Iranian director Ali Abbasi delivers an intense tale about the treatment of outsiders and the quest for self-acceptance that moves and perplexes. Border is the director’s second feature work, who wrote the film alongside Isabella Eklof and John Ajvide Linqvist. The film’s screening at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival earned it the Un Certain Regard award and it has been selected as the Swedish entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the upcoming Academy Awards.
As the forty minute mark approached during my screening of Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time (2018), I struggled with a simple question: Is it possible to review a film you walked out on? When I write about a film, I try to deliver more than a recommendation or a warning. A review should cast a spotlight on an aspect of filmmaking or storytelling that audiences and creators alike should treasure – unless the product is so bad, it should be obliterated for the cathartic entertainment of others. However, there’s a rare exception to my line of thought, where a product becomes a vehicle for a valuable lesson in the creative process. In the case of A Wrinkle in Time, while the fact that I walked out of the theater should be an indication of the film’s quality, it should mostly be a display of the importance of keeping your audience invested through compelling story elements.
Jim Henson is one of the great creative visionaries of the past century. From the long-standing, highly praised educational program Sesame Street, to the wonderful Labyrinth starring the late David Bowie, to the charming cast of The Muppets, who blur the line between fictitious character and real-world celebrity, Jim Henson’s career is truly underappreciated. Though among his body of work, few of his projects are as unique as his 1982 fantasy film, The Dark Crystal, which Jim Henson himself has called the hardest project he ever worked on. Despite being among the least well-known of the Jim Henson properties, the world of The Dark Crystal has inspired a huge cult following, spawning spin-off novels, comic books, and soon a Netflix prequel series. With this much buzz around the film, and a 35th anniversary screening coming to the O Cinema theater in Wynwood later this month, it’s difficult not to be intrigued by an 80s family film deemed ‘too scary for kids’.