Our sixth dispatch from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (here’s our first, our second, our third, our fourth, our fifth) offers an eclectic mix…
Gael Garcia Bernal’s Chicuarotes tries to defy expectations for a film in which the actor-director himself plays a performer, committing itself to an exploration of…
Our fifth dispatch from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (here’s our first, our second, our third, our fourth) tackles some of the fall’s bigger…
Paula Hernandez’s The Sleepwalkers begins with the sounds of a ticking clock and running water over a black screen. The noises increase in intensity until…
Our fourth dispatch from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (here’s our first, our second, and our third) skews heavily Canadian: Atom Egoyan’s latest, lurid…
There was no way that we were going to escape the first four years of the Trump presidency without Alex Gibney making a documentary about…
Calvin Thomas and Lev Lewis have been at the heart of the burgeoning Canadian independent film scene over the past few years, with their 2018…
The Last Porno Show opens with shots of both hardcore pornography and an aerial view of a man graphically masturbating in a movie theater. It…
If you took the most deplorable elements of today’s rap scene — the rampant misogyny, the nihilistic attitude towards putting any visible effort into anything,…
Depiction of extreme pain is not the most distressing thing about Finnish BDSM comedy Dogs Don’t Wear Pants. Frequent scenes of a dominatrix strangling a…
With Resin, director Daniel Borgman explores the beauty and the terror of escaping a dysfunctional society and returning to something more simplistic. The film is…
With the distinct air of an artist desperate to cobble together a personal story out of some old rusty parts, III is a film absolutely…
Elia Suleiman: actor, director, “citizen of the world.” It Must Be Heaven follows Suleiman as he journeys from his native Palestine to Paris, and then to New…
Our second dispatch from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (here’s our first) includes several more competition titles from this year’s Cannes that we’ve been…
Much like its titular character, Pablo Larain’s Ema is a bit of an enigma: a seemingly complex character study that offers little in the way…
Nina Hoss is an absolute treasure, one of the great actresses of contemporary cinema; her collaborations with Christian Petzold produced some of the decade’s best…
Egyptian producer Amr El-Alamy has been involved with his country’s dance music scene for years, but his debut album under the 1127 moniker is the…
Puerto Rican singer-songwriter/trap star Bad Bunny characterized his recent collaborative effort with Columbian reggaeton idol J Balvin — rather dramatically — as “a transcendental and refreshing…
For their last few releases, Japanese idol rock group BiSH has been focused on fashioning a larger sound and building a cult of personality around…
Love songs come second nature to Kiki Vivi Lily on her debut full-length, Vivid. Thinking about black coffee leads to the sweet dedication “Caffeine Holic,” addressed…
Since their self-titled debut in 2014, Fumaça Preta has had a penchant for brashly blending and utilizing the most eclectic elements of sleazy ’60s psychedelia,…