Darya Zhuk | Film Festival Today

Film Review: “Crystal Swan” Presents Evocative View of Post-Soviet Belarus

May 22, 2020

Film Review: “Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story” Is a Joy and a Delight
By Heidi Shepler
May 27, 2022
Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story (Frank Marshall/Ryan Suffern, 2022) 3½ out of 4 stars. For more than fifty years, the New Orleans Jazz Heritage Festival, better known as Jazz Fest, has brought hundreds of thousands of people to a relatively plain-looking fairgrounds for a celebration of New Orleans’ music, culture, and food. With seven thousand musicians performing over the course of eight days, not to mention the thousands of pounds of fried and ... >>
Film Review: “Scare Zone” Takes Us Behind the Scenes of a Halloween Haunted House
By Matt Patti
May 26, 2022
Scare Zone (Jon Binkowski, 2009) 2 ½ out of 4 stars. As an avid enthusiast of Halloween “Haunts,” I journey to a handful of different attractions each October. Haunted Hayrides, Haunted Houses, Haunted Trails, Haunts at Theme Parks … you name it, I’m game. Director Jon Binkowski’s Scare Zone therefore piqued my interest, especially after I discovered that the movie was filmed on location at a bona fide haunted attraction inside the Universal ... >>
Film Review: “Hit the Road” Offers a Moving Road Trip Through Comedy and Drama
By Christopher Llewellyn Reed
May 20, 2022
Hit the Road (Panah Panahi, 2021) 4 out of 4 stars. Good filmmaking occasionally runs in families, as Panah Panahi—the son of famed Iranian director Jafar Panahi (3 Faces)—proves with his debut feature, Hit the Road. As the title promises, the film offers a literal journey that our protagonists take on their way to a destination both real and metaphorical. Though present-day Iran may not be the international bogeyman some would have us believe, ... >>
Maryland Film Festival Review: Brilliant “Fire of Love” Burns Brightly
By Christopher Llewellyn Reed
May 3, 2022
Fire of Love (Sara Dosa, 2022) 4 out of 4 stars. By the time married French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft died on June 3, 1991, on the slopes of Mount Unzen, in Japan, they had long since established themselves as premier experts in their field. As we learn in Fire of Love, director Sara Dosa’s excellent archival documentary about the duo, they pioneered much of the research we now take for granted. Not only that, but they were ... >>
Film Review: “Peace by Chocolate” Offers a Delicious Taste of Harmony
By Christopher Llewellyn Reed
April 29, 2022
Peace by Chocolate (Jonathan Keijser, 2022) 3 out of 4 stars. A true story brought to dramatic life with a combination of genuine humor and deep pathos, Peace by Chocolate tackles the weighty issues of our present with a healthy dose of whimsy. A tale of refugees who make good, it follows the odyssey of the Hadhad family as they try to start over after leaving war-torn Syria. Twentysomething Tareq is the first to arrive in Nova Scotia, the ... >>

Victoria Reviews “Morbius”
May 3, 2022
With THE LITTLE THINGS and his sensational, transformation in HOUSE OF GUCCI, Leto is totally ...>>
Victoria Reviews “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent”
May 3, 2022
Nic Cage serves up a terrific movie. Cage sets the career procedural for pariahs Mel and Armie: ...>>
Victoria reviews “Anatomy of a Scandal”
April 24, 2022
Another standardized Kelley production with enough twists to keep one watching. I’ll admit it. I ...>>
Victoria Reviews “Deep Water”
March 31, 2022
Sensational erotic thriller with de Armas commandeering the film. Lyne returns with more aggressive ...>>