AFI Fest: “Nanny” and “Piaffe”

by Christopher James

Anna Diop gives a powerful performance in the horror drama "Nanny," coming soon to Prime Video.

The AFI Film Festival kicked off in earnest Wednesday with the premiere of Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me. The documentary of the pop sensation was directed by Alex Keshishian (“Madonna: Truth or Dare''). My first day at the festival was a double feature of female-directed genre pictures. Nanny, directed by Nikyata Jusu, and Piaffe, directed by Ann Oren. Both played with horror conventions in interesting ways to tell two very different stories. One deals with a complicated, bifractured tale of motherhood and sacrifice. The other dramatizes pleasure in odd, yet titilating ways. While both tell different stories and have different tones, one film was more successful than the other in marrying tone and storytelling into a satisfying package.

So which one was more successful? Find out after the jump...

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Sundance: More ‘I Love Lucy’ with ‘Lucy and Desi’

By Abe Friedtanzer

 Have you noticed that, when there’s a major scripted film about a real person from history, there’s often a documentary to go along with it at the same time? One of the very first articles I wrote for this site was about RBG and On the Basis of Sex, where the former was clearly the superior product. Recently, Being the Ricardos opened in theaters and then quickly to Amazon Prime. The movie looks at a (fictionalized) tempestuous week for the TV power couple. The documentary on the same couple, from director Amy Poehler, zooms out to look at their entire story, offering a good amount of added context.

This film’s title gives away its focus, which is that the lives of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were so intertwined, even after they were no longer married, that it’s impossible to truly separate them...

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Sundance: 'Master' is a fine horror debut

by Matt St Clair

Mariama Diallo’s feature debut Master is a horror film about the anxieties of being a Black woman in a predominantly white space. Diallo stresses such perturbations by blending paranormal elements with real-world institutional prejudice and the all-too-petrifying feeling of being an outsider. Although certain story elements outweigh others, Master thrives on its slow-burn execution and sheer demonstration of danger lingering around every corner...

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Review: "The Tender Bar" Is Sweet, But Slight

Ben Affleck becomes a surrogate Uncle in George Clooney's latest directorial film, "The Tender Bar."

By: Christopher James

Can two movie stars squander each other’s talent? George Clooney directs Ben Affleck in Amazon Prime’s latest movie, The Tender Bar, a navel-gazing tale that takes every cheap shot possible to drum up emotion. Lucky for it, cheap shots can still be effective. Parents around the world will be charmed by the ‘70s set, decades spanning family drama. After all, Ben Affleck and director George Clooney are front and center in the movie’s marketing. Though effective in fits and starts, the wistful sentimentality curdles with time. 

Once they run out of money, single mother Dorothy Moehringer (Lily Rabe) returns to her Long Island home with her tail between her legs and her son, J.R. (Daniel Ranieri), in tow...

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Is 2021 the year of Adam Driver?

by Cláudio Alves

Leos Carax's Annette hits streaming today. You can watch this year's Cannes Best Director prize-winning feature on Amazon Prime Video and bask in all its insanity. The picture has proven pretty divisive, which is no surprise. Many of the director's anti-naturalistic choices and the Sparks' off-kilter music have been at the center of praise and pans. But, along with them, the most contested element of Annette seems to be its leading man, Adam Driver, whose performance goes to extremes of operatic grandeur intersected by American realism, aggressive anti-comedy, a guttural plunge into the depths of self-hatred. It's a big performance, maybe the biggest in the actor's career, so vast in risks and pitfalls, one can't help but admire the ambition. Annette also represents the first of three major projects the actor has coming out in 2021, marking this year as one of the potential high points in Driver's ever-growing career…

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