Review: DOCTOR WHO S7E14, THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR (Or, Things Get Dark And Interesting In An Excellent Finale)

Steven Moffat has made a great number of promises throughout the seventh series of Doctor Who. I was unsure whether he'd really be able to write a satisfying answer to the mystery of Clara but "The Name of the Doctor"... More »

By Simon Cocks

Cannes 2013 Review: BLUE RUIN Or, Revenge Is A Pain In The Ass

Besides the fact that I doubt we'll see a more deft, thrilling genre film this year, I'm very pleased that Jeremy Saulnier's Blue Ruin addresses a number of issues that revenge films have been overlooking for decades. For example, after... More »

By Brian Clark

Cannes 2013 Review: Anurag Kashyap's UGLY Is a Riveting Thriller About Awful Things

Anurag Kashyap's follow-up to the widely admired Gangs of Wasseypur announces itself with a cacophony of discordant noise screeching over an attempted suicide. It's almost as if Kashyup decided to warn viewers up front, this one won't be easy. And,... More »

By Brian Clark

Cannes 2013 Review: Ozon's YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL Finds New Problems With Sexual Awakenings

Just when it seemed that every single movie about teen girls coming to terms with their sexuality had already been made, here comes François Ozon's Young and Beautiful (Jeune et Jolie), a well-observed, often fascinating exploration of a 17-year-old girl's willful entry... More »

By Brian Clark

Review: DOCTOR WHO S7E13, NIGHTMARE IN SILVER (Or, An Underwhelming Episode Sees The Doctor Battle Cybermen While Irritating Kids Tag Along)

Neil Gaiman's previous scripting effort, "The Doctor's Wife," is acknowledged as one of the strongest episodes of recent Doctor Who, effortlessly feeling like something that fits very naturally into the show's past while giving us a fresh spin on something... More »

By Simon Cocks

Review: SIGHTSEERS Delivers Black Hearted Laughs

If there is one thing the English north has a great deal of, it is space. Space and rocks. Both of which are put to extensive use by Tina (Alice Lowe) and Chris (Steve Oram) as the new couple partakes... More »

By Todd Brown

MSPIFF 2013 Review: THE DEEP Is A Modest, Well-Made Adventure

Baltasar Kormakur's The Deep is one of those rare examples of a fictionalized true story that doesn't ooze with exaggerated melodrama for false effect. Kormakur (101 Reykjavík, the excellent Jar City, and Reykjavík-Rotterdam remake Contraband) crafts a plainspoken tale of... More »

By Kathie Smith

Hot Docs 2013 Review: THE EXPEDITION TO THE END OF THE WORLD Asks Big Questions in Wide Open Spaces

Specifically, the eponymous End of the World is a place: The northern shores of Greenland that have been inaccessible due to ice-locked waterways, which now, due to changing climes, are open for a mere few weeks a year to such... More »

By Kurt Halfyard

MSPIFF 2013 Review: THE FIFTH SEASON's Apocalypse Hits Freakishly Close To Home

There is no denying that contemporary audiences are obsessed with the on-screen fantasy of all-out social breakdown. And with the exception of the poor humanoids being innocently victimized by interplanetary sadists, most cases involve our own maligned inventions retaliating and... More »

By Kathie Smith

Review: SOMETHING IN THE AIR Inspires Youthful Passion And Energy

At the outset, Olivier Assayas's Something in the Air is a biographical nostalgia piece about growing up in the aftermath of the May '68 events in France. But what it really is, is a social experiment in which 18-19 year... More »

By Dustin Chang

Review: POST TENEBRAS LUX Brings The Devil Home

As I review more and more films out of festivals, I'm beginning to notice a pattern: I'm much more forgiving and enthusiastic about films that shoot for the moon and fall somewhere short than with serviceable movies trodding well-worn territory... More »

By Brian Clark

MSPIFF 2013 Review: 80 MILLION Is A Cerebral Cat-And-Mouse

80 Million, Poland's 2012 candidate for Best Foreign Language Film, teases of a bank heist but delivers a cerebral, dialogue driven cat-and-mouse. The dramatic retelling of the anti-communist groundswell in 1980s Poland delves head first into the politically and... More »

By Kathie Smith

IFFR 2013 Review: IXJANA Injects Giallo-like Color And Weirdness Into Film Noir.

