As its title suggests, transformation is the subject of Ashley McKenzie’s feature debut, Werewolf—a film that is at once empathetic and unsentimental. McKenzie follows Blaise (Andrew…
The name of Dotham, Alabama comes from Genesis and 2 Kings: The Dothan of the Bible is where Elisha sees his vision of flaming chariots, conjured…
The bourgeois Brooklyn of Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits is a “wasteland in the middle.” The film opens with an airplane flying away for somewhere else,…
The American Western — usually identified by its action, machismo, and its oftentimes flimsy portrayal of Native American genocide — has also always dealt with borders. The Mormons…
In the 1990s and 2000s, Kiyoshi Kurosawa emerged as one of world cinema’s most accomplished and interesting filmmakers: Cure, Pulse, Bright Future, and Doppelganger (among others) are…
The Last Family details the life of painter Zdzislaw Beksinski (Andrzej Seweryn), and wastes no time trying to catch you off guard with “shocking”humor.” An aged Zdzislaw…
The closest thing to a religious presence in The Great Buddha+ is a towering statue of the divine being that sits in a factory run…
Philippe Garrel’s career has certainly taken an odd turn. The director, who first made waves in the experimental Zanzibar Group after Mai ’68, now sits…
Beginning with a group of performers being prepped in a makeup trailer before being escorted onto a stage-managed, faux battleground, Sergey Loznitsa’s Donbass suggests a…
Commissioned as part of Nikkatsu’s line of Roman Porno reboots, and adherent to its rules, Sion Sono’s ANTIPORNO is, as its title suggests, a screed…
Scott Cooper is not a subtle filmmaker. Further proof of this comes in the first five minutes of his Hostiles, when two young children and…
Downsizing represents a departure from a filmography built on incisive character studies and black comedy; Alexander Payne imbues his latest with a broader tonal register,…
Guillermo del Toro abandons his recent efforts at delivering alt-blockbusters and curating photography for interior design catalogs with The Shape of Water. A mute-mermaid romance…
The 60 year-old Aki Kaurismäki has declared that his latest, The Other Side of Hope, will be his swan song. There’s cause to treat the excitable director’s…
Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut (she co-directed 2008’s Nights and Weekends with Joe Swanberg), demonstrates a casual mastery of filmmaking, intuitively changing emotional registers—something essential to the teenage…
With Princess Cyd, Chicago-based director Stephen Cone extends his interest in exploring the push-pull of the mind, body and spirit, with a generous emphasis on the…
“YOU NEED TISSUES FOR YOUR ISSUES” reads a woman’s shirt near the start of Akihiko Shiota’s Wet Woman in the Wind, the director’s second film from 2016,…
Ominous portents abound from the first moments of Joachim Trier’s Thelma: the film opens with the unsettling sight of a man pointing a hunting rifle at…
Richard Linklater is a talented director, but it feels like he may be running out of ideas. Last Flag Flying, based on the Darryl Ponicsan…
Alain Gomis, a French director of Guinea-Bissauian and Senegalese descent, knows the value of a good face. This is why he fills so many of Félicité’s frames…
At the start of Ruben Östlund’s The Square, arrogant Stockholm museum curator Christian (Claes Bang) is preparing to unveil a new installation pinned on a large…