“Filmmaking is a battle we can’t lose,” says a possible investor to director Tetsuo (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) in Lowlife Love. If that’s the case, then call…
A film about the love affair between an anthropomorphized goldfish (Fumi Nikaidô) and an aging writer (Ren Ôshugi), Gakuryû Ishii’s Bitter Honey is less surprising…
Love in the Buff screenwriter Luk Yee-sum aspires to normalize the conversation around young, female sexuality through a recognition that, as with any other interaction, the healthiest…
Mr. Six is a Chinese fusion of John Wick and Taken that’s also director Guan Hu and star Feng Xiaogang’s Gran Torino: Spurred on by the abduction of his son and the…
Martial-artist and filmmaker Sammo Hung, responsible for some of the greatest films in the genre’s history (Eastern Condors, Pedicab Driver, Encounters of the Spooky Kind,…
Ryan Coogler’s Rocky spin-off Creed begins, evocatively, in a juvenile corrections facility. A handsomely framed shot depicts a line of African-American boys filing through a…
The biggest surprise of Brooklyn is how determinedly sweet it remains to the end, its period vibrancy bordering on the genteel. In navigating the push-pull narrative of Eilis…
Combining what some have called his propensity for “arthouse miserablism” in films like Babel or Biutiful with a newfound fetish for conspicuous formal audacity (see…
Period homages or allusions to Hollywood’s past can be diminished without a new perspective to contextualize them. This is to say, reviving a given style can be limiting without some…
Pinastri, a scientific term given to a specific moth family, is the safe word for S&M lovers Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna),…
Blackhat opens with a CG-animated representation of a block of data infiltrating a computer network. A tiny glowing grid sliding along a superconducting surface with…
In a season where all films are trying too hard to either be award winners or box office cash cows — or both — Darren…
But let’s not fool ourselves into believing that the original TRON was ever anything more than a curious novelty with some then-groundbreaking special effects. The story…
There’s a scene about halfway through Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s tepid The Tourist during which an Italian policeman appears to doubt Johnny Depp’s mistaken identity…
Early critical response to Joel and Ethan Coen’s True Grit, a faithful adaptation of Charles Portis’s western novel, has been mostly positive, yet many mask…
Boxing is a sport dependent on mental strategy, despite what its surface-level brutality suggests. In The Fighter, the physically tough but emotionally stricken welterweight boxer…
With Vengeance, Johnnie To once again makes art of action. In a stylish Hong Kong thriller held captive by the stoic auspices of French king-of-cool…
It probably wasn’t a difficult decision to have Nigel Cole direct Made in Dagenham, given that he was an ambassador of female solidarity just seven…
Dilettante Steve Antin proves the adage that persistence counts for more than talent in Hollywood. His resume is a scatter of acting, writing, production, and…
“Weapons are an extension of my body,” muses superstar terrorist Illich “Carlos” Ramirez Sanchez (Edgar Ramirez), signifying both the physical and mechanical prowess inherent to…
Tony Scott is frequently written off as an arty hack, the kind of filmmaker who dashes off chintzy, salacious action pictures with a dollop of…