Power of Solitude: Chen Deming on Always (Cong Lai, 2025)

By Yun-hua Chen. The film records the solitude of childhood and shows the power of poetry within that solitude.” Black and white, left-behind children, rural China – Director Chen Deming, in Always, uses a familiar formula to bring out a unique layer of poetry and coming-of-age. The Chinese title, Cong […]

Dead Souls on the U.S. Border: On Alex Cox’s “Final Film”

By Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. Alex Cox, in what may be his final film, smartly reconfigures the classic theme of bureaucratic greed in Tsarist Russia into a bold, timely political Western situated in the borderlands of the 19th-century American West.” Alex Cox’s newest release Dead Souls (2025), stands as a […]

Questioning Authority: Jim Towns’ Mercy

By William Blick. Towns’ is unafraid to ask hard questions about education, religion, morality, censorship, gender bias, and civil rights. He does so in the format of a dystopic, sci-fiction vehicle in 90 minutes on a limited budget, with limited actors, to impressive results….” Jim Towns’ new film, Mercy is […]

Small Nuances: Bernhard Wenger on Peacock

By Ali Moosavi. We were working on small details like what it means to be lost for so long over the course of the movie; Matthias just stares and looks a lot throughout the film. We were working on small nuances….” Austrian Bernhard Wenger‘s debut film Peacock has been selected […]

Alex Cox’s Dead Souls to Close SF IndieFest

Cox’s new revisionist Western offers commentary on contemporary immigration policy and violence.” Alex Cox will appear at SF IndieFest at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater for the closing night screening of his new film, Dead Souls. His adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s novel resituates the story as a Western, placing the action […]

Primal Ponderings: Home Invasion Horrors

A Book Review by William Blick. The last word on this niche genre, with a dense amount of information….” No genre of film is more subdivided and diverse than the horror genre. Over the years, this form of cinema has radically morphed into myriad subgenres that reflect the most primal […]