Like its bifurcated title, Ulrich Seidl’s film offers an exercise in parallel storytelling, tracing the journeys of Olga (the excellent…
Casting against type is one thing, but putting Uma Thurman—an unheralded character actress; the more extraordinary the character, the better—in…
If ever there were a true-life tale that laid bare the laws of South African apartheid in all their arbitrary…
Nothing if not a meaty yarn, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a lot more besides, but Robert Zemeckis, a cutting-edge…
Casually dismissed by those who place a premium on things like narrative, visual lucidity, and editorial smoothness, writer/director/emotional exhibitionist/mumblecore forefather…
With her 2007 SIFF-favorite documentary Manufactured Landscapes, Canadian director Jennifer Baichwal proved she had an eye for the environmental ravages…
Though no one’s idea of an action film, Andrew Bujalski’s Beeswax feels less charmingly aimless than its radically slight precursors…
Lars von Trier’s doggedly outrageous, fearsomely ambitious two-hander is so desperate to make you feel something—if only a terrible sensation…
Apart from the stray slasher flick, Halloween is traditionally a dead spot on the Hollywood calendar. This week’s big release?…
One New York institution (Abel Ferrara, b. 1951, the Bronx) regards another (The Hotel Chelsea, b. 1883, West 23rd Street)…
You’re not always entirely sure what is happening in Tony Jaa’s new movie, but there certainly is a lot of…
Don Imus’ hateful, racist 2007 remarks about “nappy-headed hos” underscored the immense fear of and fascination with the hair follicles…
We call it soccer, but for the Brits it’s football, and it’s damn serious business. From 1968 to 1974, Brian…
I’m a big admirer of Lucrecia Martel’s 2002 La Ciénaga, and her latest also centers quite frankly on an exhausted…
Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Why? Because it’s thick with sludge. Moving briskly through a serpentine,…
The vampire trend continues, but the only authentic bloodsuckers in Cirque du Freak are its producers and studio execs. Drawn…
This documentary follows Akron’s Fab Four (later Five) kids on the basketball court, from their “Shooting Stars” traveling youth team…
Anne Fontaine’s biopic gives us Belle-Époque Coco, opening in 1893 with a grim scene of the 10-year-old waif and her…
Thoroughly silly and enjoyable for film geeks who know the old ’70s blaxploitation canon, Black Dynamite suffers from the Grindhouse…
Directed by Spike Jonze from a 400-word children’s picture book first published in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are may…
