Julia Murat’s Pendular is film filled with impressive compositions: it opens with its central couple — credited as He (Rodrigo Bolzan) and She (Raquel Karro) —…
The year’s second major film addressing the particular evil of church-sanctioned gay conversion therapy, Boy Erased (based on a memoir of the same name) was…
Distant Constellation focuses on a Turkish assisted living facility, whose barren halls visualize the tragic loneliness afflicting the residents, members of a forgotten generation whose…
“17 years old/I’m in this country alone/No I.D. or passport/I’m the only livin’ John Doe” moans Sheck Wes on “Jiggy on the Shits,” a song that specifically describes…
“They love to hate, they love to hate / How ironic, I know / She loves my long hair and my tattoos / How iconic,…
An artist’s legacy in hip-hop is a fickle thing, constantly changing depending on the public’s perceived notion of who’s a “legend” or who’s “washed.” For…
The Suicideboys’ mythos — and the group’s amassed discography of 42 EPs/mixtapes all since 2013 — is daunting, to say the least. The duo of…
Brockhampton is a self-described “boyband” of Texan misfit-musicians — lead and founded by the openly gay Kevin Abstract — who made waves in the independent hip-hop scene…
Do we really need another portrait of a frustrated sad-sack young man, even if it comes in the form of one of Lee Chang-dong’s typically…
You know what? Maybe Chief Keef shouldn’t take that “stuntin’ break” after all — or, to put it more appropriately, in light of how great The Cozart is,…
In 2011, right-wing extremists claimed the lives of 77 innocent civilians during the deadliest act of terrorism in Norway’s history. Paul Greengrass’s dramatization of this event in 22…
Director Antonio Mendez-Esparza’s Life and Nothing More is a minimalist portrait of mother-and-son strife, but that emotional center is contextualized by a larger exploration of…
Originally conceived of as a gallery performance, Albert Serra’s Roi Soleil is more than a filmed theatre piece or a mere record of a performance (although…
These days, Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang seems deeply interested in the tiny variations of approach available to him in presenting the images of his subjects…
No one would likely suggest that the dialogue and interactions in Ted Fendt’s previous films (comprising three shorts and 2016’s 61-minute debut feature, Short Stay) were naturalistic, or…
With Caniba, the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Laboratory duo Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor turn their typically assured lens on Issei Sagawa, a Japanese man who was deported from Paris in…
Directing debuts from established actors are often cause for skepticism or outright disappointment. (Not everyone can be Charles Laughton.) And so it is with Paul…
Jia Zhang-ke has long been a master of conflating the personal and the political, charting large societal upheavals with a surprising intimacy. Ash Is Purest…
The 2018 New York Film Festival just wrapped over the weekend — which means it’s curtains for 2018’s fall festival season (I’m so sorry). Our first…
Perhaps the most surprising thing about First Man, director Damien Chazelle’s latest, is how little the director tries to narratively subvert the limited trappings of…
Over half a century into Frederick Wiseman’s storied career, the legendary documentarian’s interest in systems — that is, how they function in relation to the…