Cinapse

The 25th anniversary New York Asian Film Festival takes place from July 10th to July 26th. For details and showtimes, click here. Now we’re talking! 4 Tigers is exactly the type of movie that made me such a fan of NYAFF to begin with, a rollicking piece of entertainment that in the best Asian cinematic tradition throws 1,000 things at the wall in the hopes of giving the crowd something they didn’t know they wanted… and succeeding beyond all reason.

A film so prescient it feels prophetic, Perfect Blue makes its way to 4K! A common trope of cinema is to “turn the mirror around”; to tell stories that reflect the world around us. It’s a common trend and theme across all genres, and can be delivered both heavy handedly or subliminally, both as a reflection of the current world, or a gaze down the road of where we’re headed.

I saw the original Moana on the final day of 2016, an exhausting year that proved to be a portent of things to come. In the first five minutes, a toddler Moana wanders onto the beach and sees a sea turtle struggling to make it to the ocean. She assists the turtles trek, providing it shade and fighting off birds. Her act of kindness is witnessed by the ocean itself, who chooses her for a life of adventure due to her curiosity, bravery and kindness.

“It took you a while to come to the door.” If there’s any reason someone might be hesitant to see The Invite, the new film from director Olivia Wilde, it’s due to an aversion some people may have to awkward humor. Such writing has the ability to make certain moviegoers uncomfortable and anxious to the point where they potentially miss dialogue and nuance that moves the story forward.

Game of Thrones and, similarly, House of the Dragon are stories built around world-changing events. They focus on the machinations and power plays of kings, nobles, and mythical forces, where dragons, armies, and great houses collide with shattering force to alter Westeros forever. The ongoing clamor for power inevitably leaves the weak downtrodden along the way.

Jaws. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Raiders of the Lost Ark. E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial. Jurassic Park. Schindler’s List. Saving Private Ryan. War of the Worlds. Eight films, each one an undeniable masterpiece of its form or a standout of its particular genre. Each one a commercial and critical hit.

Opening this Independence Day weekend, here comes Minions & Monsters (not to be confused with an identically-named 2021 short of the same title), the latest in the animated comedy series which has shown considerable legs after spinning off from the Despicable Me franchise. I’ve had to endure a few of these movies and found them all to be excruciating in varying degrees, but let’s face it – I’m not the target market here.

Come For The Birth Of America, Stay For Gibson Tearing apart Red Coats With A Tomahawk, Feel Weird About All The Slavery White Washing. What happens when you decide your historical epic needs both intense exploitation genre flairs, a wild eyed Mel Gibson, and an intense and consistent hand-waving of Slavery in America? Well, you’ve got yourself The Patriot.

First Feature, which premiered at the Chattanooga Film Festival, is a documentary that sat unfinished for more than a decade before finally crossing the finish line. That delay ultimately becomes one of its greatest strengths. The film chronicles the making of a 2014 student feature by an endlessly passionate, wonderfully eccentric filmmaker who spent five years completing his labor of love. Left alone, both projects could have easily been lost to time.

Non-Horror Fans Can Also Come, I Guess, Although Really Who Cares About Them As artists in every medium and discipline work to define themselves and their creations beyond the reaches of AI slop and content farms, stop motion animation may in fact have become the most perfect form to distill the beauty and care of the handmade, the imperfect, the singular.