REVIEW: Call Jane [2022]

Everyone hangs up the first time. We can assume Joy (Elizabeth Banks) and Will (Chris Messina) didn’t plan on having another baby. Fifteen years between child number one (Grace Edwards‘ Charlotte) and two doesn’t scream intent. That fact doesn’t, however, mean that they didn’t want the new baby. They were happy about the pregnancy. They were looking forward to doing it all over again. Unfortunately, Joy’s body couldn’t comply. She started growing faint around ten weeks and ultimately passed out in the kitchen before finally seeing her doctor. He told…

Read More

REVIEW: Holy Spider [2022]

Keep your eyes open. Saeed Hanaei’s (Mehdi Bajestani) compulsion has grown to uncontrollable levels. So, it’s only a matter of time before he’s caught—if Mashhad’s police want to catch him. That’s the question Tehran journalist Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) asks upon arriving at the holy city. Nine women (all prostitutes) had already been strangled to death and dumped in and around the same area with no leads or suspects to be found. Either the department is inept, the so-called “Spider Killer” is a genius, or the crimes aren’t something the public…

Read More

REVIEW: Wendell & Wild [2022]

Let the revisionism begin. Sometimes tragedy begets opportunity. Case and point: Henry Selick‘s The Shadow King being unceremoniously scrapped by Pixar. It was supposed to be his follow-up to Coraline and the buzz was strong before things went south. So, while Selick took a step back creatively in the aftermath, he found “Key and Peele” debuting on Comedy Central. The director would ultimately finish its five-season run and declare Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele the “boldest, bravest, and funniest” comedy duo of his lifetime, vowing to reach out and broach…

Read More

REVIEW: The Woman King [2022]

Relentlessly, we will fight. Nine times out of ten when a white actor visits Africa, learns a “cool” historical detail, and returns to Hollywood pitching it as the “next big thing” logline, disaster strikes if a finished product even gets produced. Maria Bello is therefore the lone exception considering she did exactly that here. A 2015 trip to Benin—former site of the Dahomey kingdom—brought with it an education on the West African region’s famed all-women warrior regiment known as the Agojie. It went around town, got passed over or lowballed…

Read More

REVIEW: All That Breathes [2022]

Have you ever felt vertigo looking at the sky? The origin story for why Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud have opened a wildlife rescue hospital inside their garage is a simple one: the injured black kite they brought to Delhi’s regular animal hospital was rejected from care because it was a non-vegetarian bird. These brothers couldn’t fathom that as a reason. Not when they were raised by a mother who believed no living creature should ever be held as superior or inferior to any other. So, they brought it home…

Read More

REVIEW: Okul Tirasi [Brother’s Keeper] [2022]

If you sleep, so will the black trees. In a display of authoritarian punishment, the principal (Mahir Ipek) of the Turkish boarding school where Ferit Karahan‘s Okul Tirasi [Brother’s Keeper] is set seeks to remind the eleven-year-olds under his care that they should feel lucky to be there. They get a stellar education (while having the Kurdish beat out of those who come from the Kurdistan region). They get three square meals a day (consisting of a pitiful ladleful of three creamy liquids and half a bread loaf to dip).…

Read More

REVIEW: The Fire That Took Her [2022]

Tell me there’s hope. There are many reasons why director Patricia E. Gillespie wanted to tell Judy Malinowski’s story, but the most crucial was her desire to ensure she wasn’t forgotten. That’s a risk in domestic violence cases regardless of severity since statistics state 1 in 3 American women experience intimate partner violence during their lifetime. It’s so common that no one will be surprised to discover Judy’s murderer not only had multiple priors for that specific charge (amongst others), but that she had called and told police she feared…

Read More

BIFF22 REVIEW: Lovely Jackson [2023]

Welcome to my memory. More than just a documentary detailing the circumstances surrounding Rickey Jackson‘s tragic conviction for a murder he did not commit in 1975, Matt Waldreck‘s Lovely Jackson is a memoir that gives its subject the ability to exorcize his demons through a first-hand reckoning with the experience itself in his own words. The result creates an emotional juxtaposition that goes beyond simply narrating reenactments—it enlists Rickey to both play himself and stand watch as Mario Beverly plays the memory of the eighteen-year-old man he was upon entering…

Read More

REVIEW: Old Man [2022]

There’s all kinds of death and beauty out here. Some wounds don’t heal. Not with time. Not with a mythical lake of water with the power to mend all ailments. And while we can try to forget, the mind will always keep a little bit of the truth in reach to ensure the cause of the pain is never far away. It therefore makes sense that we would ultimately meet and leave Stephen Lang‘s character at the center of Old Man asleep on his bed with thumb in mouth like…

Read More

REVIEW: The Banshees of Inisherin [2022]

To are graves. Just like every other day at two o’clock for the past how many years, Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) strolls across Inisherin, a small island off Ireland’s western shore, to collect his best friend Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) for a pint at Jonjo Devine’s (Pat Shortt) bar. Unlike those days (up to and including yesterday), however, his knock at the window goes unanswered. Colm is neither in distress nor absent. He’s merely sitting inside his house smoking. Pádraic is at a loss. Why won’t he acknowledge his presence?…

Read More

REVIEW: Empire of Light [2022]

I’m not some problem to be solved. The lithium has left Hilary (Olivia Colman) numb. That’s what she tells her doctor before he replies that the feeling will go away once she gets used to the medication. It isn’t necessarily affecting her job performance as duty manager of the Empire Cinema, though. If anything, “numb” might help considering what occurred to spark the prescription in the first place. But I’m getting ahead of myself since that information isn’t revealed until later. For now, writer/director Sam Mendes simply needs Hilary to…

Read More