Over the weekend of November 14-16, I viewed the entirety of Twin Peaks: The Return, screened thanks to the great efforts of the Philadelphia Film…
It’s not uncommon for an international film to obtain a different name in English-speaking markets, and that ends up being the case with Little Trouble…
A former editor-in-chief of mine once told me to write lightly about heavy matters, and heavily about light ones — an adage that easily applies…
Julia Jackman’s sophomore feature 100 Nights of Hero, adapted from Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel of the same name, has the shape and tone of a…
Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino is back on terra firma with La Grazia, his second film to premiere in less than 18 months, following on the heels…
In Japan, where customs and a sturdy veneer of politeness greatly determine how people interact with one another, there is a strong emphasis on propriety,…
A visual motif that reoccurs throughout Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest film, A Private Life, is a spiral staircase. Beyond being chic and Parisian in the way…
“There comes a time when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun.” When Sara Jane Moore attempted and…
In the darkness of your room Your mother calls you by your true name You remember the faces the places the names You know it’s…
A Summer Tale A man has fallen: Argentine director Matías Szulanski’s A Summer Tale opens with a classic noir setup, one rendered gorgeously in Sunset…
A man has fallen: Argentine director Matías Szulanski’s A Summer Tale opens with a classic noir setup, one rendered gorgeously in Sunset Boulevard, Le Jour…
Action films might be the closest argument we still have for cinema as a universal language. It’s the most exportable genre, with stars and filmmakers…
Misery isn’t a genre, but it’s a motif and an emotion that many independent and arthouse films seem to think is the defining state of…
In the opening title scroll of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, the Brazil of 1977 the film takes place in is announced as “a…
Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is a sprawling, expansive work that functions simultaneously as familial remembrance, a documentary on Black intellectualism in the 20th and…
Rian Johnson brought the whodunnit into the 21st century, for better or worse. Knives Out revived it, imbuing the subgenre with the cozy vibes we…
A single work of art may, or may not, be able to change the world, but it can surely change a mind. To those unfamiliar…
It’s June 1993 in rural Nigeria. Remi and his younger brother Akin (real-life brothers Chibuike Marvelous Egbo and Godwin Egbo) are bickering, eating food and…
Sincerity is dead at the movies, and this fall season has treated us to a preponderance of autopsies as proof — Bugonia, A House of…
Perhaps we’ve been sold an overly literal version of heaven when we jump at the chance to live forever. While theologians balk at how transactional…
When you love a director, you have to trust them, there’s no other way. That’s not the message of Casino — a quasi-biblical text about…