One of the harshest realities in life is a lack of closure. The sudden death of a loved one, the dissolution of a serious relationship,…
The historical biopic is a cinematic genre defined more by its pitfalls than its merits, laden as these films can be with historical revisionism, unintended…
When last we left Alex Garland, he was busy parsing the American left/right divide and the moral responsibilities of war journalism in the phenomenally stupid…
Rhetorically, the threatening specter of militarism looms just out of frame in Makbul Mubarak’s debut feature, Autobiography, a work extrapolated from the political and ideological…
There’s a scene in Alex Garland’s Civil War, in which a man is shot in the heart and killed. The man is from Hong Kong,…
It’s always a strange experience when a self-consciously campy horror film pulls out something genuinely emotional, if only for about a minute. Christopher Landon’s Drop…
DIRECT ACTION, co-directed by Guillaume Cailleau & Ben Russell, traces the outer contours and inner lives of the persons within the ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes (the…
For a film with such a coy name, we necessarily prepare, consenting or not, to play a game of comparison: why did James Benning call…
With his latest feature, director Robert Schwentke has moved away from his Time Traveler’s Wife, Divergent, Snake Eyes-days of bad blockbuster filmmaking. Seneca — On…
A man, a woman, their bodies wrapped once in golden ornament, and then again in Klimt’s golden cosmos. He cradles her head and reaches down…
The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick Filmmaker Pete Ohs’ working methods prioritize flexibility, openness, and spontaneity. As with all of his features…
Filmmaker Pete Ohs’ working methods prioritize flexibility, openness, and spontaneity. As with all of his features so far, his latest, The True Beauty of Being…
In Kevin and Matthew McManus’ Redux Redux, Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus) vaults through an endless sequence of parallel realities, searching for a universe where her…
Writer-director-actress Grace Glowicki hasn’t yet ascended to the same level of indie prestige as Kate Lyn Sheil, Deragh Campbell, or (now mainstream power player) Greta…
After a numbing first couple months in 2025 cinema, March struck back in a big way, giving theatergoers a number of new films from idiosyncratic…
Narrative, as academics and book club members alike will tell you, is as much about process as it is about the final product. A story…
If the new indie neo-noir Gazer feels familiar, riffing on any number of classic thrillers as well as newer models like Memento and Too Late,…
Her mother’s letters come like intercepted radio transmissions, or echoes of prayers. In this state of relentless observation, pure receptivity, how could she not hear…
It’s 1987 in Oakland, California. The Golden State Warriors are trying to avoid being swept by the Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals, feuding factions…
“Everywhere animals disappear,” wrote art critic John Berger in his seminal book Why Look at Animals? Berger proposed an argument from capitalism, where the industrialized…
Miguel Gomes first began to build attention in the United States with his film Our Beloved Month of August in 2008. Since then, the Portuguese…