This year, the mentorship program is a retreat. How is this different from years past, and what will this change look like? In past years, it was the mentor meeting the mentee in person or via Zoomfor 30 minutes minimum a month for six months. They could decide where they want to take it. The … Read more
Separately, KVIFF will premiere a restoration of Czechoslovak director František Vláčil’s Western “Shadows of a Hot Summer.” When it originally premiered at the 21st KVIFF, it was awarded the Crystal Globe for Best Film. Starring Juraj Kukura, Marta Vančurová, Gustav Valach, Jiří Bartoška — the film is set two years after the Second World War, … Read more
“I’m a massive fan of [Benjamin’s] and he was actually on top of my list for years,” “Boy Kills World” director Moritz Mohr explained recently. “When we got him it was just a dream come true. In the process of editing the movie, we did two things: We had H. Jon Benjamin and we had … Read more
The first evening show of the day was Frank Borzage’s “The Lady,” starring the incomparable Norma Talmadge. I first saw this film a few years back as part of the online component of Pordenone, but I may as well have never seen it for how much the big screen transformed the experience. Talmadge at one … Read more
Ebertfest 2018, Days 4 & 5: Daughters of the Dust, The Big Lebowski, 13th and More One of the most rapturous ovations I’ve seen in the six years I’ve been attending Ebertfest was received by Ava DuVernay, the celebrated director who flew to Champaign, Illinois, amidst a busy schedule, in order to attend the Saturday … Read more
Barghouti’s family, longing for him, speak as though he will find release. The more profound point here, present in all the films of this Festival, is that as they watch the Occupiers seize their towns, their homes, and their bodies, the Palestinians cannot help but persist. His resistance, whether from a rooftop speech or torture in … Read more
By focusing on its central relationship drama, “Kill Your Lover” never fully devolves into the sweaty social critique that it sometimes threatens to become. In dialogue with each other—as well as sex and bite-sized memories that come back to them as they quarrel—we see Gilmour and Quigley-Murphy’s characters as quarrelsome, fully-realized people who, at the … Read more
You can tell that the Overlook’s organizer have already cultivated a receptive audience for their programming given how engaged and focused theatergoers’ questions were after each screening. People were really excited to find out more about whatever they just saw, including a special screening of “Me,” Don Hertzfeldt’s trippy, unsettling 23-minute long musical. Most people … Read more
SING SING Director: Greg Kwedar | 105 mins Divine G (Colman Domingo), imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other men who are incarcerated, including wary newcomer (Clarence Maclin), in this stirring true story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art, … Read more
We look at Infested, the spider film that earned director Sébastien Vanicek the chance to make the next Evil Dead movie. PLOT: Residents of a rundown French apartment building battle against an army of deadly, rapidly reproducing spiders. REVIEW: It’s been a long time since we were blessed with some good spider horror and right … Read more