Review: “A Christmas Party”

We’ve all been there before, regardless of what precisely we celebrate or believe in: the family holiday party. The tense reunions, the awkward introductions of new partners, the petty squabbles over everything from politics to what’s for dinner. And we’ve all seen it depicted on screen countless times, too. So it’s a testament to Alexander […]

Review: “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale”

Fifteen years, six seasons, 52 episodes, and 3 feature films later, change has finally arrived at Downton Abbey. It’s an inevitable fact of existence that the series, which opened with the 1912 sinking of the Titanic and now concludes (presumably) in 1930, the start of a decade rife with worldwide turmoil, has acknowledged while nonetheless […]

TIFF 2025: “Aki”

You won’t hear a word of spoken dialogue in Darlene Naponse’s Aki, an observational documentary depicting life in the indigenous Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory of Northern Ontario. But the movie is far from silent. Naponse— a native of the region— uses her connection with the community to craft a sonically and visually rich story of the […]

TIFF 2025: “Ghost School”

At the start of Seemab Gul’s debut feature film Ghost School (Pakistan’s sole entry in this year’s Toronto International Film Festival), curious 10-year-old Rabia (Nazualiya Arsalan), backpack slung over her shoulders, sets off for school like any other day. But what awaits her there is a far from average sight: a guard standing outside the […]

Venice 2025: “Made in EU,” “Silent Rebellion,” “Songs of Forgotten Trees,” “Divine Comedy”

I’ve reached the end of my time covering the Venice Film Festival (and sitting on the beach on the Lido), my first visit not only to that event, but to Italy. As exciting as it is to experience the big, buzzy premieres at the kickoff to awards season, I tend to find discovering movies in […]

Venice 2025: “Elvira Notari: Beyond Silence”

Three complete features, two shorts, and four fragments are all that survives of the 160 movies Elvira Notari, Italy’s first female filmmaker, made between 1906 and 1930. She was incredibly prolific, even founded her own studio based out of Naples, Dora Film. And yet, you’ve likely never heard of her, the loss of nearly the […]

Venice 2025: “Kim Novak’s Vertigo”

The enigmatic black-and-white portrait of its subject that Kim Novak’s Vertigo opens with speaks louder than words. Its date is uncertain, but based on her appearance, the footage originates from somewhere in the vicinity of the peak of her success in Hollywood, the girl who made a detour to Tinsel Town for fun while touring […]

Venice 2025: “The Smashing Machine”

In Benny Sadfie’s anti-sports biopic The Smashing Machine, Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) is always fighting, whether he’s inside the ring or outside it. Inside, the battle is simpler to define. The one-on-one combats are rough and bloody, knees jamming into heads and fists smushing into faces; participants often walk away with concussions or wounds that […]

Venice 2025: “Ghost Elephants,” “Nuestra Tierra,” “Cover-Up”

In this dispatch from the Venice Film Festival, I’m looking at three terrific documentaries from established auteurs that premiered out-of-competition at the fest: Werner Herzog’s Ghost Elephants (which the director received a lifetime achievement award in conjunction with), Lucretia Martel’s Nuestra Tierra, and Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’ Cover-Up. On a remote plateau in the […]

Venice 2025: “The Tale of Silyan”

In Macedonia, there’s an ancient folk story about a rural farm boy named Silyan. Sick to devoting his life to strenuous farm work, he decides he wants to leave and go elsewhere, but his father, displeased, casts a spell that turns him into a stork. No longer human, and not accepted by the other storks, […]