If there was one through line in the IFC’s first (and hopefully not last) annual Iranian Film Festival New York, it would be the idea of artistic stasis—of artists either incapable or not allowed to c…
Welcome to Marwen Movie Review: An embarrassing disaster all around
Who was the Hollywood screenwriter, producer, or bigwig who saw Jeff Malmberg’s Marwencol (2010)—a bruising, heart-breaking film about trauma —and thought yes, this will make a perfect dramedic fantas…
Patrick Wang’s ‘A Bread Factory’ is a Dizzying Callback to the Intimate Human Epics of the Hollywood New Wave
It’s easy to forget that in 1972 the highest grossing film in the United States was Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather which more than doubled the take of the third and fourth runners up, Peter Bogd…
‘Islam & the Future of Tolerance’ Review: A Penetrating Examination of the Struggle Between Atheism and Islam
Desh Avila and Jay Shapiro’s Islam & the Future of Tolerance isn’t so much a debate between Atheism and Islam as it is a debate about the debate between Atheism and Islam, an important nuance in t…
The Quake Movie Review: Norway’s New Disaster Film Barely Registers on the Richter Scale
In 2015, Roar Uthaug The Wave made waves—pun not intended—as the self-proclaimed first ever Scandinavian disaster movie. Borrowing heavily from the Roland Emmerich playbook, it followed the fate of a …
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Gauntlet Season 12 Review
Cult comedy show Mystery Science Theater 3000 returned this past Thursday with a new season, their twelfth overall and their second on Netflix. The Thanksgiving release couldn’t have been more appropr…
May the Devil Take You is a Satisfying, Gruesome Tribute to Haunted House Chillers
Though perhaps best known here in the West for his contributions to horror anthology films like The ABCs of Death (2012) and V/H/S/2 (2013), Indonesian director Timo Tjahjanto has steadily made a name…