Fantastic Fest 2025 kicks off today in Austin, Texas, with another year of potentially great offerings. The festival is jam-packed with several great titles and early premieres. For example, the highly anticipated sequel to Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone is expected to captivate the Austin community during the first weekend. The festival will also feature Chris Stuckmann’s long-awaited movie debut, Shelby
Read MoreSpike Lee is one of the best filmmakers that we have, still making films, has returned with Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington. Whether it’s the sun-soaked frames of Do The Right Thing or, more recently, BlacKkKlansman, Lee remains one of our most unique voices, having a strong presence within the culture of our past or present, and perhaps the most powerful
Read MoreEddington wears the skin of a Coen Brothers movie while utilizing the comedic mechanics of a South Park episode. The film plays everything serious while featuring solid performances from talents like Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix. It has the window dressing of rich Coen Brothers thrillers like Blood Simple and No Country for Old Men. Yet, the material is wildly satirical in
Read MoreFriendship is about a man who takes the concept of friendship too far. In the artistic style of Tim Robinson, this is the perfect role for a performer of his talents. Robinson has made a career of crafting unbelievable skits around characters who increasingly defy the odds of inappropriate behavior, such as a man who denies driving his hot dog-shaped car
Read MoreThe Legend of Ochi will face challenges upon release. Like The Dark Crystal, the film incorporates puppetry to showcase the mystical creatures in the movie. However, similar to The Dark Crystal, it isn’t easy to visualize a commercial pathway for the film. It has all the elements of a How to Train Your Dragon movie but with the approach of an
Read MoreWarfare is not a traditional military film. For most of the movies in the genre, jingoism echoes at the forefront, almost as if they aim to serve as recruitment videos more than pieces of art. Xenophobia is usually a tool to create a villain for the American heroes of the film. For example, American Sniper manufactured a Muslim threat for Bradley
Read MoreDeath of a Unicorn is a comically unhinged concept. The foundation has all the flavors of an SNL Digital Short or a Robot Chicken segment. The movie finds an existence on one unique question: What if we made a Jurassic Park movie but used unicorns instead of dinosaurs? To increase the insanity, take a wholesome comedic star like Paul Rudd and
Read MoreThe new A24 film Opus spurs reflections about the recently deceased Gene Hackman. The late actor rarely found a genre he could not improve in some form. Hackman made it a point to flourish in movies like The Birdcage, where the role required him to tackle progressive topics with sincere comedic timing. Similarly, he could navigate a darker role, much like
Read MoreAfter many years of bathing in the most egregious clichés and emotional trappings, the romantic drama desperately needs reinvention. Look no further than director John Crowley, who made a potential solution to a decaying genre with We Live in Time, a clichéd romantic story told in a scattershot, non-linear narrative. Its structure is highly communicative, too, juxtaposing moments of high-spirited joy
Read MoreIn March 2022, director Ti West and star Mia Goth unveiled their new slasher film, X, with a little twist after the credits: they had already filmed a prequel entitled Pearl. Releasing in September of the same year, Pearl arguably was even more of a cultural success than the first film. The memes of Goth screaming “I’m a starrrr!” speak for the impact in the horror community. After the
Read MoreA24’s I Saw The TV Glow features two characters connecting over a childhood program. It’s a movie dissecting how pop culture can unearth something deep inside us. At the same time, how something so mundane, like a song or a kid’s program, can help form connections. However, in the case of I Saw The TV Glow, the hopeful ideas are visualized through the
Read MoreWhen Alex Garland’s Civil War premiered at SXSW, the early reactions were quick to call it a “masterpiece” and an “important warning” or “cautionary tale” about the future of American politics and the state of journalism, as democracy is (quite literally) on the ballot in November. Some even (dared) compare its importance to the likes of Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of
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