Father Javier is a man with a mission, and an addiction. His mission is to visit families with family members who are under some kind of spell. Javier does not believe that these incidents are nothing more than psychological or mental issues that can be corrected with the right prescription. Javier addresses his own issues with medication as well. Heroine. Heroine he keeps in a hollowed out crucifix. Javier wakes up abruptly in a basement, his mentor Ramon at his side. Javier recalls to him a troubling pattern. Every family he visits disappears. All that is left behind are signs of extreme violence and a strange marking indented in the walls. Except this last time Javier woke up from his drug induced blackout to…
We sat with director Tia Kouvo to talk about her directorial debut, Family Time, which premiered in the Encounters program of the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival and selected as Finland’s official submission for consideration in the category of Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards. Touching on the short film project which provided the initial impetus to expand it into a feature, Kouvo talks about shooting in her grandparents’ home alongside her returning DP Jesse Jalonen to craft the film’s intimate mise en scene. Kouvo also explains specific soundtrack selections and cinematic influences for her first film, which she describes as a more realistic film about familial Christmas traditions, but overall, a hopeful one.… Read the rest
The Criterion Collection has unveiled its February 2025 lineup, featuring 4K UHD upgrades for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love and Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos. Also among the lineup is one of the great rom-coms, Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey, alongside Gus Van Sant’s second feature Drugstore Cowboy. Jean-Luc Godard’s first English-language feature King Lear and […]
The post Criterion Collection’s February 2025 Lineup Features Paul Thomas Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Crossing Delancey & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
The Taiwanese master of slow cinema discuses VR works, the intersection of theatre, performance art and cinema, and upcoming works.
Paddington in Peru offers an idea of Britishness that’s multifaceted and modern.
The post ‘Paddington in Peru’ Review: Resettling the Meaning of Home, with Charm and Marmalade appeared first on Slant Magazine.
In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week: How To Destroy Angels’ The Space In Between, directed by Rupert Sanders. Rupert Sanders likes his liquids thick and his protagonists immortal. Allow me to back that statement up: the director of special effects bonanzas thus far has directed three different feature films, none of them based on original properties. Snow White and the Huntsman is an effective retelling of the original fairytale with more than a dash of inspiration from Studio Ghibli thrown in there. Ghost in the Shell is a beautiful-looking adaptation of the anime classic that fundamentally misunderstood the original’s philosophies and the wishes of its fanbase. The Crow is a-sort-of-adaptation of…
We’re pleased to exclusively announce that Altered Innocence has acquired the restoration of the critically lauded queer film By Hook or by Crook ahead of its world premiere restoration screening at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on December 5, 2024. Altered Innocence has exclusively acquired all North American rights, with a planned theatrical release […]
The post Exclusive: New Restoration of Queer Drama By Hook or By Crook Acquired by Altered Innocence for Spring 2025 Release first appeared on The Film Stage.
The film paints a vivid portrait of what life was like for Black South Africans under apartheid.
The post ‘Ernest Cole: Lost and Found’ Review: A Scattered Portrait of a Great Photographer appeared first on Slant Magazine.
Gints Zilbalodis’s animated feature is movingly attuned to its characters’ primal instincts.
The post ‘Flow’ Review: A Cat’s Journey Movingly Attests to the Primal Search for Community appeared first on Slant Magazine.
Sam Raimi’s 2009 return to horror after the 1992 Army of Darkness, Drag Me to Hell, is from a more innocent time. Just like ye old E.C. Comics and Tales From the Darkside, Drag Me to Hell is a morality play, but wrapped in a big-budget extravaganza. The film has those hyper-kinetic camera moves and zooms, Raimi’s trademark. This film follows Alison Lohman’s (Gamer) Christine Brown, a loan officer in Los Angeles who’s got her eye on the assistant manager promotion. In order to get it, she’s got to win over her boss, who’s leaning towards giving her misogynistic co-worker the job. Unfortunately, she decides to show her boss that she can “make the hard decisions.” This means that when Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) comes…