Screen Anarchy

After the death of her fiancé, Natalie moved to America for a fresh start. When we catch up with her she is 8 months pregnant at her job as a real estate agent. She has take on a challenging listing, a palatial estate with its own troubled past that has barely caught the eyes of any potential buyers. In the final moments of the open house The Client shows up but appears to show not enough interest in the property and seemingly leaves. Except they haven’t and break back into the home afterwards and proceed to hunt Natalie throughout the estate. The terror of the moment causes Natalie to go into premature labor, starting a physiological ticking clock as she must find a way to…

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In Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, adapted from Russell Banks’ Foregone, a renowned documentary filmmaker named Leonard Fife subjects himself to a filmed interview while battling the throes of death. This final interview, to be captured by a former pupil turned documentarian in his own right, is supposed to be a fawning retrospective tribute to a noble life. Instead, Fife takes the confessional aspect of a spotlit interview as an opportunity to alleviate himself of an imposter’s guilt before the watchful eye of the all-seeing lens, and perhaps even more significantly, his wife Emma. The film is the second collaboration between writer/director Paul Schrader and author Russell Banks, following the acclaimed Affliction in 1997, and it’s a project that both writers nursed through sickness and health….

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A weekend of Hong Kong cinema is coming soon to Montreal, during the weekend of October 24th through 26th, at Making Waves Montreal.  Presented by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society, in collaboration with Chicago Asian Pop-Up Cinema, sponsored by the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and supported by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Toronto, MWM24 will present another slate of Hong Kong films, most of them directed by a new generation of talented, committed and award-winning filmmakers with a distinct voice. The three day festival opens with Albert Mak’s heist thriller, Rob N Roll. Actor Gordon Lam will be in attendance for the screening. Also in attendance at this year’s event is…

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The Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival (LUFF) returns for its 23rd edition, presenting a program that blends experimental cinema and innovative music performances, continuing its tradition of showcasing avant-garde and subversive works that challenge conventional boundaries.

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Since we live in a time when every single film ever produced should be remade at least once, it’s fair to expect a new reimagining of some intellectual property come out every other few week or so. Some of those, like the recent English-language version of Speak No Evil, manage not only to capitalize on the already existing qualities of the original, but to also expand on them and possibly introduce something novel. Right now, it’s time for a new take on Bad Genius (Chalard games goeng) – a memorable Thai hit from 2017 about a brilliant highschooler who helps her well-off classmates cheat during exams. The 2024 film, shot in English and transferring the setting to Seattle, is penned by J.C. Lee (for whom it’s…

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Sister Midnight from Karan Kandhari (Bye Bye Miss Goodnight) is a hard film to review and classify, but I’m going to try after seeing the film at the 44th annual Hawaii International Film Festival. Funded in part by the British Film Institute and Film4, Sister Midnight opens with a young Indian bride on a train. She doesn’t look happy, and most of us would not be happy to be joined with a veritable stranger in an arraigned marriage within a system that would restrict and confine us to traditional gender roles, with no way to escape. Actress Radhika Apte (Andhadhun, Merry Christmas) plays the bride; currently, there’s no character name for her listed on imdb, which almost seems fitting, as this is a society that…

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Quebecois filmmaker François Simard has been charged with sexually assaulting two children. Because there has not been much of any English-language press about this, collectively ScreenAnarchy felt it was our responsibility to share this news with you.    This report from French-language newspaper La Presse came out at the beginning of the month. Since that time Simard has been formally charged.   The 42-year-old man appeared Thursday morning at the Quebec City courthouse. He faces four counts of sexual assault and sexual interference with a child under 16. The two complainants were between 9 and 11 years old at the time of the events, according to the indictment.   The incidents allegedly occurred between March and June in Lévis and also in another country. A…

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In 2021 Finnish filmmaker and documentarian Otso Tiainen, together with their co-writer Kalle Kinnunen, set out to Montségur, France, a commune nestled in the French Pyreneese mountains and a homestead for practitioners of the occult. Initially filming started out as a documentary about filmmaker and occultist Richard Stanley and their life in what they call “The Zone.” However, part way through the project a shocking allegation of past domestic abuse was made against Stanley. Not only did the documentarians need to rethink what they do with this revelation but so did other residents of Montségur who had come to know Stanley as one of the commune’s key spiritual leaders.    Shadowland starts out as a continuation, of sorts, of Stanley’s own documentary about the region,…

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Roberto Minervini’s new film, which premiered earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival, is the second feature in this festival round to be titled The Damned. Another movie with the same English-language title, directed by Thordur Palsson and featured at the Tribeca Film Festival, was also set in a period setting, and talked about moral compromises and emotional tolls extreme circumstances can take on human beings. (See review linked below.) Minervini’s feature ventures to explore similar ideas, setting the story in 1862 during the Civil War, somewhere along the borderlands of the Western territories. The Damned (orig. Il Dannati) starts off with a prolonged shot of some wolves ripping into an animal carcass, a grim image that doesn’t promise opistimistic things for the main characters,…

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In the romanticizing of 90s indie music, it’s oft said that no band better epitomized the rock & roll slacker ethos of rebelling against establishment/commercialism/‘whatever else ya got’/etc. than Pavement. If true enough, then how exactly do you make a movie about Pavement? The answer as put to Alex Ross Perry by Matador Records seems to be to make every movie about Pavement… and a museum exhibit… and a community theater-style musical. The result is Pavements, a hilariously kaleidoscopic telling of the band’s mythologized story and ostensible meaning, while simultaneously functioning as an appropriately wise-ass satire of the non-music mediums that typically seek to capture the essence of musicians. Paraphrasing Perry’s words, is there any high-brow film genre lower than the music biopic? If not,…

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