7 years ago
AFI Fest 2013 10
AFI Fest Review: ‘We Are the Best!’
It's 1982, and punk is dead. But a trio of preteen girls decides that they'll keep its spirit alive.
Read more →
AFI Fest Review: ‘Moebius’
Moebius seems like the purest distillation of everything that Ki-duk Kim is as a filmmaker. It's completely without dialogue, tears through taboos like the Kool-Aid Man through tissue paper, and sticks itself in your mind like a difficult thorn. It's the kind ...
Read more →
AFI Fest Review: ‘Our Sunhi’
There are blind spots in every cinema lover's list of films that they have seen, and then there's whatever I have with Hong Sang-soo. Until this year, I had never even heard of the man. And once I had, I discovered that a good deal of critics and movie lovers ...
Read more →
AFI Fest Review: ‘Her’
I've loved all of Spike Jonze's work, but I was incredibly skeptical of Her. What looked like a story about a man falling in love with Siri, complete with him spinning in romantic circles with his phone, just seemed like too much. It was a rotten attitude to b...
Read more →
AFI Fest Review: ‘Nothing Bad Can Happen’
The original German title of Nothing Bad Can Happen is Tore Tanzt, or "Tore Dances." Anyone who watches the trailer for the film will recognize that the new title is meant as bitterly ironic. This is a story about many, many bad things happening. But while Tor...
Read more →
AFI Fest Review: ‘Closed Curtain’
Anyone who criticizes Jafar Panahi for retreading themes in his films at this juncture of his career is kind of an asshole. The man is under the thumb of a dictatorship and forbidden from making movies. What else is he going to muse on with his films (which he...
Read more →
AFI Fest Review: ‘The Sacrament’
A new wave of horror has come in the form of "mumblegore," and I've not yet drunk its kool-aid (that phrase is an appropriate one to use in a review for this film, as you'll come to understand in a moment). I get the idea of using "realistic" verbal patter and...
Read more →
AFI Fest Review: ‘The Unknown Known’
Errol Morris' new film focuses revolves around a captivating interview with Donald Rumsfeld.
Read more →
AFI Fest Review: ‘The Wind Rises’
Hayao Miyazaki's supposedly final film isn't great, but it's a fitting end to an astonishing career.
Read more →
AFI Fest Review: ‘Blue Ruin’
Dwight (Macon Blair) is a beach bum, spending his days scrounging recyclables on the Virginia coast and his nights in a gruesome 1990 Pontiac Bonneville. But when he learns that the man who murdered his parents has been released from prison, he embarks on a ro...
Read more →