2020 is guaranteed to have at least one indisputably great movie released in its calendar. And no, that’s not a joke about the current state of the film industry, with films being pulled due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Regardless of how many films are released this year, “Bacurau” is definitely going to make the top 10 lists of some critics.

Cannes Jury Prize winner, “Bacurau,” which was directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, is a perplexing mix of magical surrealism and grindhouse.

Continue reading ‘Bacurau’ Director Discusses Genre Filmmaking & Why His Film And ‘Parasite’ Are “Cousins” [Interview] at The Playlist.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne might just be the most influential European filmmakers of the last 20 years, with their social-realist handheld camera style becoming a sort of Euro-arthouse cliché at this point. And if you believe their last effort, 2016’s “The Unknown Girl,” felt a little off, then you’d probably be happy to know that this year’s “Young Ahmed” is another unique film in the brothers’ cinematic oeuvre, tackling a controversial character who feels incredibly relevant with today’s political reality.

Continue reading The Dardenne Brothers Discuss Their Polarizing Film ‘Young Ahmed’ [Interview] at The Playlist.

The socio-political and supernatural blend in Mati Diop’s Cannes-winning “Atlantics,” a bewitching film from the French-Senegalese writer-director whom, after a successful jaunt in acting and directing short films, returns to her native Senegal for her feature-length debut. It’s also the first film directed by a black woman to compete in Cannes’ main competition, where it was awarded the Grand Prix prize.

“Atlantics” has Diop painting with her brushstroke a vibrant portrait of Ada, a young Dakar girl in search of her lover, Souleiman, who went to sea overnight and never came back.

Continue reading Mati Diop Discusses Immigration, And Michael Mann’s Influence Over ‘Atlantics’ [Interview] at The Playlist.

It’s hard to have grown up in the ’90s and not be familiar with Kevin Smith‘s brand of slacker comedy. Between 1994 and 1999, Smith basically became the spokesman for a misfit generation of geeky basement dwellers with his films  “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy,” “Mallrats,” and “Dogma.”

READ MORE: Kevin Smith Responds To Martin Scorsese: “Who Is Jesus If Not A Superhero?”

What bound all of those lo-fi 90s movies together, beyond their DIY, stitched-together spirit, sophomoric jokes, and (arguably unearned confidence), was their zealous enthusiasm about geeks inheriting the earth and chutzpah-y, can-do-it worldview.

Continue reading Kevin Smith Talks ‘Jay and Silent Bob Reboot,’ How Seth Rogen Made Him A Stoner & Much More [Interview] at The Playlist.

In 2011, Bruce Springsteen started recording the album Western Stars, only to sideline the project for an E-Street Band tour. Recording sessions eventually continued over the years, the album was completed in 2018 and the belated release this year was met with glowing reviews. But Western Stars wasn’t backed by a tour, the first time the musician skipped the road on an album since his 1982 folk acoustic landmark, Nebraska.

Continue reading ‘Western Stars’: Bruce Springsteen’s Concert Doc Is One For The Ages [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

Famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman is not on the American $20 bill yet, thanks to political Trumpian bureaucracy and delay, but even the consideration puts her historical and cultural importance into immediate context. Her courageous story as a political activist and risk-taking Underground Railroad leader is legendary, larger than life, and more than deserving of a fitting cinematic treatment. Director Kasi Lemmons (“Eve‘s Bayou“) and Tony-winning actor Cynthia Erivo (“Widows“) try their best to do her life and legacy justice in the biopic “Harriet,”but the results— beyond the actresses’ terrific performance— are flat, familiar, and largely uninspired in the tradition of unremarkable, eager-to-please awards bait.

Continue reading ‘Harriet’: Cynthia Erivo Cannot Emancipate The Harriet Tubman Story From A Generic Biopic [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

When Bruce Springsteen released “Western Stars” his nineteenth studio album, this past June, most fans were expecting a tour to follow soon after promptly. And yet, no visit came. In fact, no live shows whatsoever are expected, a rarity for Springsteen, an artist who has come to value the live experience and to take any new songs he has out on the road. Even stranger is the fact that “Western Stars” has turned out to be one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year, a primal statement filled with lush orchestral arrangements, impressive vocals and some of the most melodically beautiful songs you will hear all year.

Continue reading ‘Western Stars’: Bruce Springsteen Gets The Documentary Treatment From Warner Bros. at The Playlist.

Director Richard Linklater‘s “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” adapted from Maria Semple’s popular YA novel of the same name, concerns Bernadette (Cate Blanchett) a brilliant, middle-aged ex-architect with a beautiful home, a loving husband (Billy Crudup) and a brilliant teenage daughter (Emma Nelson). And yet, with all the good graces Bernadette has gotten in life, she is going through an existential mid-life crisis.

Continue reading Richard Linklater Talks ‘Where’d You Go, Bernadette?’ Working With Cate Blanchett & More [Interview] at The Playlist.