(If I did THIS much sex, booze and drugs together on one evening: yep, unfortunately I'd forget stuff as well...) Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski is no stranger to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which even honored him a few years... More »

By Ard Vijn

Review: DOCTOR WHO S7E11, JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE TARDIS (Or, Mysteries And Secrets Fuel An Exploration Of The Doctor's Time Machine)

The notion of discovering more about the Tardis will always be enticing. It's essentially a big box full of secrets and there's so much about it that I'd love to discover or at least have explained in more depth. To... More »

By Simon Cocks

Review: Baring Body And Soul In Ulrich Seidl's PARADISE: FAITH

The second installment of the Paradise Trilogy by Austrian provocateur Ulrich Seidl, Paradise: Faith premiered at the Venice Film Fest last year (Love at Cannes 2012 and Hope at the Berlinale 2013). And it will be screening as a part of... More »

By Dustin Chang

Review: PARADISE: LOVE Illuminates Complex Emotional Truths

Ulrich Seidl's Paradise: Love, the first in his trilogy of "paradise" films (next up is Faith followed by Hope), is a confrontational, often ugly depiction of different forms of desperation and exploitation set against a sex tourism backdrop, and indeed,... More »

By Brian Clark

Tribeca 2013 Review: FLOATING SKYSCRAPERS, The First Polish LGBT Film, A Boldly Intimate Story of Forbidden Desire

Floating Skyscrapers is described by its director Tomasz Wasilewski as the first LGBT Polish film, which makes the film itself as taboo-breaking as its main characters themselves, who struggle to assert their desires, and their right to express them, in... More »

By Christopher Bourne

Review: DOCTOR WHO S7E10, HIDE (Or, The Doctor And Clara Go Ghost Hunting)

"Hide" certainly has similarities with the other episode of Doctor Who written by Neil Cross, "The Rings of Akhaten," in that they both manage to sell the emotion of the story without constructing a coherent narrative throughout. When it begins, it... More »

By Simon Cocks

Review: IN THE HOUSE is François Ozon's Best in Years

In François Ozon's new film In the House, it is clear from the title sequence on a school notebook and as Fabrice Luchini's jaded high school literature teacher cynically commenting on the new rule on school uniforms in the first... More »

By Dustin Chang

Review: LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED Effortlessly Charms

Pierce Brosnan is an acquired taste. I like him. I can't put a finger on why, but I do. If he's not your cup of tea, I suspect you'll find little to enjoy here. And that's a shame, because... More »

By James Dennis

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Leading Voices in Global Cinema

Todd Brown, Founder & Editor Toronto
Peter Martin, Managing Editor Dallas
Ryland Aldrich, Festivals Editor Los Angeles
James Marsh, Asian Editor Hong Kong
Brian Clark, European Editor Paris

Destroy All Monsters: Retire Superman

While the internet is tearing itself apart in its efforts to empirically determine whether Man of Steel "sucks" or "is awesome" - because such things are now apparently possible, given Superman Returns' near-unilateral, and intellectually disturbing, dismissal - I'd like to pause to make a gentler request: may we please... More »

Fifteen Unfilmable Novels And The Directors Who Should Try Anyway

Ah, the 'unfilmable' novel. Go back ten or fifteen years and it seems everyone had some sort of list of great novels that could never be brought to the screen. The limitations at the time were largely technical and in recent years those lists have dwindled with titles such as... More »

Jason Gorber's Cineruminations: On MAN OF STEEL, SuperJesus, and THIS IS THE END's Jewpocalypse

Back in 1933, while Hitler was ascending into power in Germany and diasporic Jews throughout the world looked on with concern, two high school students created one of the most indelible mythical heroes of the last century. Borrowing from the Nietzschean concept of the Übermensch, Joe Shuster and Jerry... More »

Twitchvision: Talking MAN OF STEEL and THIS IS THE END

This is the big week of Superman's return, with Zack Snyder's take on the caped saviour hitting our screens. While my opinion's kind of mixed on the film, there's still plenty to admire about it. I also discuss the overt Jesus imagery throughout, as expanded in a full cineruminations column... More »

70s Rewind: Bridges, Barbra, Bogdanovich, Brynner

Amazon's Prime Instant streaming service is not as well-established as Netflix and has far more modest offerings in off-beat and strange cinema. Still, since I temporarily dropped Netflix, I've been diving deeper into Amazon's catalog, and discovered a good number of films from my favorite movie decade. Here's a selection... More »