Vera Miao’s horror debut stars Kelly Marie Tran, Benedict Wong, Jimmy O. Yang, Aria Kim, and Fiona Fu in a story that links a grieving Asian American family to the 1885 massacre.
The French writer, playwright, professor, actor and director Guillame Nicloux is no stranger to the International Film Festival Rotterdam. In the past 30 years, he visited several times, and his films have often featured in the festival’s program. This year he brought a special treat for the festival: the world première of his new thriller Mi Amor, starring Pom Klementieff and Benoît Magimel as a DJ and her employer who are looking for a missing person in the Canary Islands. You can read my positive review here. The day after the première, we met Guillame Nicloux at the press center of the festival for an interview. Note that some mild spoilers for Mi Amor come up in the interview, but nothing too disrupting (I think)….
The second movie palace to bear the name, the Castro Theatre in San Francisco opened more than a century ago (1922). Originally serving the working-class inhabitants of the area, the Art Deco-inspired Castro Theatre ran new and old theatrical releases for the better part of half a century before demographic changes irrevocably changed the Castro district and with it, the theatre itself. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into the early 70s, the Castro became a haven for LGBTQ+ individuals facing discrimination, bigotry, and violence. With the arrival of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician to hold political office, the Castro District received national recognition. Both a longtime repertory house for wide-ranging film programs and local festivals, including the San Francisco…
After years of slapdash sequels and waning fandom, the Camp Miasma slasher franchise is handed over to an enthusiastic young director for resurrection. But when she visits the original movie’s star, a now-reclusive actress shrouded in mystery, the two women fall into a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium.
Here is another one to place on your radar, an upcoming possession thriller called Izzi. Deadline is reporting that sales have launched at EFM for the flick that is set to star Isabelle Fuhrman, from the Orphan franchise, and Michael Rooker (Guardians Of The Galaxy). Fuhrman is to star in a dual role in the film, whose synopsis reads: “After years of separation, Jenny returns home to discover that her twin sister Izzi has been possessed by a malevolent force and has disappeared into the surrounding woods. As a long-buried generational curse resurfaces, Jenny joins forces with her father John and local sheriff Blackstone (Rooker) to venture into the cursed forest in a desperate attempt to save her sister.” First-time directors Jamie and…
Also in theaters: ‘Wuthering Heights,’ ‘Cold Storage,’ ‘The Mortuary Assistant.’ Plus, on VOD: ‘Broken Bird’ and ‘Sweetness.’
Featuring neither flowers nor the desert state of America, Rose of Nevada is a deeply authentic, and thoroughly strange time-travel fishing movie that is mainly drama, but, as the red typesetting suggests, with elements of dread and horror. The credits in this design are nearly illegible, but given the opaque and unsettling nature of the film, this is perfectly appropriate. It’s designed by musician, sound designer, and frequent collaborator of director Mark Jenkin, Dion Star, from a an on set photograph by Steve Tanner, and done in the classic British Quad style. On a cream-ochre background, Callum Turner and George MacKay sit on the edge of a boat in their work gear, and stare perplexed out of frame. As it was shot on 16mm film,…
There are oh so many, singular, memorable images in Luke Gleeson’s Wədzįh Nəne’ (aka Caribou Country). The film is so beautiful, and meditative in its execution, that it is almost possible to forget that it is a call to action against the Canadian government handing out oil and gas extraction licenses like candy. If an activist-documentary could be described as Malick-ian, then this is that doc. Gleeson narrates the film along with his grandfather, from their property on the Tsay Keh Dene First Nation. The 90-year-old man watches vintage black & white Muhammad Ali boxing matches on his tiny television, as he considers how much things have changed in his lifetime, even up in the North. The world-famous prizefighter floats like a butterfly in the…
Mexico has a rich tradition of genre films, both serious and outrageous, and that shouldn’t be a surprise because the country has an incredible selection of mythologies and histories to pull inspiration from. Back in 2020, the Mexican director Carlos Matienzo Serment made a short film called Tekenchu, featuring the mythical half-bird-half-man creature called the “Nahual”, which can be found in stories from all over Mexico. That short won awards at several festivals, so Matienzo Serment decided to re-tell his story in extended form, as a full-length feature. He just finished it, it’s called Tekenchu: The Rite of the Nahuales and it had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam last week. And it is very much worth checking out. In the film,…