By Owen Gleiberman According To The variety Blink Twice” opens with a blurry close-up shot of a frog, which then comes into glistening focus. The sound is eerie; the image is sinister, fascinating, mysterious and trippy. That describes the movie as well. “Blink Twice” is the first feature directed by Zoë Kravitz, who also co-wrote it (with E.T. Feigenbaum), and it’s a post-#MeToo feminist party-girl nightmare thriller that’s been made with an unusual sense of intimacy. Kravitz, the veteran actor (“The Batman,” “Kimi,” “Big Little Lies”), doesn’t rely on the standard medium shot/POV pedestrian film grammar. She composes the movie out of vibrant close-ups, using each shot (a cocktail, a glance, a social-media cutaway) to tell a story, drawing us into the center of an encounter, so th...

By Guy Lodge According To The variety Lithuanian cinema, not typically that well represented on the international film festival circuit, was the big story of this year’s Locarno Film Festival awards ceremony, with two films from the Baltic nation taking a number of top prizes between them. “Toxic,” an auspicious debut from writer-director Saulė Bliuvaitė, won not only the Golden Leopard for Best Film in the fest’s premier International Competition — from a jury chaired by Austrian auteur Jessica Hausner — but also, in an unusual double, the top prize in the separately juried First Feature Competition. Bliuvaitė’s compatriot Laurynas Bareiša, meanwhile, won Best Director in the International Competition for his sophomore feature “Drowning Dry,” while the same film’...