Sophy Romvari’s “Blue Heron” has been one of the breakout critical darlings of the fest circuit, premiering at Locarno to raves before traveling to TIFF for more of the same. At first, her debut feature feels a bit familiar, a memory piece about a troubled brother that the one remembering couldn’t save, but Romvari pivots

The title for “Fuze” fills the screen, accompanied by loud house music, and the smeary credits that follow are over in a blink. From its first frame, this thing moves—so much so, moving so fast through its set-up, that initially it’s a little tricky to tell exactly what the hell is happening, or who these

Following the success of “Squid Game,” the storytelling flair found in Korean dramas has reached new heights in popularity. As with every style of television from every country, there have been pops and fizzles; still, there’s something about the imaginative plots and constant cliffhangers that pulls American viewers back to our screens for more K-drama.

Interesting leading men and women dominate this unusual dispatch, one that gathers films that have almost nothing in common on paper, itself a testament to the variety of styles one can find at a festival as broad-reaching as TIFF. The best of the three is the intense, unforgiving “Wasteman,” another evidence exhibit in the case

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, though that seems unlikely: two guys walk into a twin bereavement support group and uncover an unexpected rapport. Before long, they’ve formed a friendship that—somewhere between mutual healing and toxic codependency—leaves them considering, and quietly hoping, that they’ve somehow stumbled back across their other halves.  To say

Venice had a remarkable non-fiction portion of its 2025 program, including new films by Werner Herzog and Laura Poitras (both covered here). The programmers for Venice don’t fall for generic documentaries shaped by anecdotes told by talking heads, leaning instead on the projects that say as much about their creators as their subjects. Ross McElwee,

One of my earliest memories of watching something on-screen was seeing reruns of the Canadian children’s television series “The Adventures of Dudley the Dragon” on television throughout the day. In it, Graham Greene plays Mr. Crabby Tree, a wisecracking tree who, while frequently in a bad mood, eventually comes around to the incessant questions of

Once again it is my pleasure and my privilege to be reporting to you from Venice, where the Cinema Biennale, known to the American trades as the Venice Film Festival, is unspooling, sort of, but not literally, given that more of the fare is projected from DCPs. Among other things the death of celluloid has

The territorial battles between companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have blurred over the last few years, with PlayStation exclusives becoming increasingly available on PCs, and Microsoft continuing to “play nice” by leaking some of their hits into the world of Sony gamers. The latest such release is arguably the biggest to date, offering Sony

Four films about near-death experiences (NDE), shared death experiences (SDE), and related phenomena will be screened at the International Association for Near-Death Studies (“IANDS”) annual conference, August 27-31  at the Hilton in Oak Brook Hills, Illinois, said Janet Riley, the Executive Director of IANDS. The Annual Conference includes four days of education and workshops, and will bring together more