Directed by Soi Cheang, the Hong Kong action extravaganza is packed with martial arts legends and rising stars from Sammo Hung and Louis Koo to Philip Ng and Raymond Lam.
R.J. Daniel Hanna’s tense thriller stars Brendan Bradley, Rachel Cook, Rosanna Arquette, and Ron Perlman.
Hunter Schafer, Jessica Henwick, and Dan Stevens star in Tilman Singer’s thriller.
Screendaily shared the news that Ant Timpson’s Bookworm, the story of an absent father who reunites with their daughter to get proof of a mythical beast, has won the Audience Award for this year’s edition of Fantasia. Bookworm was the opening film of this year’s festival and stuck a chord with the Fantasia audience early, a crowd that still had two and half weeks to find another champion. They did not. The three-hour French epic, The Count of Monte-Cristo took the silver and American cringe punk comedy Rats! took the bronze prize. Self Driver was voted the top Canadian feature, A Samurai in Time was voted Best Asian Feature, and Kidnapping Inc. the Haitian/Canadian caper comedy won Best Quebecois Feature. That last one…
It’s the 1920s in Northern China and prized student Qi Quan returns to their martial arts academy. He is there to participate in a formal duel, for leadership of the academy. He will fight Shen An, son of the academy’s ailing master. Qi wins the match and with their master’s last breath he assumes leadership of the martial arts school. Shen is displeased with the outcome and will do whatever it takes to win back leadership at the school. Internal and social politics complicate the matter, as do a father’s wishes for his son to leave the martial arts world. Add to that growing love interests for both combatants and the rumor that there is a special skill that Qi Quan had not been…
Here in the States, we are very much enjoying your raucous Northern Irish film Kneecap, which our own Olga Artemyeva described as “bold, entertaining and boisterous – both as a cinematic piece and as a statement. It is also genuinely hilarious.” Frankly, we don’t have anything homegrown to offer in return, so may I recommend something completely different? Now playing in UK and Ireland, Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro is a perfect picture to watch in a cinema, where you can become enraptured by the gorgeous animation and delightful story: “Two girls move to the country to be near their ailing mother” and “have adventures with the wondrous forest spirits who live nearby,” according to an official synopsis. So, just like Kneecap, only with less…
Celebrating its tenth anniversary, Popcorn Frights Film Festival kicks off Thursday night with the world premiere of Beezel and the Florida premiere of Strange Darling. The festival will be a hybrid experience, presenting both in-theater and virtual film offerings, running August 8-18. Beezel is described in the official release as “an unforgiving and utterly frightening morality tale about a cursed home and the sinister secret dwelling beneath its floors –an eternal witch with an insatiable thirst for the souls of the living,” while Strange Darling “is told in a non-linear way that keeps the viewers on their toes,” according to our own Olga Artemyeva in her Fantastic Fest review last year. The film “is decidedly devoid of anything that is unfun or boring, including possible…
In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week: Bright Eyes’ Bells and Whistles, directed by Josh Boone. Josh Boone’s works have never clicked for me. The Fault in Our Stars feels like a weird ode to romantic dramas with an illness theme like Dying Young, Turkish Delight, The Notebook and the perennial godfather of the genre, Love Story, that adds a youthful glow to the notion of dying young. It feels like a bad taste film that is offensive to people with cancer ánd victims of World War II. The scene in which the American teens make the suffering of Anne Frank somehow all about them speaks to how utterly misguided the film is….
Derek is down on his luck. Separated from his wife and child he lives out of his car, using it for ride-sharing to make ends meet. He meets an old friend, Gilbert, who offers to give him a job testing out the latest product from his high-tech start up. That product is Susan, a high end BDSM sex doll, designed to take as much punishment as her partners desire. She is as real as a sex-robot can be. Derek marvels at how life-like Susan is. So much so, that he tries to engage with her beyond sexual acts. But Susan is programmed for one thing and one thing only, bring sexual satisfaction to her partner, through any means necessary. And Susan is programmed to bring…
Tamara searches for her missing son in a violent town, falling under the weight of a civil uprising. She comes across a morally questionable ex-detective Brajyuk, who, in a last ditch effort to stay alive, agrees to help her find him. His methods are cruel but she is determined to find her son whatever the cost. He discovers that their quests will meet along the same path so he more or less puts up with her trauma induced, stuttering gibberish as they race to the border to rescue her son. Our first introduction to the works of Adilkhan Yerzhanov were his two films A Dark, Dark Man and Atbai’s Fight. Crime thrillers at their core, we would have compared them to the yakuza thrillers…