Category Archives: International

The Royal Hotel review — Outback adventure turns to horror

October 6, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Kitty Green | Written by Green and Oscar Redding | 91 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | Crave A review of this film first appeared on FITI during TIFF in September. This exceptional new drama from Kitty Green, the director of The Assistant, reunites her with the breakout star of that one. Julia Garner. Garner's…Read More

Carbon Arc Cinema review: Passages

September 28, 2023 flawintheiris

I'm the new Artistic Director at Carbon Arc Cinema, part of a group of programmers who choose the films we screen. Directed by Ira Sachs | Written by Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias, and Arlette Langmann | 91 min | Carbon Arc Cinema This is the first feature to screen at Carbon Arc Cinema under the auspices…Read More

Pathaan review — Bonkers superspy thriller goes waaaay over the top

September 25, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Siddharth Anand | Written by Anand, Shridhar Raghavan, and Abbas Tyrewala | 146 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Amazon Prime I think it's fair to say the cross-cultural popularity of 2022 Oscar-winning Indian historical action and fantasy movie RRR has brought more attention to action cinema from Bollywood. Shah Rukh Khan is a big…Read More

The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan review — Pistols or blades at noon?

August 26, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Martin Bourboulon | Written by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, based on the story by Alexandre Dumas | 122 min | ▲▲▲△△ | For rent on VOD and Digital For French cinemas, this is a huge-budget adaptation of the beloved Dumas adventure story, and the first to be done in French…Read More

The Last Voyage of the Demeter review — Dracula sets sail on blood and water

August 14, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by André Øvredal | Written by Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz, based on a chapter of Bram Stoker's Dracula | 118 min | ▲▲▲△△ | VOD It's hard to argue against the notion we've seen this kind of thing before — this film's a solemn, genuine throwback to gothic creeps of Hammer Horror…Read More

Talk To Me review — Terrifying horror delivers lethal dose

August 2, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou | Written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman | 95 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | VOD The filmmakers, two brothers from Australia, have credited many of their actors with "based on a concept by," which speaks to the level of collaboration behind the camera. I'm not familiar with their…Read More

Subtraction review — The double lives of Farzaneh and Jalal

July 6, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Mani Haghighi | Written by Haghighi and Amir Reza Koohestani | 107 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | Carbon Arc Cinema My positive experiences of Iranian cinema are largely rooted in Asghar Farhadi and Jafar Panahi. Their stories of social realism reflect the challenges of people living in a regime of arcane laws and religious…Read More

The Eight Mountains review — A gorgeous, lyrical film about friendship

June 1, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch | Written by van Groeningen and Vandermeersch, adapting the novel by Paolo Cognetti | 147 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | Carbon Arc Cinema Two 11-year-old boys meet when one, who lives in Turin, spends summers in Grana, near Asti, Italy, in the Italian Alps. It's astonishingly beautiful there,…Read More

What’s Love Got To Do With It? review — Culture clash works better than the romance

May 20, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Shekhar Kapur | Written by Jemima Khan | 108 min | ▲▲▲△△ | On Demand Best known as the director of Bandit Queen, the movie that made Cate Blanchett a star, Elizabeth, and it's sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, a romantic comedy might seem an unlikely project for the Indian filmmaker, but it's actually…Read More

Polite Society review — Not polite about kicking ass!

May 6, 2023 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Nida Manzoor | 103 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | Amazon Prime When I saw the amazing Rye Lane on Disney+ last month, I would not have predicted another comedy coming out of a London suburban immigrant enclave would knock my socks off, but here we are. With this film what we have…Read More