John Maclean’s SLOW WEST is foremost a showcase film. His […]

Like a psychopomp, the conductor welcomes passengers onto Amtrak’s Empire Builder, the last great American railway route. Stretching across desolate prairies, mountains, and snowy wastes, the train carries nearly half a million passengers annually from Chicago in the east to Seattle and Portland in the northwest. There is much silence and time for contemplation during the train’s trek across the great American Nothingness.

In gutters of suburbia Jabz (Bonko Cosmo Khoza) and September […]

How would you judge a piece of steak as being the best in the world? By its flavor, the texture, some meat-to-fat ratio? The casually informed gourmand might point to Japan’s kobe beef, that practically defied brand of meat from Hyōgo Prefecture renowned just as much for its marbling as for the cattle breeders’ unusual methods of raising them: giving them beer; regular massages; playing Mozart day and night to relax the cows. But no, kobe beef was never

Pakistani cleric Maulana Aziz has perfected the art of creating […]

Screen Comment critic Nate Hood recently attended the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and reviewed the film "Orion: the Man who would be King" (his article is available online). He met with director Jeanie Finlay afterwards. I had the opportunity to check out Orion: The Man Who Would Be King" a couple of days ago and I was blown away by it. So how did you first hear about “Orion?” Jeanie Finlay: So, twelve years ago I was—I live in Nottingham

"If Elvis could make it sounding like Elvis, why can’t I?” This line best sums up the inexplicable futility and cosmic tragedy of the life of Jimmy Ellis, a singer from Orrville, Alabama who skyrocketed to fame in the late seventies and early eighties thanks to his uncanny vocal resemblance to the recently deceased Elvis Presley. Desperate to cash in on the explosion of popularity surrounding the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll after his

My name is Nathanael Hood and I’m autistic. And in my twenty-six years on this earth I have never seen a film that treated autism with the same level of respect and dignity as Matt Fuller’s AUTISM IN LOVE. It examines four subjects: Lenny, a twenty-something living with his parents who agonizes over his inability to get a girlfriend; Dave and Lindsey, two Autistics who have managed to overcome their disabilities to sustain an eight-year relationship; Stephen, a middle-aged

Adrián García Bogliano’s SCHERZO DIABOLICO can best be described as a near-perfect engine of human cruelty. Any other attempt to qualify it within the terms of established genre traditions are futile. Is it an abduction procedural? A psychological character study of a criminal à la John McNaughton’s HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986)? A female revenge thriller? SCHERZO DIABOLICO is all three and

On August 24, 1992 the German city of Rostock was slammed by a wave of xenophobic riots which culminated in the burning of a residential building housing over 120 Vietnamese immigrants. Known as “The Night of Fire,” it was a defining moment in post-reunification German history. 23 years later, Burhan Qurbani reconstructs the events of that terrible night with his film We Are Young. We Are Strong. As an American who had never heard of this event before, I