AFI: Riz Ahmed in "Sound of Metal"

by Eurocheese

When putting together my list of films to catch at the festival, I threw this film in because I’d heard that it had an incredible sound design. Nobody told me that Riz Ahmed gives one of the best leading male performances that we’ve seen in years. Nobody told me that this passion project would have me emotionally on edge from start to finish, or that I’d leave feeling that it was unlike any film I’d seen before. The fact that the sound design buzz on the sound design proved true was the delicious cherry on top.

Ahmed plays Ruben, a drummer in a rock band, and the movie kicks off immersing us in one of his performances...

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NewFest: Irish comedy "Dating Amber"

Coverage from NewFest the 32nd Annual LGBTQ Film Festival

By Abe Friedtanzer

I imagine that I’ll be thinking about Normal People for a while every time I watch an Irish romance (or maybe just any Irish production!). If I can’t see Connell and Marianne on screen again, the next-best thing is probably Dating Amber, a wonderfully entertaining comedy showing at NewFest. One of its stars is Fionn O’Shea, who portrayed the despicable and manipulative Jamie in Normal People. He's one of the romantic leads this time...

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NewFest: "Cowboys"

Coverage from NewFest the 32nd Annual LGBTQ Film Festival

 

by Abe Friedtanzer

Films about young transgender children tend to focus on the responses of parents to the reality of what their children express to them. Teenagers can talk back and run away from home, but if they’re younger, it’s unlikely that they will be able to fully separate themselves from a situation, good or bad. A Kid Like Jake was one recent effort starring Claire Danes and Jim Parsons about parents who were mostly on the same page about accepting their four-year-old. Cowboys, which is screening as part of NewFest, finds its adults at odds when it comes to supporting their child, Joe…

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Review: "Possessor" is a true provocation

by Tony Ruggio

A worm-infested apple doesn’t fall far from a rotting tree. In only his second feature film, baby Brandon Cronenberg proves he’s everything his father David was in his heyday: stylish, provocative, and interested in more than the gore and sleazy depravity that often grab headlines, although he’s clearly interested in those as well. Set in an alternate techno-horror 2008 of corporate espionage, where agents like Tasya (Andrea Riseborough) use brain-implant technology to “possess” other human beings for carrying out assassinations, Possessor is possibly the most graphic film made since Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist. Here it’s not so much what happens, but how it happens, how it’s framed on screen via some truly horrific and terrific practical effects.

When we meet Tasya, she’s at the top of her game yet beginning to slip. As Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character puts it, “the older you get, the harder it gets”...

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"Enola Holmes"

by our new Italian contributor Elisa Giudici

It's been a while since a Netflix film prompted me to write in my cinephile What's App group chat: "ok everybody, I have a fun movie to suggest." After the boring disappointments of The Devil All the Time and Project Power, after the unspeakable horrors I witnessed in The Last Days of American Crime, I confess I log in my Netflix account holding my breath. Enola Holmes brought a sigh of relief. Nothing life-changing, mind you, just a fun, entertaining movie that reimagines the canon of Sherlock Holmes, the classic of classics. Conan Doyle's detective is one of the few fictional characters who keeps getting adapted in fresh ways without ever wearing out his welcome. 

Giving Mycroft and Sherlock a little sister is not entirely new...

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