Two of the more interesting synopses in this year’s SXSW Film & TV Festival program revealed themselves at the Zach Theater in Austin on back-to-back days to start the festival. While the overall profile of SXSW has dimmed a bit in the last couple years as streaming service originals have dominated too much of the

While Austin’s favorite festival is a big event for genre filmmaking, they also welcome more traditional storytelling, the kind more focused on character dynamics than hauntings or serial killers. There’s a long history of dramedy screenwriters bringing their latest projects to this festival, and one of the most interesting things about this year’s program was

Over the last few years, the adult sibling dynamic has been explored to great effect in a number of sharply funny and/or dramatically impactful series. Think Carmy and “Sugar” Berzatto in “The Bear.” The Garvey quintet in “Bad Sisters.” Coop and Ali in “Your Friends & Neighbors.” The Friedkin brothers in “Black Rabbit.” Richard and

Sam Shainberg’s “Endless Sea” opens on a dreary metropolitan street where it looks like freezing rain has been pouring all morning. Carol (Brenda Cullerton) has a collection of recyclables she deposits for a little extra pocket change. She then enters a pharmacy to pick up her prescription for heart meds and gets dreadful news that

I met Tom Noonan in 2008, on the 2 train in Brooklyn, heading back into Manhattan after speaking to a film history class at Brooklyn College. There were maybe 40 people on the train, standing and sitting. I was seated on a bench near the middle of the car. Perched on a bench at the

“Rooster” could be considered the third entry in what I’ll refer to as Bill Lawrence’s “Likable White Guy Failing Upward” Trilogy, assuming, of course, that he stops at three. The first was “Ted Lasso,” which was co-created by Lawrence, Joe Kelly, Brendan Hunt and Jason Sudeikis and famously focused on an American football coach hired

Are you a murder mystery aficionado looking for a new show? Ever wanted to get into murder mystery TV shows, but don’t know where to start?  I’m here to solve that mystery for you. Along with my family, I have watched so, so many murder mysteries, of a variety of sub-genres, delving deep into British

Ever since Niall MacGinnis ordered his devil worshippers—among them malevolent ghouls and spirits—to do his bidding in 1957’s “Night of the Demon,” cinema has had its fair share of egotistical male cult leaders. From Sidney Blackmer in the satanic double act of “Rosemary’s Baby” and Orson Welles’ bespectacled coven leader in “Necromancy” to a literally

Entertaining audiences is in Joan Cusack’s DNA. A crackling, high-voltage live wire who commits to scenes with an intensely funny mischievous ferocity, Cusack appeared in a few bit screen parts in the early ’80s, including “Sixteen Candles,” before she earned a place as a cast member of “Saturday Night Live,” where she stayed for a

Last night, as I am wont to do, I went to the Music Box Theatre. There, a programme in its seventh iteration titled Life Within the Lens took place. It was staged by the Chicago-based programmer and curator Tyler Balentine, who previously presented his Melanin, Roots, and Culture series in 2024 and 2025, which featured