In interviews past, director Kit Zauhar has mentioned that nice people aren’t interesting on camera, and, really, This Closeness is exactly that mantra in action. This Closeness follows couple Tessa (Kit Zauhar) and Ben (Zane Pais) who book an Airbnb to attend Ben’s high school reunion. Unbeknownst to them, they’re sharing that space with the […]
Even if you’ve been to as many shows as I have, SXSW always manages to dazzle with its myriad of live performances. The fact that nearly every barbecue joint, bar, and grocery store becomes a makeshift music venue for the week means that you’re bound to see some cool things, even if you’re just walking […]
This review of Beef is based off of Episode 1 and 2, which had its World Premiere at SXSW 2023. If you’ve lived in Los Angeles, or really, any metropolitan area in the United States, you’ll know that road rage is a real, palpable thing. Maybe someone cuts you off on the highway, merges into […]
Do you ever get roped into a film with certain expectations about what you’re going to see… only to be met with something completely different? I would safely file Japanese director Shinzo Katayama’s Missing under that niche marketing category. At first glance, it’s a film that promises a paint-by-numbers revenge thriller given its fairly generic […]
Right at the beginning of South Korean director Syeyoung Park’s The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra, a young woman tells her narcoleptic boyfriend about a shocking discovery she made in a nearby river. She and her team, she recalls, found an unusually high number of dead “dolphins” there, which bewildered the group. But when they conducted further […]