TIFF Review: “El Agua”

Toronto International Film Festival 2022 North American Premiere In a small river-side town in Spain, legend holds that every few decades when the river overflows, female residents disappear, an effect of the water’s desire to claim a woman who has recently fallen in love. Filming in her hometown and drawing on its own local legends, […]

Review: “Bodies Bodies Bodies”

“Bodies Bodies Bodies,” director Halina Reijn’s Gen-Z satire clothed in trappings of a whodunnit from a story by Kristen Roupenian and screenplay by Sarah DeLappe, opens on a tender note. The camera caresses young couple Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and their girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova) as they caress each other, Sophie even going so far as […]

Review: “Alone Together”

We’re over two years into this thing now, and I think I’ve figured out at least partially why no movie that centers around the COVID-19 pandemic has been good. In fact, they’ve almost all been almost excruciatingly bad, with the exception of Steven Soderbergh’s straight-to-HBO Max thriller “Kimi,” which tied the protagonist’s anxiety to the […]

Review: “Skies of Lebanon”

He was an astrophysicist who dreamed of sending the first Lebanese man into space. She was a Swiss artist who moved to Beirut to work as a nanny. For this seemingly unusual pair, it was love at first sight, but even the most idyllic romance struggles to withstand the hardships of war. Director and cowriter […]

Review: “Watcher”

Julia (Maika Monroe) is outside her comfort zone. The American just moved to Bucharest with her part-Romanian husband Francis (Karl Glusman), who accepted a demanding new job there. With Francis away for much of the day, and not knowing the language or anyone around her, Julia’s isolation soon transforms into paranoia when a serial killer […]

Review: ”Marvelous and the Black Hole”

Sammy (Miya Cech) is angry. Her mother passed away within the last few years, and the 13-year-old channels her grief through acts of aggression at school (vandalism, and a fight that leaves her with a black eye) and home. She smokes and uses foul language. She shuts out her older sister Sue (Jae Suh Park) […]

Review: “Cow”

Director Andrea Arnold has said of the subject of her latest film, “When I look at Luma, our cow, I see the whole world in her.” Luma is the titular “Cow” of Arnold’s first documentary project, shot over the course of several years at Park Farm in Kent, England. Working with cinematographer Magda Kowalcyzk, Arnold […]

Review: “Mothering Sunday”

Mother’s Day, 1924. Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) is a maid in the rural English home of Mr. and Mrs. Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), and she’s been given the Sunday off work. The Nivens are off to have lunch with their friends and neighbors, the Hobdays and the Sheringhams, the latter family having also […]

Review: “Turning Red”

I don’t think I expected to find “Turning Red” as funny and relatable as I did, something that made all the more sense when I realized the story was set in 2002, and that I was the same age as its 12 to 13-year-old characters in 2002. But even though Pixar Animation’s latest feature film, […]

Review: “The Pink Cloud”

I think it’s safe to assume that no one will ever get to watch writer/director Iuli Gerbase’s debut feature film, “The Pink Cloud,” exactly the way she intended. That isn’t because the final product of the film itself isn’t something she stands behind; quite the contrary. Rather, it’s due to exterior factors that have rocked […]