Film reviews and more
In what has to be one of the crazier award ceremonies to grace the Venice Lido on its 76th edition, Todd Phillips’ Joker took home this year’s Golden Lion in a move guaranteed to provoke a flood of hot takes, an avalanche of think pieces and further lubrication for Oscars season.
★★★★☆ Suzhou River director Lou Ye’s wartime espionage thriller Saturday Fiction starts as a mysterious murky mess and resolves itself into a bullet-riddled noir. We first meet Jean Yu (Gong Li) in Shanghai circa 1937 as she is rehearsing a play with director/lead actor Tan Na (Mark Chao).
★★★★★ Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy’s debut feature is a haunting tale of buried secrets, sea shanties and fracturing communities. Set among the bleak shacks and sketchy bed and breakfasts of a Maine fishing village, Blow the Man Down […]
★★★★☆ With 143 Sahara Street, documentarian Hassen Ferhani takes us to one of the most unlikely places one might expect to find a cafe: the middle of the Algerian desert. On the edge of the dusty road that cuts through the […]