The much-beloved Orcas Island Film Festival took 2020 off for the pandemic but eased its way back in 2021 in a more …
Month: August 2022
Three Thousand Years of Longing; or, Good Luck To You, Lonely Djinn
When last we saw George Miller, it was in the sun-blasted desert of Fury Road for a breathless post-apocalyptic hyper-saturated revolutionary adventure. But aside from his forays into the Mad Max mythology, his oeuvre also includes two movies about dancing penguins, another pair about talking piglets, and a dark adult fairy tale concerning three suburban witches. So, seven years after his chaotic masterpiece, we shouldn’t be too surprised that his return to big screens is less an action spectacle than a return to the realm of storybook fables.
Spin Me Round star Alison Brie talks to us about her hilarious new movie, opening this weekend at SIFF
Spin Me Round is the latest collaboration between Alison Brie and Jeff Baena, whose other films include The Little Hours and Horse Girl. Often, as with The Little Hours and Spin Me Round, Baena’s spouse Aubrey Plaza also stars. Alison Brie’s character is Amber, a young manager in the Exemplary Manager program at Tuscan Garden who finds there may be in Italy for reasons other than her potential in restaurant management.
Golden Space Needle winner The Territory brings indigenous activism into focus
The title of The Territory refers to a large swath of rainforest inhabited by the dwindling population of Uru-eu-wau-wau people, who first came into contact with non-Native Brazilians in 1981. Until recently, strict protections have made this land one of the few remaining bulwarks against the rampant clear-cutting that threatens to fundamentally erase the lush and biodiverse Amazon river basin.
Alex Pritz’s documentary juxtaposes life among the Uru-eu-wau-wau with those of indigent farm workers seeking to establish their own settlements within the untouched lands as a way of elevating themselves from poverty.
Girl Picture is a dramatically beautiful story of first love and teen angst
Rönkkö and Mimmi are best friends, the kind of buddies that tell each other everything, wear each others’ clothes, and support each other through thick and thin. Throw in more than a few hormones, discovering what your body wants, and how to even talk to someone you’re interested in and you’ve got the jumbled pile we call puberty; that’s exactly where we find these two women.
Emily the Criminal is Ocean’s 11 for gig workers
It’s not difficult to have sympathy for Emily, the character Aubrey Plaza plays in the great new movie Emily the Criminal. She understands that a person in her circumstances (loaded with debt from student loans for an expensive art school education and a permanent record that includes some legal infractions) has no shot at “the American dream.”
Medusa: A Feminist take on Slasher-flicks that asks WWJD?
By day, best friends Mari and Michele are devout women in a Christian pop group called Michele and the Treasures of the Lord. They sing bubblegum pop songs about Jesus and Michele runs a YouTube channel that tells young, God-fearing women how to take the most holy selfies. By night, they channel their Christian devotion into a girl gang that menaces the streets of Brazil, eager to attack any woman that they perceive to be sinful.
Bodies Bodies Bodies is an Agatha Christie whodunit for Generation Z
Bodies Bodies Bodies involves a group of zoomers who plan on spending a weekend at the home of their rich friend David (Pete Davidson). A hurricane knocks out the cell signal and everything quickly goes to hell.