An overstuffed, stylish crime story about an unpredictable underground world, impressive visual poetry might be on display again in Yinan Diao’s “The Wild Goose Lake,” his latest action-noir, but narrative cohesion is sorely lacking. Following the visually-dazzling 2014 Berlinale-winning, “Black Coal, Thin Ice,” Diao’s most recent, ‘Goose Lake,’ is similarly themed. But it’s ultimately a less successful film with one almost entirely drowned by its overly-complicated and convoluted narrative about a gangster on the lam from both the cops and a rival gang.

Continue reading ‘Wild Goose Lake’: A Stylish Crime Noir Could Still Use More Narrative Cohesion [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

28-year-old writer-director Kantemir Balagov shocked and astonished many at Cannes just two years ago with his startlingly assured debut feature, “Closeness,” which won a FIPRESCI prize in the Un Certain Regard section. He returns in UCR selection again, with another challenging and bleak statement set in his native Russia, and has earned the section’s Best Director prize for his efforts.

READ MORE: 2019 Cannes Film Festival: The 21 Most Anticipated Movies

In “Beanpole,” Balagov focuses his vision on a post-WWII world where two female friends, fresh off the battlefield where they fought as soldiers, try to cope with the severe PTSD inflicted on them by the war.

Continue reading ‘Beanpole’: Kantemir Balagov’s WWII Drama Is Bleak, But A Deserving UCR Best Director Winner [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

“High Life” is director Claire Denis’ twisted, kinky version of a deep space opera. A film set beyond our solar system, “High Life” centers on Monte (Robert Pattinson) and his infant daughter Willow who survives together aboard a spacecraft, in complete isolation of the nothingness around them. Monte fathered the girl back when the spacecraft had 7 death row inmates onboard who were sent up to space, as guinea pigs, to explore the possibilities of black holes.

Continue reading Claire Denis Talks Her Erotic Sci-Fi Film ‘High Life,’ Her Robert Pattinson Crush, The F*ckbox & More [Interview] at The Playlist.

Former elite soldiers go on an ‘Expendables‘-like heist in J.C. Chandor’s indelibly exciting and pulse-pounding “Triple Frontier.” The film, written by Chandor and journalist-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal of “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty” fame, begins rather familiarly, as Oscar Isaac’s Santiago reconnects with his former Special Ops buddies (played by Ben Affleck, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Pedro Pascal) hoping they will join him on a high-paying, very illegal legal heist in South America.

Continue reading Filmmaker J.C. Chandor Talks ‘Triple Frontier’ & How Netflix Is Changing The Film Industry [Interview] at The Playlist.

Is Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Netflix film, “The Irishman” going to follow in the tradition of “Casino,” or “Boardwalk Empire”? Aka two gangster stories Scorsese either directed or developed by Scorsese and heavily echoed his mob rule classic “Goodfellas”? Not according to its editor and longtime Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker who recently said the new movie is a very different beast.

Continue reading ‘The Irishman’ Editor Says Half The Movie Will Feature A Youthful, De-Aged Robert DeNiro & Al Pacino at The Playlist.

The unbelievable strangeness inherent in truth has made for some incredibly destabilizing documentaries about the blurred lines of fact and fiction. Films like “Dear Zachary,” “Catfish,” “Exit Through The Gift Shop”’ and “The Imposter” all blow themselves up in the middle all featuring “oh shit!”-like twists so disarming, so surprising they make one question the very reality and existence of what you’ve been watching.

Continue reading ‘Untitled Amazing Johnathan Documentary’ Is A Riveting, Twisted Examination Of Non-Fiction Filmmaking [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Rock documentaries generally skew towards humanizing musical icons and paint portraits of overcoming personal adversity. That’s just the kind of way they lean, complete with a rise and fall and redemption arcs. But the soulful and affecting “David Crosby: Remember My Name” is special nonetheless, managing to break through those tropes as it chronicles a similar architecture of ups and downs, successes and tragedies. Directed by A.J. Eaton, with the help of producer Cameron Crowe, who acts as Crosby’s interlocutor throughout, it’s almost impossible to not be taken by this brutally honest and emotionally vulnerable film about a famous musical icon, who’s also just a man who’s beginning to contemplate his last act in life.

Continue reading ‘David Crosby: Remember My Name’ Is A Soulful & Intimate Portrait Of Regret [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Young, female, brown, carrying oh-so-terrifying socialist ideals of equality for the underrepresented, and not afraid to speak her mind loudly, U.S. House of Representatives politician and activist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez currently has the Washington D.C. establishment quaking in their boots. Laugh if you want to, but there’s absolutely a reason a brand new, relatively inexperienced 29-year-old congresswoman—the youngest woman ever to serve in the United States—has found herself in the crosshairs of Fox News, The Daily Caller, and dozens of alt-right conservative voices.

