Review: "The Vourdalak" is a Gothic throwback with its own soul

by Nick Taylor

We love 19th century gothic horror, don’t we folks? One of the most durable subgenres of all time. Influential to our current understanding of what horror is and how to depict it in ways so finely woven into the genre we couldn’t possibly begin to disentangle it from contemporary media.

Director Adrien Beau, making his feature film debut with The Vourdalak following a handful of spooky shorts, has created a vampire film equally indebted to the rhythms and moods of the gothic novella and the style of a Hammer horror flick. There’s no self-aware pastiche, no riffing on the genre, just an immersive attempt to bring some very particular sensibilities back from the dead. After premiering at the 80th Venice Film Festival last year, The Vourdalak is getting a theatrical release this summer. It works beautifully, mordant and sensually detailed, and it’s exactly the kind of gem folks should remember from this part of the year when we’re overwhelmed by December releases...

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Review: A cat faces the apocalypse in "Flow"

by Cláudio Alves

Is there a more cinematic animal than the cat? By all accounts, one of the first – if not the first – use of a closeup in film history featured a cat. Yes, dear reader, cat videos harken back to the 1900s, when George Albert Smith's The Sick Kitten proved a delightful diversion. More than a century later, the big screen has seen many felines, from MGM's Leo to Chris Marker's cat-forward experiments, going through a panoply of animated pusses in between. Yet, the seventh art continues its love affair with the cat, finding new ways to celebrate and elevate these natural-born movie stars. 

Just look at Flow, Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis's new film. It premiered on the Croisette before bowing at Annecy, where it won four prizes, including the Audience Award…

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Tribeca Review: Under a Microscope in “The Knife”

By Abe Friedtanzer 

It’s always intriguing to see what projects actors choose when they step behind the camera to direct for the first time. Nnamdi Asomugha has been working behind-the-scenes as an executive producer and producer since Beasts of No Nation, helping bring to life films he’s starring in like Crown Heights and Sylvie’s Love, the latter of which earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding TV Movie in 2021. For his debut venture as director, Asomugha has chosen a tense story of crime and policing in America, written by him in conjunction with Mark Duplass…

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Tribeca Review: Parallel Stories in “The Freshly Cut Grass”

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Most films tend to focus on one or several protagonists or feature a true ensemble where there’s no lead. It’s rare to find a film with two main characters who have absolutely nothing to do with each other, or at least don’t appear within the same narrative. Yet The Freshly Cut Grass does just that, following two intellectuals who are both not overly satisfied with their lives and begin to see the allure of something that feels distinctly fresh and unlike what they’ve felt in a long time…

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Tribeca Review: A Wandering Librarian in “Darkest Miriam”

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Librarians make for interesting protagonists because they spend most of their waking hours in a place where silence is meant to be upheld but surrounded by such vast troves of knowledge. Temperaments can vary, and some may prefer to remain quiet while others will eagerly engage visitors in warm conversation or ply them with recommendations about what to read next. Darkest Miriam presents a character who tends towards the former, chattering nonstop in her head but sharing very little of that with the world…

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