Initially presenting as another in a long, increasingly ossified line of rural neo-noirs (see also Out of the Furnace, Cold in July, Bad Turn Worse, on and on), Hell or High Water eventually manages to tease out a modestly novel threat to tug on as far as the subgenre’s general motivators of economic desperation and thwarted masculinity go. After the opening scene in which divorced dad Toby (Chris Pine) and his ex-con brother Tanner knock over a West Texas bank, you’d…
Sion Sono’s eighth feature refined and nearly perfected his early, amateurish Dogme 95-esque aesthetic. Billed as a “film about the human body,” The Real Body is a totally singular hybrid of documentary and fiction. It examines the work of four artists—photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, buoh dancer Akaji Maro, fashion designer Shinichiro Arakawa, and Sono himself—each of whom use the human body, in different ways, to express lust, love, and desire. Sono also directs a film-within-the-film following a high school girl (Keiko Hamaguchi) who loves to run and falls…
