The story of Cinderella is retold as a body-horror fable about unrealistic beauty standards in The Ugly Stepsister. Elvira (Lea Myren) joins her recently married mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) and younger sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) at their new home, with Elvira quickly striking up a rapport with her new stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch…
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A struggling woman in post-WWI Copenhagen is taken in by a confectioner running a side business taking unwanted babies in The Girl with the Needle. In the dying days of the first World War, seamstress Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) is suddenly evicted from the apartment she shared with her MIA husband Peter (Besir Zeciri). Karoline…
Two cousins go on a tour of Holocaust sites in Poland in A Real Pain. David Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg) has taken some time off his busy work and family life to join his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) on a tour of Poland in memory of their recently deceased grandmother. The two join a tour group…
A Polish nurse shelters a group of Jews while working as a housekeeper for a S.S. Major in Irena’s Vow. Irena Gut Opdyke (Sophie Nรฉlisse) is training to be a nurse in 1939 when the Germans invade and she ends up working in a factory for Officer Kruger (Marcel Sabat). Irene is hired by Major…
The commandant of Auschwitz lives with his family right next to the atrocities going on inside the concentration camp in The Zone of Interest. Rudolf Hรถss (Christian Friedel) is the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who lives with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hรผller) and five children at an estate that borders the fence of…
This review was originally published as part of my coverage of the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival In a world without death, a detective tries to solve a murder committed by a terrorist group in Restore Point. In 1948 Prague, the population is able to be restored from death by digital back-ups stored by the Institute…
In a world without death, a detective tries to solve a murder committed by a terrorist group in Restore Point. In 1948 Prague, the population is able to be restored from death by digital back-ups stored by the Institute of Restoration run by Rohan (Karel Dobrรฝ). Emma Trochinowska (Andrea Mohylovรก) is a detective investigating the…
Two women live isolated from the world on their farm in Bucolic. 65-year-old Danusia and her 35-year-old daughter Basia live in isolation from the rest of the world on their farm on the outskirts of a village in central Poland. Danusia and Basia live in turn with rhythm and laws of nature, among animals and…
Two farmers care for a unique newborn lamb like their own child in Lamb. Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snรฆr Guรฐnason) are a married couple who live on a sheep farm in the mountains of Iceland. As the sheep give birth to their lambs in the spring, one is born with very unique traits and…
A young man with Species Identity Disorder is sent to a clinic with controversial methods inย Wolf. Jacob (George MacKay) is a teenager who believes himself to be a wolf, who is admitted to a clinic meant to cure those with similar species dysphoria. While Dr. Angelie (Eileen Walsh) uses very optimistic methods in her therapy…
The horrible accident mars a Polish couple’s Italian vacation inย Silent Land. Adam (Dobromir Dymecki) and Anna (Agnieszka Zulewska) are a bourgeois Polish couple, who arrive at their vacation home near an Italian island town. One of the first things that the couple notices is that the house’s pool is empty and their landlord Fabio (Marcello…
A 50 year old woman has a sexual awakening in Marygoround. Mary (Grazyna Misiorowska) is a grocery story worker, who has started to go through menopause, which she begins take hormone treatments for. That, combined with the sudden visit of her niece Helena (Helena Sujecka) results in in the still virginal Mary having an increased…
We follow the tumultuous relationship between two musicians in postwar Europe in Cold War. In 1949 Poland, jazz-loving pianist Wiktor Warski (Tomasz Kot) is forced to play into the communist propaganda machine and audition traditional folk musicians, as part of state-sponsored project. During the auditions, Wiktor finds himself immediately enamored by Zuzanna “Zula” Lichoล (Joanna Kulig),…
This review was originally published as part of my coverage of Hot Docs 2018 The development of a video game is followed from start to finish in Playing Hard.ย Jason Vandenberghe has worked in the video game industry for two decades. In 2013,ย Vandenberghe goes to Ubisoft’s studio in Montreal to pitch his dream game, a medieval…
Twelve New York City police officers join a class action lawsuit against corruption in the NYPD in Crime + Punishment. Within the NYPD, a number of Black and Latino officers are encouraged by their superiors to perform illegal summons and arrest quotas, with those refusing to do so facing repercussions. A number of these officers,…
The development of a video game is followed from start to finish in Playing Hard. Jason Vandenberghe has worked in the video game industry for two decades. In 2013, Vandenberghe goes to Ubisoft’s studio in Montreal to pitch his dream game, a medieval actioner eventually named For Honor. The studio begins development of the game with Vandenberghe as…
Oil painted visuals tells the story of the life and death of Vincent van Gogh in Loving Vincent. One year after the suicide of Vincent van Gogh (Robert Gulaczyk), Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth) is asked by his postmaster father Joseph (Chris O’Dowd) to deliver an undelivered letter from Vincent to his brother Theo. After finding out that…
Young mermaids become hits in a Warsaw nightclub in The Lure. Golden (Michalina Olszanska) and Silver (Marta Mazurek) are two mermaid sisters, who arise from the ocean in 1980s Warsaw. Thanks to their hypnotic siren singing powers, the two mermaids become the spotlight attraction of a band performing at a burlesque nightclub, which begins to call themselves…
A group of people try to exist in a world without memory in Embers. After a global epidemic, the population of the world have forgotten how to remember. Various people try to move on with their lives, including a guy (Jason Ritter) and a girl (Iva Gocheva), who are supposedly lovers, a teacher (Tucker Smallwood)…
A depressed woman is pushed into committing a horrible crime in I, Olga Hepnarova. For all of her life, Olga Hepnarova (Michalina Olszanska) was a victim of bullying, whether it be the abuse she received from her parents or the torment by fellow girls at a psychiatric hospital. Despite having a number of female lovers, Olga is…
Young mermaids become hits in a Warsaw nightclub in The Lure. Golden (Michalina Olszanska) and Silver (Marta Mazurek) are two mermaid sisters, who arise from the ocean in 1980s Warsaw. Thanks to their hypnotic siren singing powers, the two mermaids become the spotlight attraction of a band performing at a burlesque nightclub, which begins to call…
Rodney Ascher (Room 237) explores the terrors of sleep paralysis in The Nightmare. There are people who suffer from a mysterious sleeping condition, where they feel like they are awake, yet they find that they cannot move. Many of those suffering from sleep paralysis have visions of shadowy figures coming at them in the darkness….
Rodney Ascher (Room 237) explores the terrors of sleep paralysis in The Nightmare. There are people who suffer from a mysterious sleeping condition, where they feel like they are awake, yet they find that they cannot move. Many of those suffering from sleep paralysis have visions of shadowy figures coming at them in the darkness. …
This semi-experimental documentary features intimate confessional interviews with 50 unique individuals. Sitting in front of a blank white screen, these people talk about everything from relationships, the search for identity, family violence, depression, suicide, sexuality, mental illness, aliens, religion and death. These interviews are accompanied by a subtle synthesized score and the occasion inclusion of…
Passed from generation to generation, the Slavic folk tale of Baba Yaga tells the story of a pair of children, who find the witch living in a hut perched on chicken legs in a haunted forest. The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga tells this story in an illustrated style, while interweaving it with a…
Roman Polanski‘s latest film, based on the play God of Carnage, is a very simple and hilarious film about how a simple conversation can quickly blow out of proportion. The whole film is one giant coversation between two couples. The son of Nancy and Alan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) hit the son of Penelope…
Last Wednesday when I looked back at The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, I worried that I did not know if I would enjoy this film, since I wasn’t that familiar with the rest of The Chronicles of Narnia. However, it turned out that I enjoyed the film just fine. It helped that this…
