Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi has been making films since the first decade of the 21st century, and began his rise to international prominence with the 2015 Happy Hour. In 2022, his Drive My Car won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film (he released two movies in 2021 – that one and also Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy). He has a new feature, Evil Does Not Exist, which premiered at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival. A few days later, Matt Delman and I saw it…

In 1991, filmmaker Nancy Savoca directed her second feature (after True Love), Dogfight, starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. Working off an original script by Bob Comfort, Savoca told a moving story of how friendship and love can develop in even the most unlikely situations (or perhaps because of them). Set mostly in 1963, on the day before John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the movie follows a group of marines, about to be shipped off to Vietnam, as they engage in an act…

Writer/director Iram Parveen Bilal follows up her engaging 2020 I’ll Meet You There with Wakhri, which just played SXSW 2024 (where I reviewed it). Inspired by the life of the late Pakistani social-media influencer Qandeel Baloch, this aesthetically assured and narratively powerful film follows a widowed mother, Noor (Faryal Mehmood, making her exciting feature debut) who must navigate daily microaggressions from her in-laws, step-mother, and the patriarchy around her. A teacher in a girls’ school, she struggles to raise money for a new building, and…

Indoor malls have seen better days, but at one point they were both filled with pedestrian traffic and often the hope of urban planners to revitalize ostensibly blighted districts. That’s how the folks in Providence, Rhode Island, thought of the late-1990s Providence Place Mall, built in the middle of town, part of an ongoing gentrification project that would destroy an artists’ community in favor of new condos. And where did those artists go? Why, into the mall, thank you very…

Set in Austin, Texas—the location of its world premiere, at SXSW 2024 (where I reviewed it)—the documentary An Army of Women explores how the local police department and district attorney have failed to prosecute perpetrators of sexual assault and rape over many years. Director and cinematographer Julie Lunde Lillesæter marks her feature debut with a searing takedown of the forces of ostensible law and order, giving the underserved victims their due in front of the camera. Some of the content may be difficult…

If you love board games, have I got a film for you! In The Hobby, which just premiered at SXSW 2024 (where I reviewed it), director Simon Ennis (Lunarcy!) explores his newfound enthusiasm for, well, “the hobby” in a celebratory look at the passion it engenders. There’s enough material to please fans of games old and new, with interviews with collectors, promoters, podcasters, designers and, yes, players, some of whom gather in 2022 in Las Vegas for the first-ever World Series of…

For its 31st edition, the SXSW Film & TV Festival will host nine days of screenings from March 8-16, 2024. Bears Rebecca Fonté and Chris Reed will be deep in the hearth of Austin, Texas for the festival. Here are their picks for the always intriguing program.

The 2024 Academy Awards take place on Sunday, March 10, and as usual there are 15 nominated short films across three categories: animation, documentary, and live action. As I do every year for Hammer to Nail, I watch all of them —which have been available for theatrical viewing in some markets since February 16, courtesy of ShortsTV—and then offer my thoughts on which are the best (to me). I am no Oscar prognosticator, however, so expect nothing in the way of predictions about which…

Veteran director Maggie Greenwald made what many, including her, consider her most-celebrated work, The Ballad of Little Jo, in 1993. Now, 30 years later, courtesy of Kino Lorber, there comes a brand-new Blu-ray release featuring an HD master of the movie taken from a 4K scan of the original 35mm negative. The disc also provides a commentary track with Greenwald and cinematographer Declan Quinn, as well as a short interview with lead actress Suzy Amis. The audio-visual quality of the digital transfer—supervised by…