French director Ladj Ly is at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend with second feature Les Indésirables. Like Ly’s breakthrough first feature Les Misérables, it is set and shot against the backdrop of Paris’s deprived eastern suburbs of Clichy-Montfermeil where the director grew up. Having put the spotlight on …
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When British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi was watching the UK media coverage of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011, it had a profound impact on her. At the time, Shalit was an Israeli occupation soldier who had been abducted in 2006 by Palestinian freedom fighters and the first Israeli soldier …
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The Lovers (Sky, 7th September) It’s not often we get a TV series that’s just a straight-up romcom these days, but that’s exactly what The Lovers dishes up, starring Roisin Gallagher (The Fall) and Johnny Flynn (Lovesick) as sweary shop worker Janet and arrogant political broadcaster Seamus, a mismatched pairing …
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Gonzo Girl, Patricia Arquette’s feature directorial debut, is not technically about Hunter S. Thompson. It is about a Hunter S. Thompson type, Walker Reade (Willem Dafoe), invented by Cheryl Della Pietra for her semi-autobiographical novel inspired by her brief stint as Thompson’s assistant. But it’s not really about Walker, either. …
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The term “alien” takes on multiple meanings in writer-director Moin Hussain’s intriguing and rather gloomy debut feature, Sky Peals, which follows a lonely rest-stop cook whose life is upended by the death of his estranged father. Although extraterrestrials are evoked at some point, this intimate indie is less of a …
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If cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland’s new film is one precision-tooled specimen. This profoundly moving, flawlessly executed multi-strand drama, shot in stark black and white, tracks refugees from various nations in 2021 trying to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. …
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NEON’s Origin teaser trailer previews Ava DuVernay’s stirring adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s gripping novel. Ava DuVernay’s Origin teaser trailer is here to stir your emotions before its world premiere tomorrow at the Venice Film Festival. Breaking ground as the first African-American woman director in competition in Venice Film Festival’s eighty-year history, DuVernay …
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Four years after director Kitty Green and actor Julia Garner channeled whispers and silence into the stuff of workplace horror in The Assistant, they reunite for a movie that turns up the volume and ratchets up the fear and loathing. Way up. Instead of the careerist corridors of Manhattan, the …
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In a recent legal win for Grayscale against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Bitcoin (BTC) soared to $27,000. However, the bullish sentiment seems to have waned as the cryptocurrency has retraced to $26,000. QCP Capital, a cryptocurrency analysis firm, has provided valuable insights into the implications of this …
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No animals were harmed in the making of Luc Besson’s highly original new thriller, Dogman, but plenty of dudes get mauled, bitten, robbed and attacked, and at least one guy has his junk put into a serious vice grip by a ferociously well-trained canine. That being said, the director’s …
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The formidably versatile Italian star Pierfrancesco Favino (The Traitor, Nostalgia) does many impressive things in the WWII submarine story, Comandante. He wears an asphyxiating back brace that looks painful. He speaks in a convincing Venetian accent. He does yoga. He barks orders to his haggard crew, including that they all …
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Felicity Huffman, Nicollette Sheridan, Teri Hatcher, Eva Longoria, and Marcia Cross. Dara Kushner/INFGoff.com Desperate Housewives captured the attention of the public for eight seasons — but the behind-the-scenes drama has kept people talking. The ABC series premiered in 2004 and was created by Marc Cherry. Starring Teri Hatcher, Felicity Huffman, …
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