The Film Gang from KSQD

  Inherent discrepancies exist between who we truly are, how others perceive us, and how we consciously and unconsciously choose to view ourselves. In our average day-to-day lives, such differences rarely matter. But what if a potentially life threatening situation triggers an ignominious act of instinctive self-preservation that can’t be glossed over or ignored? That […]

  KSQD’s Film Gang has been remiss in not yet reviewing one of the most acclaimed films of 2019, the South Korean dark comedy, Parasite, written, produced and directed by Bong Joon-ho. Hopefully this review will not only serve as a corrective but will inspire foreign-language-averse moviegoers to give it a chance. As Bong Joon-ho […]

  It’s Oscar season, and just when it looked like all prestige films have been accounted for, 1917, the World War I drama directed by Sam Mendes, snuck up from behind with a last minute, end-of-year release date in select markets, just in time to qualify for 2019 award consideration. Since then, it’s won Golden […]

  In 1868, feminist and abolitionist Louisa May Alcott published the first of her two-part semi-autobiographical novel, Little Women. It tells the story of four sisters – Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth – growing up in Massachusetts during the mid 1800s. Their father has gone off to join the Union army. The eldest sisters, Jo […]

  For those of us too young to remember, a security guard named Richard Jewell discovered a backpack bomb at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. It exploded shortly after, resulting in two deaths and over one hundred injuries. But if it hadn’t been for Jewell, who also aided in clearing crowds away from the device, the […]

  The following is a spoiler-free review of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Star Wars has gone through three evolutionary stages. The first trilogy of films captured the spirit of the Saturday afternoon movie serials produced during the golden age of Hollywood. Imaginative world-building and unambiguous good versus evil storylines provided state of the […]

  Honey Boy, the winner of the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, starts off with a literal bang: a young man getting blown backwards by an explosion. The smoke clears to reveal he’s an actor on a movie set, tethered to a rope, dangling above smoldering wreckage. His name is Otis, […]

  Martin Scorsese has directed comedies, biopics, documentaries, period pieces – even a musical. However, the one genre Scorsese is going to be forever associated with is the crime drama, in no small part thanks to the indelible performances of Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in 1990’s Goodfellas and 1995’s Casino. For his latest […]

  For over four decades, renowned Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar has been creating melodramatic works of art conveying his unique perspective on post-Francoist Spain, strong women, family, sexuality, and filmmaking itself. With semi-autobiographical elements sprinkled throughout, Almadóvar’s Palme d’Or-nominated film, Pain and Glory, is one of his most personal works to date, and despite […]

  In 2016, writer/director Robert Eggers gifted us with The Witch, an auspicious first film that helped add the phrase “elevated horror” to the critical lexicon as a shorthand way of describing creative aspirations above and beyond cheap jump scares and gratuitous gore. With his second film, The Lighthouse, a surreal thriller about a couple […]

  “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?” That’s the question asked by the titular character of Joker, a film that luxuriates in giving us the answer. By now, anyone with a pulse knows that Joker is the origin story […]

  Earlier this year, the Sundance Film Festival awarded its Grand Jury Prize to The Souvenir, written and directed by British Indie director, Joanna Hogg. Largely autobiographical, The Souvenir is pieced together from Hogg’s decades-old diaries, love letters and audio recordings, and it tells the story of her tragic May-December romance during the early ‘80s […]

  One of the sure signs of a great performance is when it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the role. Such is the case with Renée Zellweger’s portrayal of Frances Ethel Gumm, a.k.a., Judy Garland, in the biopic, Judy. Loosely adapted from the Olivier-nominated stage play, End of the Rainbow, Judy swings back and […]

  At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, it was Honeyland, a documentary about a beekeeper, which generated the most buzz. It took home three awards, more than any other film in competition, and it’s North Macedonia’s official submission in this year’s Oscar race for Best Documentary Feature. Honeyland is an intimate window into the life […]

  The films of French filmmaker Claire Denis are elliptical and often sacrifice plot-driven narrative for poetic visuals steeped in humanism. They tend to alternate between dark, like her second-to-last film, Bastards, and light, like her penultimate film, Let the Sunshine In. With her latest release, High Life, Denis once again gravitates to the darker […]

  “Friends are the family we choose.” That simple aphorism, offered by a character played by Bruce Dern, perfectly encapsulates the central theme of South By Southwest’s Audience Award-winning indie film, The Peanut Butter Falcon. Written and directed by first-time feature filmmakers Michael Schwartz and Tyler Nilson, it was brought to fruition by the indie […]

  Richard Linklater is a director who alternates between doing commercial fare such as School of Rock, and more personal, quasi-experimental films such as Boyhood. With his latest film, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Linklater has both feet firmly planted in the land of commerce. Boasting a talented cast led by Cate Blanchett as the titular […]

  Who would’ve thought that one of the most interesting and entertaining films about today’s culture war would be about Satanists? But such is the case with Hail Satan, the irreverent new documentary directed by Penny Lane. Or, I should say “Hail Satan?” because the title includes a question mark that emphasizes the absurdity of […]

  Quentin Tarantino is arguably the most influential filmmaker in the world. His nonlinear storytelling, trademark outbursts of stylized violence, dark humor and rich dialog are so distinctive, “Tarantinoesque” has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Capitalizing on his celebrity status, his latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is being marketed as […]

  The Last Black Man in San Francisco won the Special Jury Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It’s the directorial debut of Joe Talbot who won the Best Director prize. Talbot co-wrote the script with his longtime friend Jimmie Fails, who plays the lead character, also named Jimmie Fails due to its semiautobiographical […]

  “Every single one of us has the capacity to be captivated, manipulated, controlled.” That’s a direct quote taken from Faults, a little gem-of-a-film from 2014 about mind-control, written and directed by Riley Stearns. With his recently released second film, The Art of Self-Defense, Stearns has once again crafted a dark and funny examination of […]

  In June of 2018 writer/director Ari Aster released his highly acclaimed first feature, Hereditary. Now, barely a year later, Aster has firmly established himself as one of the leading auteurs of art-house horror with his sophomore follow-up, Midsommar. Unlike more mainstream horror films that try to startle their audiences with cheap jump scares and […]

  Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos was born in Athens where he also went to Film School. But as an aspiring film director, getting projects off the ground was a challenge because there is no real film industry in Greece. So, Lanthimos shot commercials and music videos, invested his money, and by working with friends he […]