Review: CALL ME KUCHU Sheds Light on Gays' Plight in Uganda

There hasn't been a lot of good P.R. for civil rights in Uganda in the last few years, what with its parliament's proposed legislation that would make homosexual activity punishable by death. Call Me Kuchu, a powerful documentary by first-time... More »

By Eric D. Snider

Review: The Paul Walker Vehicle VEHICLE 19 Is Fast And Thoughtful

Michael Woods (Paul Walker) is eager to reconnect with his ex-wife. So eager in fact that he travels to South Africa where she works at the US embassy. As soon as he arrives he hires a car, is given the... More »

By Kwenton Bellette

Hot Docs 2013 Review: WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL Subverts the Expected TEDtalk Narrative

What exactly is William and The Windmill about? Is it the story of a resourceful and ingenious young Malawi boy who builds a windmill from available detritus using diagrams in a book so his parents have a way to... More »

By Kurt Halfyard

IFFR 2013 Review: NAIROBI HALF LIFE Entertains At High Speed

(Crime doesn't pay... but it can further your acting career!) In 2010 the International Film Festival Rotterdam dedicated an entire programme section to films from Africa, and there has been a strong African presence at the festival ever since. This... More »

By Ard Vijn

Black Movie 2013 Review: TODAY (AUJOURD'HUI) Puts a New Spin on Dying

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE From Ikiru to The Bucket List, there are already a number of movies made about people who find out they have a short time to live. However, I can safely say... More »

By Brian Clark

Review: THE PIROGUE, A Tragically Familiar Yet Well-Told Tale of a Perilous Sea Voyage

A recurring visual motif in Moussa Touré's affecting and often harrowing sea drama The Pirogue consists of a simple yet quietly commanding camera move: the scanning of faces. These are the faces of 30 men, and one woman stowaway, who... More »

By Christopher Bourne

Slamdance 2013 Review: FYNBOS Is A Brilliantly Anti-Cathartic Piece Of Cinema

A young white woman in high heels walks down a street in a black working-class neighborhood. Though clearly on edge, she walks with a purpose. She pauses at a row of trash cans. Clothes billow in the wind, threaded on... More »

By Ben Umstead

TIFF 2012 Review: REBELLE (War Witch) is Bloody and Compassionate

Let us start off by saying that Kim Nyugen's Rebelle, is easily the best Canadian war film ever produced. I know, you say that there aren't many Canadian war films made outside of National Film Board documentaries and that big... More »

By Kurt Halfyard

Review: THE AMBASSADOR, More Than a Great Documentary Stunt

(With Drafthouse Films releasing The Ambassador in New York today and in other selected U.S. cities on Friday, we revisit our review from HotDocs.) Either Mads Brügger has balls the size of grapefruits or there is mondo chicanery going on... More »

By Kurt Halfyard

Fantasia 2012 Review: THE AMBASSADOR

Either Mads Brügger has balls the size of grapefruits or there is mondo chicanery going on in The Ambassador. Well, it's a given that there is trickery happening, so the thing to figure out is who the trick is on: The Central... More »

By Kurt Halfyard

Blu-ray Review: Shaky Cam Mayhem in Joburg With SAFE HOUSE

The CIA thriller Safe House uses a lot of sleight-of-hand in the attempt to create the illusion that there's more movie there than is actually, you know, there. Denzel Washington is along to lend the necessary gravitas to this story... More »

By Charles Webb

Review: THE DICTATOR Not Altogether Great, But Still Retains Power

Here we have a fish-out-water story which transports the protagonists from their far-away homeland, to New York City. The CG may not be the best, and it plays more than a bit blue. No, I'm not talking about THE SMURFS,... More »

By Jim Tudor

HotDocs 2012: THE AMBASSADOR Review

By Kurt Halfyard

VIVA RIVA! Review

(On the event of the Region 1 DVD release of "Viva Riva!", I present my belated review of the theatrical release.) Hailing from the District of Congo is "Viva Riva!", an unflinchingly violent gangster/crime film. One part De Palma's "Scarface",... More »

By Jim Tudor

Fantastic Fest 2011: HOW TO STEAL 2 MILLION Review

Noir is a loaded term. Noir = doomed characters (hard-bitten heroes, cold-hearted villains, deadly femme fatales) + black and white imagery awash in shadows. In heart and soul, Charlie Vundla's How to Steal 2 Million * is pure noir,... More »

By Peter Martin

DFF: LIFE IN A DAY Review

"The only real important filmmakers at the moment are the thousand and thousand YouTube providers."--Heddy Honigmann, in a Facebook entry dated Wednesday, March 12, 2011. The Disposable Film Festival (DFF) and YouTube co-presented a special free screening of Oscar®-winning film... More »

By Michael Guillen

SFF 2011 Review: AFRICA UNITED

Heart-warming movies make great crowd pleasers. At the Sydney Film Festival so far this year, a clear crowd favourite is AFRICA UNITED, which stands a good chance of taking out the Audience Award. At its screening, the packed cinema... More »

By Hugo Ozman

Blu Ray Review: BLUE CRUSH 2

I suspect that despite the lack of clamor for a sequel to moderately successful 2002 surfer-girl drama, Blue Crush, its direct-to-video sequel might go over well with the tween and teen girls that movie appears to be targeting. It's a... More »

By Charles Webb

VIVA RIVA! Review

[With African action picture Viva Riva! opening in limited release in the US tomorrow we revisit our earlier review.]Set in modern day Kingshasa - capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo - gasoline is in short supply. Riva, wonderfully... More »

By James Marsh

SFIFF54: A Dozen

[Our thanks to Frako Loden for offering this egg carton's worth of reviews to Twitch.] For this year's San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF54), I have yet to go on a screener binge--that starts later today--so I'll be attending festival... More »

By Michael Guillen

Page 1 of 3

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 »