“Eat the rich” satires didn’t start under Trump, but it certainly feels like they’re accelerating of late. We’re less than a month removed from the…
It may seem counterintuitive to use Alfred Hitchcock’s famous quote — “Drama is life with all the boring bits cut out” — to describe a…
Since the release of his first short film, Heroes Never Die, 35 years ago, Alain Guiraudie has gradually built a reputation as one of world…
As Shadow of a Doubt opens, Joseph Cotton’s uncle Charlie is running away from the police. He has been lying down in his cheap hotel…
Nominated for five Academy Awards, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance has been one of the most talked about movies of the past year. Since its premiere…
In his expansive body of work as a playwright, Harold Pinter dissected the language of power with a scalpel. Characters speak in clipped, ambiguous sentences,…
Desert of Namibia At first, Yoko Yamanaka’s Desert of Namibia seems to be just another entry in what this writer is calling Millennium Mambo-core, after…
Zodiac Killer Project is, put simply, a strange undertaking. Charlie Shackleton’s expansively stripped-down documentary emerged from a thwarted attempt to adapt Lyndon E. Lafferty’s 2012…
At first, Yoko Yamanaka’s Desert of Namibia seems to be just another entry in what this writer is calling Millennium Mambo-core, after the growing yet…
The best of the experimental film programming at the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look 2025 is actually found outside the program specifically dedicated…
Brigid McCaffrey’s debut feature plays very much like a pleasant walk in the woods. One is surrounded by the hazy glint of sunlight on foliage,…
There’s an opaque yet stern quality to Kaloyan (Ognyan “Fyre” Pavlov), a heavily tattooed young man returning to his small Bulgarian hometown after many years…
Since his emergence on the periphery of the “New French Extremity” in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Bruno Dumont has continued to carve out…
You could argue that it’s extremely ironic that The Electric State, an absolutely dismal movie about humanity learning to love corporate-branded A.I. robots rising up…
Independent American filmmaking in the 1970s features many showcases of distinctive actor-director relationships. One of them: Joan Micklin Silver and her many great actors, including…
Suspended Time Given the muted critical response and prolonged time period between its festival premiere and eventual (limited) distribution, the new Olivier Assayas film has…
Given the muted critical response and prolonged time period between its festival premiere and eventual (limited) distribution, the new Olivier Assayas film has apparently been…
It’s rather rare for debut features to world premiere in Competition at Cannes. The second-tier lineup, Un Certain Regard, is the festival’s typical launchpad for…
In Aude Léa Rapin’s sci-fi drama, Planet B, the French government has imprisoned dissidents in a virtual prison. Bodies are kept in a vegetative state…
In a concise opening, Thierry de Peretti’s In His Own Image introduces its heroine Antonia (Clara-Maria Laredo), a young and passionate photographer who seems to…