Continue reading ‘Knock Down the House’: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Will Fire Up Your Political Spirit [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

It’s a cliché, but “more than you bargained for” documentaries are typically the best ones. Those films that feature a filmmaker on an odyssey quest for one piece of truth, but discovers something richer and more profound along the journey. Such is the case with what Mads Brügger‘s astonishing “Cold Case Hammarskjöld,” about an investigation into a mysterious murder that strikes a vein and the blood of discovery comes gushing.

Continue reading ‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld’ Is An Astonishing Murder Mystery Investigation Doc [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

The bible belt of early 1960s rural Oklahoma wasn’t a great time and place in America for outsiders. And this god-fearing country is certainly no place for two girls that may be slowly falling in love and calling too much public attention to all the time they’re spending together. Director Martha Stephens (co-director of 2014 Sundance film “Land Ho!” with Aaron Katz) adapts Shannon Bradley-Colleary‘s screenplay on intolerance and class-warfare in pre-sexual revolution America into an artfully visual feast, but one that unfortunately plods along at an uneven pace into heavy-handedness as the drama intensifies.

Continue reading ‘To The Stars’ Is A Beautiful, But Familiar, Coming Of Age Tale [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

The 2019 Sundance Film Festival saw a festival in flux.  Amazon Studios dominated the acquisitions front picking up five different films at almost unheard of prices while A24 arrived with five films and left with six. How many will we be talking about a year or two from now?  That remains to be seen on the narrative side given the last two Grand Jury U.S. Dramatic winners, “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” and “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore,” were quickly forgotten.

Continue reading Best & Worst Of The 2019 Sundance Film Festival at The Playlist.

In two short years, Trump’s toxic America, has turned race, privilege, and class into incendiary topics while amplifying intolerance, and Julius Onah‘s powerfully constructed “Luce,” mixes all these socio-political subjects into a provocative Molotov cocktail that shatters, burns and leaves no easy answers.

READ MORE: Sundance 2019 Film Festival Preview: 25 Must-See Films

A dissecting, and even confrontational, look into the American Dream, “Luce” features at its core a married couple going through a series of shocking, ambiguous and difficult-to-describe events involving their adopted African-American son, a straight-A student and all-star athlete.

Continue reading ‘Luce’: Julius Onah’s Powerfully Constructed Psychodrama Of Race & Social Politics Is Brilliantly Tense [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Not to carp on about it, but the new wave of indie arthouse horror, but has really tapped into something primal in our culture. Using formal rigor and a kind of patience that’s the opposite of jump scares, this new movement is bound by its collective desire to use atmospherics to unsettle us emotionally and psychological on a much deeper level. It’s a different kind of fear and one not traditionally scary in the boo!

Continue reading ‘The Hole In The Ground’ Digs A Moody, But Conventional Horror Ditch [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Arthouse horror is on a tear right now, and it’s no secret. One of the most inspiring movements in American cinema right now, modern classics like “Hereditary,” “Get Out,” “The Witch,” “It Follows,” et al. have reinvigorated a genre blunted by the cheap slasher films of the ’80s and ’90s and sparked something of a movement, thoughtful, emotionally bruising and sometimes glacially paced horror.

Continue reading ‘The Lodge’: Arthouse Horror Chalks Up Another Win In This Claustrophobic Family Drama [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Many attempt to mix the outwardly-delicious peanut butter and chocolate tone of comedy and horror, and there are many good ones—“Shaun of the Dead” “Cabin In The Woods,” “Get Out,” the “Evil Dead” films, etc.— but it’s actually a deceptively tricky genre hybrid to get right. For all the classics, much like horror, there’s a lot of cheap, garish junk that gets churned out each year that hurts the overall quality score.

Continue reading ‘Corporate Animals’: Demi Moore’s Unfunny Performance Hinders This Wild Cannibal Office Horror-Comedy [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Given the disgraced saga of Harvey Weinstein, his crash and burn meteoric downfall, and the way the cratering implosion decimated his once seemingly-invulnerable career and company, it was inevitable that a documentary based on the former magnate’s scandal would quickly appear in the wake of his ruin. But the aptly-titled “Untouchable,” is more just about the Harvey Weinstein, the power he held over Hollywood for decades and his once-unassailable Teflon armor.

Continue reading ‘Untouchable’: Harvey Weinstein’s Rise & Fall Are Detailed In This Timely Doc [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

As the year’s pass, the deceitful excuses and the disturbing decision by the Bush Administration to wage war against Iraq in 2003 grow increasingly criminal. The continuous barrage of first-hand knowledge that has been revealed over the last 15 years since the invasion, has made it quite clear that the intelligence community distorted facts and manipulated the American people. This shameful time in American history has resulted in a slew of scathing films (fiction and non-fiction) and the latest zeroing in on this topic— following its recent appearance in Adam McKay‘s satirical Dick Cheney biopic “Vice“— is “Official Secrets,” by South African director Gavin Hood (“Eye in the Sky”).

Continue reading ‘Official Secrets’: Keira Knightley Can’t Save Gavin Hood’s Political Whistleblower Thriller [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.