VOD Catch-Up: Avalon Fast's "CAMP" is a Spooky, Entrancing Campfire Tale

by Joanna Sodeman-Taylor

If you’re anything like me, you walk away from the Oscars each year under an absolute fugue state against all new films. If it was made in the last decade, then no thank you! When it comes to 2026 features, I’ll be spending the summer doing what I do best: catching up on new releases I missed in theaters as soon as they hit VOD. So let’s start with a relatively deep cut, recommended by my good friend and one-time TFE contributor Patrick Gratton and available for rental in the US as of this past weekend.

CAMP is the second narrative feature from Avalon Fast, a Canadian writer/director/producer/editor/actress with a prolific repertoire of short films and a well-received debut in the form of 2022’s Honeycomb. Fast’s acting credits include roles in Alice Mao Mackay’s The Serpent’s Skin, Louise Weard’s Castration Movie Pt. i, and Jane Schoenbrun’s upcoming Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and her ambitions fit comfortably within this cadre of palpably queer, genre-bending directors. I’m automatically fascinated by any artist who describes their oeuvre as GIRL HORROR like Fast does, and CAMP’s uncanny, blossoming synthesis of aching grief and encroaching danger fits that description as easily as it defies it...

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Gotham Awards Revue: "Urchin"

by Nick Taylor

As with Familiar Touch, I am very solidly impressed by the filmmaking debut on display in Urchin, but first I need to know how the leading turn at the center of this wasn’t nominated. Frank Dillane is magnetic as Mike, the unhoused addict trying to reintegrate into London society after his latest stint in prison. He gives a very extroverted, mannered performance of a strung-out young man rooted in an empathetic understanding of Mike’s decision-making and needs. He never showboats at the cost of the other cast members, instead showing himself to be a receptive, active scene partner. Dillane finds a man who isn’t particularly malicious even when he uses others. At no point does this character stand in for any social issue or personality type, even as the film posits his story as a parable of how an individual’s recovery and downfall are informed by the support they receive. Nothing affects Mike’s ability to take care of himself more than the government housing he receives and later loses...

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Gotham Awards Revue: "My Father's Shadow"

by Nick Taylor

The Gotham Awards ceremony is tomorrow night, and to celebrate I'll be devoting the next 24 hours and change to the nominees of the Breakthrough Director category. I've already gone long on Familiar Touch, the only nominee represented here and in the Best Feature lineup. Double dipping has historically led to winning the Breakthrough Director category, so we might give Sarah Friedland some pre-emptive congrats if we felt inclined to run stats. I'll reveal my own favorite after I've posted my final review, but suffice it to say that all five films would be worthy winners. So to start, let's dive into Akinola Davies Jr. and My Father's Shadow...

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Gotham Awards Revue: "The Perfect Neighbor"

by Nick Taylor

Geeta Gandhbir’s The Perfect Neighbor has to be one of the most widely accessible films nominated at this year’s Gotham Awards, premiering only a few weeks ago on Netflix. With a title so banal as to signal immediate dread, the true-crime subject matter made it priority viewing to some even before it received this citation. My own queasiness with the genre kept me from watching it until now, and it's an intriguing object to consider in how it relates to other activist documents. Assembled almost exclusively of footage collected from police bodycams, security cameras, drone footage, news archives, and court tapings, the film chronicles the boiling tensions in an Ocala, Florida neighborhood over two years that culminated in the killing of Ajike Owens by Susan Lorincz on June 2, 2023. It’s an upsetting document of an all-too-familiar American tragedy, streamlined into a more broadly resonant object but possibly verging on exploitative and under-contextualized in the process . . . . 

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2025 Gotham Award Nominees

by Nick Taylor

With yesterday's announcement from the Gotham Awards, our very first nominees of the 2025 awards season have arrived. Setting aside my inherent disdain for the big-budget American films now allowed to compete alongside genuine independent cinema across the world, this looks like a pretty neat set of films! Let's dive into the nominees, and as always, share somoe verbose opinions despite not seeing all these features . . . .

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