Author: Derrick Murray

We may not be on the ground in Venice, but fall film Festival season is in full swing and we are working hard to bring you as much coverage from all festivals as we can! Of course, larger, premiere releases require in person attendance, so we’re here to shed light on some of the smaller, out of competition international features that round out the slate. Let’s take a look at some new films that had their World Premieres at Venice! “Familia” Based on the memoir “Non sarà sempre così” (translated in English to “It won’t Always Be Like This” by Luigi…

Sometimes all you need is Adèle Exarchopoulos as your film’s star and that’s enough to get me seated. One of the best international performers working today, Exarchopoulos’ latest feature “Planet B” is a bit of a mixed bag, delivering an abundance of sci-fi thriller elements you’ve seen before in a slick package that – despite its misgivings- never stops being entertaining. Sci-fi is one of those genres that is often easy to make but very difficult make well. It falls somewhere in the middle, the kind of experience that at first glance leaves you feeling excited and satisfied but the…

I’m one of the few people who actually managed to sit through 2016 “Dark Crimes” starring Jim Carrey. It very well may be one of the worse films ever made, so you can imagine my hesitation with a new film by Alexandros Avranas. Thankfully, Avranas has learned from his mistakes, and creates a heartbreaking but beautiful story with “Quiet Life.” Most immigrant or refugee stories follow the turmoil of escape or the world they’re fleeing from, immersing the audience in trauma with very little respite. It is rare that we tell stories of asylum seekers after the escape, and even…

“Blink Twice” trades out narrative conclusiveness for parabolic social commentary, but unfortunately doesn’t have anything new to say about any of the myriad of topics it wants to discuss.

“Strange Darling” takes all the familiarity of erotic crime thrillers into unfamiliar territory, giving you something you know in a package you haven’t seen. It is never restricted by anything which allows “Strange Darling” to do everything

“Romulus” thrives in its visuals, and while some of its homages are a bit on the nose, it manages to use them as an advantage to ratchet up the tension with each new horrifying scenario the characters find themselves in.

We’re fast approaching the Fall Festival season, which is often an overload of newly released and unreleased films as well as a plethora of late Oscar contenders. To pave the way for my return to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) later this year, I decided to take a break for my blindspot watches and catch up with a few newly released films. Major flops, surprise unnecessary prequels, and a drug fueled Irish rap music biopic are all part of my current movie binge. Most of these films are currently playing in theaters or available on VOD, so there won’t…

In a renaissance of good video game adaptions, it is always shocking when a current entry takes us back to the bad days. You know, the “Max Payne,” “Mortal Kombat 2” era that many of us who lived it would like to forget. Today, we have critically acclaimed adaptions like “The Last of Us” and “Fallout” have given us hope – hope that fans of games can be given proper, engaging renditions fit for the TV and silver screen. Alas, that optimism is diminished greatly with “Borderlands,” a soulless attempt at capturing the vibrant and chaotic first person shooting world…

Love him or hate him, M. Night Shyamalan always gives us something to talk about. He’s a filmmaker who often operates in extremes; when he hits, it’s an out of the ballpark home run. But when he misses, he whiffs hard, almost to the point of being irredeemable. And thus is the endless cycle of Shyamalan releases. We go in knowing it is either going blow us away or leave us swearing off his films indefinitely until the next one. “Trap” is a bit of both, the filmmaker indulging his best and worst tendencies in a mixed bag of a…

“Deadpool and Wolverine” may be the least narratively cohesive film so far, feeling more like a collection of loosely connected comedy sketches than a fully realized film. But it is so much damn fun and packed with everything fans of the series could ask for that it doesn’t really matter.