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Movie Reviews

TIFF 2026: Wild Wild East, Our Loves, The Violinist

Historical fiction has been a subgenre of filmmaking for generations, but it’s fascinating to consider how these journeys to the past are shaped by the present in which they are made. The war in Gaza and the rise of both Fascism and Anti-Semitism around the world have led to what feels like more stories set

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Movie Reviews

TIFF 2026: Woman Unknown, Lemonade, The Julia Set

This year’s Centerpiece and Special Presentations section of the Toronto International Film Festival featured a striking postwar drama from Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy, a tender narrative debut from documentarian Kim Bartley, and the follow-up film from last year’s breakout star Chase Infiniti.  Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner “Woman Unknown,” the latest from writer-director May

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Movie Reviews

Telluride 2026: Alpha Gang, The Liberation, The Idiots

I have left the mountainous confines of Telluride and am currently winding down mountainous roads to Grand Junction. But I am also unspooling much of what I saw at a festival that included far more laughs than I anticipated. Some of those zingers are in two of these films, though one is decidedly not (you’ll

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Movie Reviews

Enslaved Spirits: Maya Annik Bedward on “Black Zombie”

Maya Annik Bedward’s incisive documentary “Black Zombie” isn’t merely a look back at the cinematic origins of the supernatural re-animated monster. It’s a powerful parsing of how the historical distortion of Vodou and the Black diasporic people of Haiti was engineered by exploitative white colonialists, showmen, and hacks to create a being whose obvious racist

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Movie Reviews

It’s Time to Grow Up: Joe Swanberg and Cory Michael Smith on “The Sun Never Sets”

Taking full advantage of its sun-kissed ambiance and featuring wonderfully lived-in performances from its central cast, director Joe Swanberg’s “The Sun Never Sets” is an understated, whimsical look at the ways adults fail to love one another, while also being a testament to how it’s never too late to start over, even if you think

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Movie Reviews

FX’s Exhilarating “The Drop: A Snowfall Saga” Is a Spin-off For the Ages

Three years after FX’s “Snowfall” ended, the show’s first spin-off is finally here. Originally announced in 2023, “The Drop: A Snowfall Story” follows fan-favorite Wanda Bell (Gail Bean) as she embarks on a career in the music industry after finally getting clean from drugs. She, along with her cousins Lamar (Asante Blackk) and James (Peyton

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Movie Reviews

Short Films in Focus: Bouncy Brothers (with Nicholas J. Santore)

As you’ve traveled this summer, either at carnivals, block parties, state fairs, or street fairs, you have probably seen a bouncy house. Someone was in charge of getting that bouncy house to that location, inflating it, testing it out, and waiting for the rental to be finished so they could deflate it, roll it back

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Movie Reviews

“Onimusha: Way of the Sword” is a Drawn-Out Samurai Epic

Capcom has had an incredible 2026 so far, with the releases of the fantastic “Resident Evil Requiem,” “Pragmata,” and “Monster Hunter Stories 3.” Rounding out the year is “Onimusha: Way of the Sword.” It’s the latest mainline entry in the series after a staggering 20-year hiatus, the last one being 2006’s “Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams”

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Movie Reviews

Live Wire: Michael Wright, 1956-2026

As a journalist, I only had a few interactions with the late Michael Wright, mainly at industry functions and movie premieres. The one I think about most had nothing to do with his filmography, which included “The Principal,” “The Five Heartbeats,” “Sugar Hill,” and HBO’s long-running prison drama Oz. It happened at a party for

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Movie Reviews

Shabana Amzi on Her Career, Vulnerability, and “Batwara 1947”

Ask any working actor today in the Hindi film industry, and chances are they’ll cite Shabana Azmi as an inspiration. Over a career of 160-plus films that began in 1974, not to mention a record five National Film Awards (India’s equivalent of the Oscars; the most won by any Indian actress), Azmi has demonstrated an

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