Cannes Film Festival Review: Pippa Bianco’s ‘Share’
“When everything aligns, ‘Share’ works brilliantly and feels like a true indie hit. Unfortunately, such moments are fleeting, and it ultimately feels like a glorified student film.”
Review: Joe Talbot’s ‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco’
“‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco’ soars, stretching gull wings as a poetic lament articulating longing and loss recognizable and accessible to all.”
Sundance London Review: Patrick Brice’s ‘Corporate Animals’
“Brice and company get too tied up in the character comedy for ‘Corporate Animals’ to work as a satire (or to really say anything at all), and the televisual filmmaking isn’t helped by a plotline that could have been a single episode of ‘The Office.'”
La Semaine de la Critique Review: Valentina Maurel’s ‘Lucia en el limbo’
“Maurel allows Arenas’ body language to speak for her, rather than relying upon cliché teenage dialogue found in many Hollywood films.”
Forty Years of Facehugging and Chestbursting: ‘Memory: The Origins of Alien’
“‘Alien’ is a gift that keeps on giving, and ‘Memory’ unwraps so many colorfully wrapped boxes of various shapes and sizes.”
Cannes Film Festival Review: Robert Eggers’ ‘The Lighthouse’
“Eggers is persistent in never revealing his hand, but I’ve got a hunch he’s hiding a royal flush.”
Review: Praveen Morchhale’s ‘Widow of Silence’
“Widow of Silence’s characters communicate little because the core of human existence is on the verge of death. It’s the humanization of the unfamiliar that makes the characters feel so exceptionally real, and viewers will likely see parts of themselves on screen.”
Olivia Wilde Makes Confident Directorial Debut with ‘Booksmart’
“You don’t have to be a queer teenage activist to relate to Amy, but imagine what ‘Booksmart’ might mean to those who have not seen themselves regularly represented on the mainstream screen.”
Review: FINT’s ‘Fonotune: An Electric Fairytale’
“‘Fonotune: An Electric Fairytale’ can’t escape feeling like a zany music video concept, lacking the energy or plot to sustain a feature. For all the beauty and allure that FINT’s wacky film offers, the emptiness strikes hardest, possibly not in the way the director intended.”
Review: Ry Russo-Young’s ‘The Sun Is Also a Star’
“Despite entertaining directorial flourishes often accompanied by striking stock footage cutaways — from Carl Sagan to a history lesson on African American hair care products — Russo-Young can’t set her hooks into much beyond the postcard images of the Big Apple.”