From our Honorable Mentions post: It goes without saying that 2020 was a year like none other in recent history. Significantly, by virtue of living through such times, it’s also a year that retuned minds to see history being made in the present. There are certainly more critical sociocultural institutions whose shape have been permanently altered, but in a year where entertainment was sought (and was, arguably, psychologically essential) more than ever, the film industry’s struggles played out on a grand…
You Will Die at Twenty contains plenty of allegorical power, but its ineffectual plotting ultimately teases out more stimulating questions than it does answers. As a motif in his film, Amjad Abu Alala enacts a…
Nine Days angles toward profundity, but is a largely maudlin, intellectually bankrupt genre-exercise of self-congratulation. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, prisoners sit facing a wall on which the shadows of puppets are projected; with…
- by InRO Staff Film
Before We Vanish | January 2021: American Skin, PG: Psycho Goreman, Run Hide Fight
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into some DVD bargain bin assuming that those still…
Film About a Father Who is an intimate, innovative auto-doc about wounded people finding solace in the company of fellow stragglers. Film About A Father Who is Lynne Sachs’ latest, and evidently most personal, feat…
- by Daniel Gorman Film Horizon Line
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time | Lili Horvát
Preparations is a major discovery, its distinct character recalling nothing less than the works of Abbas Kiarostami, Christian Petzold, and Krzysztof Kieślowski. Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time opens with a…
In and Of Itself isn’t without its small hypocrisies, but ultimately surprises by delivering spectacle through its big heart and humanism. From 2016 to 2018, the illusionist and performer Derek DelGaudio ran a one-man show…
- by InRO Staff Music
Album Roundup: Oct. – Dec. 2020 | Part 4: Juicy J, Future & Lil Uzi Vert, Magic Markers
Juicy J There are few constants in this precarious universe that we inhabit: the sky is blue, the grass is green, and as long as Jordan Michael Houston is still breathing, he’s going to…
Fernanda Valadez’s debut, while sometimes frustratingly broad, tells a well-known tale through unusual eyes, giving the classic immigration tale a welcome twist. Within a cinematic tradition that associates the violence of Mexico’s crime-infested northern…
Rather than recalling Bahrani’s past strengths, The White Tiger only serves to draw out the director’s worst instincts. Filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has long focused on issues of class in his works, examining how the…
Our Friend upends some familiar conventions of the terminal illness narrative, but also boasts plenty of missed opportunities. One of the things that can only be learned firsthand when it comes to the death of…