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FILM FEATURES

Showing film results: From 6 to 16



 

New Release Review - "The Ice Tower"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com
published 2025-11-20

Lucile Hadžihalilović's The Ice Tower is that classic tale of the kid who runs away to join the circus. The circus in this case is the film industry of 1970s France. That was an era when the gulf between adolescence and adulthood wasn't so pronounced, when adults didn't think it strange that they were working alongside kids. It reminds us of how Cameron Crowe became a rock critic while barely out of short pants, or how Spielberg wandered onto a Hollywood backlot and found himself directing Joan Crawford within months. But The Ice Tower is tonally a very different film than Almost Famous or The Fabelmans. This is a dark fable that reminds us there are predators waiting to exploit the dreams of the innocent.



New Release Review - "Frankenstein"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com
published 2025-11-15

"It's alive!" Well, barely. Guillermo del Toro's pointless adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is Robert Eggers' Nosferatu all over again, a sumptuous but redundant retelling of a tale told 200 times too many. The writer/director has been trying to get this film made for three decades, and anyone familiar with his career knows of del Toro's fondness for monsters. But aside from his trademark over the top violence, del Toro has brought nothing new to the table here. His Frankenstein is twice as long as James Whale's and over an hour longer than Terence Fisher's, but it lacks the depth of either of those classics.



New Release Review - "Nuremberg"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com
published 2025-11-12

Given its subject matter, you might expect writer/director James Vanderbilt's Nuremberg to be another awards bait snoozer, the sort of film schoolkids will be forced to sit through when their History teacher wants to catch up on correcting homework. But Vanderbilt is the screenwriter responsible for David Fincher's Zodiac, arguably the best movie based on real events to come out of Hollywood this century. By narrowing his focus on two men, Vanderbilt has crafted a riveting film that grounds a global spectacle in the brief relationship between these two figures.



New Release Review - "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com
published 2025-11-08

"I know who you are." "That makes one of us." That exchange between a star struck car salesman and Bruce Springsteen gets to the heart of writer/director Scott Cooper's music biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. Like most good biopics, Cooper's film narrows its focus to a specific chapter in its subject's life. In this case it's 1981 and Springsteen's writing and recording of 'Nebraska', considered by many as The Boss's greatest work.








New Release Review - "Bugonia"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com
published 2025-11-05

Jang Joon-hwan's 2003 Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet! was part of that Millennial wave of East Asian genre movies that developed cult followings among western audiences. Many of those films received inevitable, and inevitably disappointing, Hollywood remakes, and now two decades later Jang's film receives am English language remake from an unlikely source: the Greek absurdist auteur Yorgos Lanthimos.



44th Bi-Annual New Jersey Film Festival to Take Place January 23 to February 22, 2026

(NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ) -- The 44th Bi-Annual New Jersey Film Festival will take place on select Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays between January 23-February 22, 2026. The Festival will be a hybrid one as it will be presented online as well as doing in-person screenings at Rutgers University.



New Release Review - "The Mastermind"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com
published 2025-11-01

Fittingly, The Mastermind receives its release in the wake of a headline-grabbing heist at the Louvre. The criminals responsible for that robbery employed methods that suggest they're not students of French heist movies. There was no ingenious plan to break in through the roof or via an adjoining building under cover of darkness; instead the thieves went to work with angle grinders in broad daylight. Kelly Reichardt's film is inspired by a similar 1972 incident in which thieves entered the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts during opening hours and walked out with four valuable paintings.



Teaneck International Film Festival Marks 20th Anniversary with Free Filmmaker Boot Camp Led by TV Executive Ashley McFarlin

(TEANECK, NJ) -- As part of its milestone 20th anniversary celebration, the Teaneck International Film Festival (TIFF) presents a Free Filmmaker Boot Camp with award-winning television executive and producer Ashley McFarlin. Presented in partnership with Bird's Eye Entertainment, Inc. and Fairleigh Dickinson University, this one-night workshop will take place on Wednesday, November 12, 2025 from 6:30pm to 9:30pm at the Fairleigh Dickinson University Library Auditorium on the Teaneck campus.



New to Netflix - "Ballad Of A Small Player"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com
published 2025-10-30

Director Edward Berger follows up his Vatican drama Conclave with another movie set within a small city with a distinctive personality. This time it's the Asian gambling mecca of Macau, a cross between the tacky glitz of Las Vegas and the exclusivity of Monte Carlo. It's there we find Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell), a British aristocrat whose opulent hotel room suggests he hit it big at one point on his trip, but he's now fallen heavily into debt.