SLIFF Review: “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt”

Hands. That’s the first thing you notice about Raven Jackson’s debut feature film All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt: the close-up of Mack’s hands as she runs them through the river water, sifting through the dirt with her fingers, as her father Isaiah (Chris Chalk) teaches her how to fish, patiently telling her to go […]

Review: “The Killer”

“Stick to the plan.” That’s the mantra that the titular assassin of The Killer, played by Michael Fassbender, repeats in his head as he goes about his job, constantly rationalizing the need for a clinical attitude and lack of empathy every time he’s faced with a situation that challenges his inhumanity. The same sentence could […]

Review: “Anatomy of a Fall”

“I really wanted to address the legal issue in its smallest details, to address the issues of the couple, of living together. It was also a pretext to dissect every bit of their life.” Justine Triet stated the above to the magazine Paris Match following the world premiere of her courtroom drama Anatomy of a […]

Review: “Priscilla”

I didn’t put two and two together until I was standing in the hotel lobby. The same day I was set to go see Priscilla— Sofia Coppola’s screen adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me— I was checking into a hotel, a charming relic of Route 66’s heyday in southwest Missouri. As I […]

Review: “Killers of the Flower Moon”

“The murder plots depended upon doctors who falsified death certificates and upon undertakers who quickly and quietly buried bodies. The guardian who McAuliffe suspected of killing his grandmother was a prominent attorney working for the tribe who never interfered with the criminal networks operating under his nose. Nor did bankers, including the apparent murderer Burt, […]

Review: “The Creator”

A global war between humans and artificial intelligence? The premise of The Creator couldn’t be more timely if Gareth Edwards’ tried, with even the film’s trailer premiering mere days after SAG-AFTRA followed the WGA on strike, better protections for actors and writers regarding the increasing use of A.I. in film production being one of their […]

Review: “Expend4bles”

Generally poorly executed in story, dialogue, and action, the one pure pleasure the Expendables series had to offer was the joy of watching aging 80s action legends like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, and Bruce Willis appearing together on screen, quoting their iconic lines back-and-forth to one another in bouts of fan service banter […]

Review: “A Haunting in Venice”

You have to give Kenneth Branagh some credit. Revealing no flagging interest in Agatha Christie and her famed investigator creation, Hercules Poirot, following his film versions of two of her most famous works, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, with a loose adaptation of one of Christie’s lesser known Poirot tales, […]

TIFF Review: “Seagrass”

The long toots of the ferry horn have a lilting, almost musical sound, one that emphasizes the playful mood of the two little girls running around the boat deck. There’s not a cloud in the sky. The calm blue water seems to stretch into infinity. The girls pester their dad for a dollar for some […]

Review: “We Kill for Love”

A man walks into a cluttered room, settles in, and slowly begins to unpack its contents: dusty pulp novels, VHS tapes of long-forgotten films with titles like Illicit Dreams, Secret Games, and Lipstick Camera that flicker to life in all their low-res glory on a tiny TV set. A narrator (Anthony Penta) identifies this man […]