In his directorial debut, Dev Patel stars as Kid, a man making a living losing fights in an underground fight club under the alias ‘Monkey Man’. Kid suffers trauma from his childhood, having watched his mother die at the hands of a police chief, Rana Singh. Now an adult, he plots his revenge on the…
Directed by Jang Jae-hyun, Exhuma follows shamans, Hwa-rim (played by Kim Go-eun) and Bong-gil (played by Lim Dong-hyun), who have been called to the Parks, a Korean American family in LA experiencing unrest among their firstborns. Through their investigation, Hwa-rim and Bong-gil discover that this family is being haunted by one of their ancestors and decide that they must move…
This mockumentary follows former child actor, Cody Lightning who, 25 years after his big screen debut in Smoke Signals, tries for a comeback with his self-written, self-produced sequel, Smoke Signals 2. His journey to getting the film made is a weird and wacky one that culminates in his realization of how important his support system is. It…
In 1980s New Mexico, gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) meets and falls for body builder Jackie (Katy O’Brian). When their new relationship is integrated with Lou’s family, especially brother-in-law, JJ (Dave France) and father, Lou Sr (Ed Harris), they find themselves driven to violence to save each other. Raunchy, gory, and funny, Love Lies Bleeding is the…
In Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, director Anna Hints dives deep into our need for connection. A group of women in Estonia, within the protective walls of a smoke sauna, share their most vulnerable experiences and support each other in doing so. This experience, for me, was reminiscent of being at the hairdresser’s, listening to other women share…
Origin, written and directed by Ava DuVernay, is based on the book Caste: The Origin of our Discontents, and on the life of its author, Isabel Wilkerson. After the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012, Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Isabel Wilkerson, is prompted by a colleague to write a piece about his death. She is hesitant…
Beyoncé has been releasing music literally for as long as I’ve been alive. Some of my earliest music related memories involve pretending to be Destiny’s Child (3) and singing along to ‘Survivor’ with my 2 sisters. When B’Day dropped, we played it top to bottom at our nightly dance parties; in secondary school, we would test our…
The Boy and the Heron is written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. At the beginning of the film, Mahito loses his Mum in a drastic fire. A year after this, he and his father move from Tokyo to the countryside to live with his new stepmother, Natsuko, who is pregnant. Mahito isn’t…
Prequel to The Hunger Games series, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is written by Michael Lesslie and Michael Arndt, directed by Francis Lawrence, and is based on the novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. It follows Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) as a young man who does everything in his power to keep his…
Rustin, directed by George C. Wolfe, and written by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black, is a biographical film about civil rights activist, Bayard Rustin, and his role in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. At the beginning of the film, a conference that Bayard (played by Colman…
