: COLDWATER Is Lukewarm

Shedding light on important issues through the power of narrative filmmaking can be a tricky proposition. The very nature of fictional storytelling can sometimes make the issues brought to the forefront seem less worthy of inspection (ie: "it's just a... More »

By John Jarzemsky

WASTELANDER PANDA Is Coming For You. New Series Teasers Begin

Last year we found out about a strange new hybrid of awesome, a webseries about a Max Rockatansky-style panda wandering the blasted post-apocalyptic landscape. A prologue for this series, Wastelander Panda, was launched online, and after an overwhelming vote of... More »

By Simon de Bruyn

SXSW 2013 Review: AWFUL NICE is Painfully Funny

To call director Todd Sklar's sense of humor peculiar is to understate the weird and wacky no-holds-barred comedy we've come to know in his work. One look at his hit short '92 Skybox Alonzo Mourning Rookie Card and his... More »

By Ryland Aldrich

SXSW 2013 Review: SWIM LITTLE FISH SWIM Is A Sincere Look At The Stubbornness Of Artists

The opening moment of Ruben Amar & Lola Bessis' Swim Little Fish Swim (his feature directorial debut, her directorial and feature acting debut) finds Bessis in a rather precarious position: hogtied and posing for a grizzly-bearded naked painter. This moment... More »

By Ben Umstead

SXSW 2013 Jury Awards Go To SHORT TERM 12 and WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL

Short Term 12, which stars Brie Larson as a supervisor at a foster home for at-risk adolescents, took home the SXSW 2013 narrative prize, awarded by a jury which included Indiewire editor and Chief Dana Harris and GQ articles editor... More »

By Brian Clark

SXSW 2013 Review: REWIND THIS! Is About More Than Just Tapes, It's About Love

One could be forgiven for imagining director Josh Johnson's documentary debut, Rewind This!, to be a look inside the tiny niche of the current VHS collecting boom. Many of the promotional materials are a bit misleading in that way. However,... More »

By J Hurtado

SXSW 2013 Review: THE RETRIEVAL Quietly Takes on Life, Loss, and Hope

Chris Eska crafted the finely-honed, modern-day drama August Evening, which featured a resilient, older Mexican immigrant who stoicly dealt with life's challenges as they arose. The Retrieval is Eska's followup, and it's a similar, low-key, high-quality affair that etches portraits... More »

By Peter Martin

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Leading Voices in Global Cinema

Todd Brown, Founder & Editor Toronto
Peter Martin, Managing Editor Dallas
Ryland Aldrich, Festivals Editor Los Angeles
James Marsh, Asian Editor Hong Kong
Brian Clark, European Editor Paris

Destroy All Monsters: Retire Superman

While the internet is tearing itself apart in its efforts to empirically determine whether Man of Steel "sucks" or "is awesome" - because such things are now apparently possible, given Superman Returns' near-unilateral, and intellectually disturbing, dismissal - I'd like to pause to make a gentler request: may we please... More »

Fifteen Unfilmable Novels And The Directors Who Should Try Anyway

Ah, the 'unfilmable' novel. Go back ten or fifteen years and it seems everyone had some sort of list of great novels that could never be brought to the screen. The limitations at the time were largely technical and in recent years those lists have dwindled with titles such as... More »

Jason Gorber's Cineruminations: On MAN OF STEEL, SuperJesus, and THIS IS THE END's Jewpocalypse

Back in 1933, while Hitler was ascending into power in Germany and diasporic Jews throughout the world looked on with concern, two high school students created one of the most indelible mythical heroes of the last century. Borrowing from the Nietzschean concept of the Übermensch, Joe Shuster and Jerry... More »

Twitchvision: Talking MAN OF STEEL and THIS IS THE END

This is the big week of Superman's return, with Zack Snyder's take on the caped saviour hitting our screens. While my opinion's kind of mixed on the film, there's still plenty to admire about it. I also discuss the overt Jesus imagery throughout, as expanded in a full cineruminations column... More »

70s Rewind: Bridges, Barbra, Bogdanovich, Brynner

Amazon's Prime Instant streaming service is not as well-established as Netflix and has far more modest offerings in off-beat and strange cinema. Still, since I temporarily dropped Netflix, I've been diving deeper into Amazon's catalog, and discovered a good number of films from my favorite movie decade. Here's a selection... More »