CFTCA Digest: August 2024 - Cascadia Film & TV Critics Association

Welcome to CFTCA’s monthly digest for August 2024, a roundup of recent reviews, features, interviews, and more by CTFCA critics.

Film Reviews

Alien: Romulus | Reviewed by Christopher Cross | Read the full review

“…Where Scott’s film balanced philosophical ruminations on creation and God with a violent, unforgiving world, Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus is much less interesting and far more indebted to its amusement park structure as characters move from one harrowing predicament to the next, forced to improvise a solution to avoid meeting a perilous fate.”

Christopher writes for Asynchronous Media.

Borderlands | Reviewed by Matthew Simpson | Read the full review

“Borderlands is a frustrating film. With so much wasted potential, and so much wasted talent involved, how could it not be? The film is the laziest type of adaptation, one where the filmmakers have only gleaned the most surface-level aspects of the source material and then transplanted them without any of the depth that makes the games likable.”

Find more of Matthew’s reviews on Movies We Texted About.

La Práctica | Reviewed by Eric Zhu | Read the full review

“More than anything, La Práctica is a charmer, with characters, spouting off rhythmic dialogue in monotone voices, practically winking at the camera. The sheer number of side characters within the film’s short runtime offers La Práctica a slew of delightful presences, and as these characters recur in the film’s numerous rhymes and repetitions, the effect is musical.”

Find more of Eric’s writing on The Insert.

The Becomers | Reviewed by Michael Clawson | Read the full review

“A comic sci-fi romance that plays like a sketch drawn out to feature length, the film picks up with its two aliens after they’ve landed on earth, separated, and begun wending their way through suburban Illinois in search of each other… With their shades, stilted speech, and dryly absurdist interactions with various offbeat humans, these aliens could just as well be in a Jim Jarmusch movie.”

Michael writes for Drink in the Movies.

Strange Darling | Reviewed by Darren Zakus | Read the full review

“Strange Darling is one unforgettable thriller that grips viewers immediately and takes them on a heart pounding and shocking ride unlike anything you have ever experienced, that thanks to the sensational performances of Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner, makes not only for one of the best films of the year, but one of the best thrillers in recent memory.”

Find more of Darren’s work on Movie Scene Canada.

Planet B | Reviewed by Taylor Baker | Read the full review

“Another year, another Adèle Exarchopoulos film, and for the first time in a while, a colossal misfire.”

Taylor writes for Drink in the Movies.

Electrophilia | Reviewed by Dakota Arsenault | Read the full review

“What happens when you survive a traumatic unexpected event? Do you gather yourself together and overcome any new fears you might have to not let it define you? Or does it slowly consume every aspect of your life, waking and non? In the new Argentinian film Electrophilia, directed by Lucía Puenzo, we explore the after effects of a woman who is struck by lightning and scarred by it.”

Find more of Dakota’s work on the Contra Zoom Pod website.

Television

Futurama Season 12 | Reviewed by Matthew Simpson | Read the full review

“Good news everyone! Futurama is returned once again to satirize the future and the present, and it’s only slightly out of date doing it. There are a few things to say about the show, but let’s get this out of the way first: it’s still Futurama, and if you liked Futurama before then you are likely going to continue liking Futurama now.”

Find more of Matthew’s reviews on Movies We Texted About.

Interviews

Zarrar Kahn on In Flames

On this episode of McFly’s Movie House, director Zarrar Kahn joins Marta to chat about his feature film debut, In Flames, the first Pakistani film to premiere at the 76th Cannes Film Festival as part of the Director’s Fortnight in over 47 years. In Flames is a supernatural horror and social drama that uses the genre as a tool to explore the traumas of living in an oppressive patriarchal society. The film was Pakistan’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 2024 Academy Awards.

Find more of Marta’s work through her website.

Retrospectives

A24 Retrospective: Mississippi Grind

For the latest installment in Contra Zoom’s on-going survey of the full A24 catalog, Dakota is joined by Eric Zhu for a discussion of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s Mississippi Grind. This film stars Ben Mendelsohn as Gerry, a down-and-out gambling addict who befriends Ryan Reynolds’ Curtis, a man who Gerry believes is his good luck charm.

Find other installments in Contra Zoom’s A24 retrospective on the Contra Zoom Pod website.