True/False 2025: “Wishing on a Star”

It’s like something out of a fairytale: the tall tower of a rustic Italian castle framed against a sunny sky. Suddenly, a chair flies out of an open window, crashing to the ground below. Other objects follow: more chairs, and other bits of furniture and knickknacks. Accented by a breezy, horn-driven score, this opening sequence […]

True/False 2025: “Writing Hawa,” “Requiem for a Tribe,” “A Want in Her”

Among the many reasons why the True/False Film Festival, Columbia, Missouri’s annual celebration of the documentary form, is my favorite festival to attend is that it highlights fresh (and frequently side-lined) perspectives. The three films I’ve written about below— Writing Hawa, Requiem for a Tribe, and A Want in Her— all swirl around topics of […]

True/False 2025: “How Deep is Your Love”

It’s funny that so many people are fascinated— perhaps even obsessed— with the notion of looking to the stars to locate life beyond Earth, when 70 percent of our planet is covered with water, the majority of which remains untouched and unseen by humans. That may not be the case for long, however: the alien-like […]

True/False 2025: “Valentina and the MUOSters”

Valentina is adrift. Nearing 27 years old, she still lives with her parents in her hometown of Niscemi, Sicily, a place whose natural landscape is slowly deteriorating thanks to wildfires that ravage the forests, and MUOS (Mobile User Objective Systems) that dot the landscape. The satellites, part of an American base and— as cuts to […]

True/False 2025: “River of Grass”

“I remember nature always creeping in.” Those words, spoken by writer and director Sasha Wortzel in her debut documentary feature River of Grass in reference to how growing up in Florida, the natural world existed in tandem with the human one— she speaks of finding tree frogs in the toilet, opossums in the yard— immediately […]

Review: “Rats!”

Rats! is very much a your-milage-will-vary sort of movie. Writers, directors, and producers Maxwell Nalevansky and Carl Fry’s debut feature film’s blend of satire, gross-out comedy, and social commentary drew comparisons to the filmography of John Waters following its award-winning world premiere at Fantastic Fest in 2024, a comparison that turns out to be an […]

Review: “Paddington in Peru”

I do wonder how I might have received Paddington in Peru had I not had such an immediately ardent reaction to the two preceding films in the series. I’m not exaggerating when I say that 2014’s Paddington and 2017’s Paddington 2 are masterpieces of family entertainment that I’ve rewatched ad nauseam in the years since […]

Review: “Heart Eyes”

For a while, Heart Eyes is about as stuck on what it wants to say about love as those guys on Hinge who only seem interested in talking about beer, that one trip they took abroad five years ago, and The Office. Bearing the tagline “Romance is dead,” director Josh Ruben’s slasher/rom-com mash-up opens with […]

Review: “Grand Theft Hamlet”

To game, perchance to dream. During the United Kingdom’s third COVID-19 related lockdown in 2021, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen— London-based actors unable to find work while their industry remained at a standstill— found a way to merge two seemingly disparate interests: Shakespeare, and Grand Theft Auto. The latter— an online open world video game […]

Review: “Presence”

Director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp understand that there are infinitely more frightening things in the world than paranormal entities. That becomes increasingly evident throughout Presence, the duo’s second collaboration following their crackerjack 2022 thriller Kimi. Perhaps it’s rooted in the fact that they were each somewhat inspired by their personal close brushes with […]