Josh Kim’s How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) is a moving tale of loss and growing up, set in Thailand it centers on eleven-year-old Oat (Ingkarat Damrongsakkul) and his relationship with his openly-gay brother Ek (Thira Chutikul), whose boyfriend J …Read more
It goes without saying, as with all of Studio Ghibli’s films, that their production of When Marnie Was There is lushly beautiful. It was also the last film to be put out by Studio Ghibli before the studio went on a hiatus prompted by the retirement o …Read more
Ale Abreu’s Boy and the World is a feast for the eyes, ears and heart. The animated film tells the story of a young boy, Cuca, who lives in a small house in the country with his mother and father. When his father suddenly gets on a train and leaves t …Read more
The Ripstein family name is synonymous with cinema. Arturo Ripstein isn’t only of the most prominent Latin American auteurs, his father Alfredo, was a legendary producer behind some of the most glorious films in Mexican cinema, and his son Gabriel’s …Read more
Band of Robbers imagines what Huckleberry Finn (Kyle Gallner) and Tom Sawyer (Adam Nee) would be up to in their mid-20s, if they hadn’t given up the treasure hunt they started as children. Directed and written by Nee, and his brother Aaron, the film …Read more
An idyllic vacation goes to hell, quite literally, in the Paz Brothers’ JeruZalem, a fantastical horror movie that combines travelogue aesthetics with millenary demons. The film follows Sarah (Danielle Jadelyn) and Rachel (Yael Grobglas), two America …Read more
Monster Hunt takes place in a mythical past, where the Human race exists alongside a Monster race. While they once shared the earth in peace, the Humans drove the Monsters out of their lands. It isn’t until a civil war in the Monster world forces the …Read more
The Upper West Side is the perfect spot for the strivings of Eros and Thanatos to be poetically unraveled. On Wall Street, such strivings would be torn asunder; in the suburbs they’d be glossed over, and everywhere else, there’d be jokes. Direct and …Read more
If you crossed Patch Adams with King Lear and sprinkled a light coating of Travis Bickle, the result might be Franny, Richard Gere’s benefactor of the title. Franny has a mysterious relationship to a family, which borders on sociopathic. He seems to …Read more
Henry Gamble (Cole Doman) has just turned 17, and on the day of his birthday party, as guests arrive for a poolside celebration, he will discover more about the world than he expected. In Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, writer/director Stephen Cone ch …Read more
