Godard’s famous axiom (by way of D.W. Griffith) about a girl and a gun being the essential elements of a movie is given a very…
Pieces of a Woman Director Kornél Mundruczó knows how to open a film (see the otherwise underwhelming White God, for example), and with Pieces of…
Soul Emir Ezwan’s debut feature, Soul, is part of an emerging Malaysian cinema heavily composed of genre fare. Made for roughly $80,000 USD, the horror…
In the rarefied world of slow cinema — the kinds of films that flourish at film festivals but with limited commercial prospects outside those specialized…
In recent years, Venezia has been a strong catalyst for auteurs to premiere some of the year’s most internationally acclaimed films. While Daniele Luchetti’s The…
Residue is a singular, important achievement, a work of shattering beauty and necessary discourse. Director Merawi Gerima was born into an impressive cinematic lineage. His father…
Spiral is content lean into cheap scare tactics at the expense of the more novel, potent direction is could have taken. New horror thriller Spiral…
Night of the Kings Storytelling is at the crux of Philippe Lacôte’s entrancing sophomore feature, whose structural integrity depends upon a viewer’s willingness to accept…
The best thing one can say for Claudio Noce’s Padrenostro is that its narrative is well-intentioned. The film attempts to reckon with the lingering effects…
The new Australian western The Furnace opens with text explaining that, in the 19th century, the British government imported camels into the Outback, as they…
Bertrand Mandico made quite a splash with his first feature-length film The Wild Boys in 2018, but he’s been making accomplished shorts for well over…
The Nest is a deeply obvious, under-cooked attempt at horror-flecked domestic portraiture. The Nest, writer-director Sean Durkin’s long-awaited follow-up to his remarkably assured debut feature, 2011’s…
Lahi, Hayop Lav Diaz knows violence. The director’s filmography is virtually an exemplar of the temporal nexus of historical and contemporaneous representations of authoritarian exploitation.…
In the midst of the annus horribilis of 2020, with the US still being ravaged by a global pandemic, all manner of racial strife, a…
After the international success of Asghar Farhadi’s socio-familial, “realist” dramas, there were a litany of Iranian films that tried to copy the winning formula of…
It’s unclear if the new film Gone with the Light is directly inspired by or otherwise wholesale lifting the premise of The Leftovers (both the…
Anthony Wong is an axiom of Hong Kong cinema, an iconic actor who has featured in every conceivable film genre and played every kind of…
Forgiven Children is a reactionary apologist’s straw man, an irresponsible configuration of centrist thought which aestheticizes and generalizes any viewpoints that would be positioned in…
Nomadland Having just taken the top prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Nomadland begins its journey towards Oscar gold. That’s admittedly a flip assessment…
Legally Declared Dead Anthony Wong is an axiom of Hong Kong cinema, an iconic actor who has featured in every conceivable film genre and played…
There never was a romance quite like it: beat poets/star-crossed lovers Exene Cervenka and John Doe form a little rock band with guitarist Billy Zoom…