SXSW Film Festival
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My 2024 SXSW coverage continues with Michael Mohan’s nun-themed horror film: Immaculate. An attempt at “nunsploitation” that never quite reaches the requisite luridness of its subgenre, Sydney Sweeney’s scream queen turn only finds tepid scares and lukewarm thrills. Minor spoilers ahead…
My 2024 SXSW coverage begins here with one of the most anticipated films of the festival. As first-time action director and action star, Dev Patel has rocket fuel in his veins. Colliding formal, kinetic grit with adrenaline-fueled passion, Monkey Man is an action movie that delivers in spite of its dim spirituality and flat politics: a whirlwind of bloodletting, throat punches, and kicks to the teeth. Minor spoilers ahead…
John Wick has always been the action franchise of the decade, but Chad Stahelski’s Chapter 4 is next level: the type of exhilarating, metal-as-hell ballet of bullets that blows the doors off action filmmaking. There hasn’t been a take-your-breath-away feast for genre fans like this since Mad Max: Fury Road or The Raid. Minor spoilers ahead…
Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s SXSW Film Festival. As usual, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but there are plenty of notable films in this year’s slate that I still wanted to cover. Here are the capsule reviews for 2023’s SXSW: Tetris, Furies, If You Were the Last, and Late Night With the Devil. Minor Spoilers Ahead…
Every single Evil Dead movie is a bloody, gruesome delight, and now the tradition continues with Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise. A decade after a deadly-serious reboot turned the franchise on its head, this new installment finds a bond between sisters shredded by a disgusting waltz of Deadites, guts, and gore. Alyssa Sutherland brings her A-game as a twisted, cackling fiend: a physical performance for the ages. Minor spoilers ahead…
SXSW’s opening night finds its curtain-raiser in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Bucking the reputation of its much-maligned predecessor from 2000, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s take on the tabletop role-playing game finds a fleet balancing act between fantasy and comedy. A nimble adventure anchored by winsome performances and a surprising trove of practical effects, Honor Among Thieves eschews the gravity of cinematic universes and franchise-building with goofy, digestible fun. Minor spoilers ahead…
Nicolas Cage plays Nicolas Cage in Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Plumbing the shallower end of the “meta” pool for an irreverent, sweet-natured action comedy, the film explores the multitudes within the celebrated actor’s storied career. Cage delivers crowd-pleasing laughs — working best when sharing the screen with Pedro Pascal — that reminds audiences that he’s always been a movie star. Minor spoilers ahead…
Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s SXSW Film Festival. As usual, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but there are plenty of great films in this year’s slate that deserve attention. Here are the capsule reviews for SXSW: The Lost City, Deadstream, Jethica, and The Cellar. Minor spoilers ahead…
Combining familiar, 70s grindhouse terror with modern sensibilities, X is director Ti West’s best film since 2009’s House of the Devil. With bloody slasher mayhem unspooling on a porn set, West’s latest slice of brutality brings the nudity and gore, but underneath its vintage horror pastiche lies a sex-positive, beating heart that examines the cutting power of jealousy and the unforgiving cruelty of time. Mia Goth, Brittany Snow, and Jenna Ortega form a new Scream Queen triumvirate. Minor spoilers ahead…
Exploding intimate family drama into a multiverse-jumping, martial arts, sci-fi epic, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a blast of inventive genre fiction. Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively and affectionately known as just Daniels, follow up their feature debut of Swiss Army Man with lunatic glee, stretching the limits of visual and kinetic storytelling to its absolute breaking point. Steadied with the incredible - and very game - cast of Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and James Hong, Everything Everywhere All at Once is the most fun you’ll have at the movies this year. Minor spoilers ahead…
Welcome to my coverage of 2022’s SXSW Film Festival! This year, I’ll actually be in Austin, Texas in-person to cover the festival for four days. This year’s festival sees a variety of exciting offerings, with highlights including the new Daniels sci-fi mind-bender Everything Everywhere All at Once, Ti West’s new horror flick X, and Nicolas Cage playing Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, plus much more. Below, you’ll find my entire coverage, including a dispatch of capsule reviews. All reviews in viewing order…
My coverage of SXSW continues. Ambitious, exhaustive, and utterly entrancing, Kier-La Janisse’s three-hour-plus treatise on folk horror is an education in a bottle. A deep, dark rabbit hole that examines the power of storytelling and tales inherited, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched is more than a mere documentary, it’s an essential text.
My 2021 SXSW coverage begins here! Horror legend Barbara Crampton takes the spotlight in Travis Stevens’ sanguine vampire comedy, Jakob’s Wife. Embracing its B-movie trappings, the film tackles its themes of empowerment with the subtlety of a stake to the heart, but Crampton makes everything work with a hypnotic, career-best performance. Jakob’s Wife is camp horror brought to rousing life with blood spilled and guts strewn, and the fun everyone is having is infectious. Minor spoilers ahead…
Welcome to my coverage of 2021’s Sundance Film Festival! Far away from the hustle and bustle of its usual Park City home, this year’s festival - like many before it - has been transformed into a virtual experience due to COVID-19, but that doesn’t diminish the caliber of its offerings. This year’s festival sees a variety of special film events, such as a robust short film program, a wide selection of genre showings, and gala presentations. This year marks my first year as accredited press at Sundance, and I’m so excited to be able to review a selection from the festival. You can find my entire coverage here.
Last month, I was lucky enough to catch I Will Make You Mine, Lynn Chen’s directorial debut that was supposed to premiere at SXSW in March, a film festival that has since been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. A rhythmic and bittersweet end-cap to a low-key film trilogy, I Will Make You Mine is a confident debut that not only adds texture to the saga of the Surrogate Valentine films before it, but also stands alone as an indie gem, applying a refreshing lens to existing characters. Minor spoilers ahead…
Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s SXSW. Like always, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but this year is filled with big headliners and gnarly midnighters: the latest Alex Garland, an indie horror director’s frightening sophomore feature, a new Doug Liman remake of a beloved cult classic, and Hunter Schafer’s debut in a leading role. Here are the capsule reviews for Civil War, Oddity, Road House, and Cuckoo.