Joel Potrykus offered viewers a kind of hell on earth in 2014 when he released Buzzard, a crusty cumrag of a movie about the drudgery…
There are few genuinely pleasurable elements in Daniel Minahan’s On Swift Horses. Adapted by Bryce Kass from Shannon Pufahl’s novel of the same name, the…
In Fire Island, director Andrew Ahn and writer/actor Joel Kim Booster retrofitted Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, not just as a means to reflect the…
Michael Angarano’s Sacramento carries through it a familiar refrain of millennial angst and light comedy, exploring themes of anxiety about adulthood, personal loss, and dashed…
About halfway into Courtney Stephens’ new film Invention, a lawyer (filmmaker James Kienitz Wilkins) tells our protagonist, Carrie(Callie Hernandez, co-screenwriter with Stephens), that ideas are…
Shot on grainy 16mm and scored by loopy, synth approximations of classical instruments, Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy’s Dead Mail sets up a dialectical battle…
The middle class context of Kostis Charamountanis’ Kyuka: Before Summer’s End gives its story of a languid, European summer vacation a refreshingly dressed-down feel. Like…
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…
The opening shot ofTrương Minh Quý’s Việt and Nam depicts two men in enveloping darkness. One carries the other on his back as he trudges…
When Armand Yervant Tufenkian worked as a fire lookout in the forests of Central California, his protracted, expectant gazing into the distance made him wonder…
In Lee Anne Schmitt’s latest feature, Evidence, which premiered at the Berlinale earlier this year, the conspiracy theory adopts a progressive slant. With Schmitt’s characteristic…
Thoughtful film curation asks us to consider films in a new light. Alexander Horwath knows this better than most, having served as director of the…
A simple sprinkling of chemicals into an in-ground pool reveals more about the enigmatic figure at the center of Ted Kennedy’s B.F. Skinner Plays Himself…
It’s a sign of great writing when you can identify everything you love and hate about a character, but can’t decide whether you love or…
Alice-Heart optimistically envisions a world in which an aspiring writer’s dream of financial security through her art is still achievable — if unlikely. Combined with…
In the Mouth, the sophomore feature from Cory Santilli (Saul at Night, 2019) is everything from a film noir to a prison escape thriller to…
When 20th Century Fox bought the rights for a new anamorphic lens technology in 1952, whose origins dated back to a 1926 process called Anamorphoscope,…
As loglines go, a Chloë Sevigny-narrated, archive-heavy documentary about an infamous, largely discredited dolphin scientist has a kind of whimsical ring to it. And indeed,…
It’s hard to say how much genuine excitement there is for new Lord of the Rings properties. As the lukewarm reception to Amazon’s billion-dollar, multi-series…
It’s a bit of a shame that Kaveh Daneshmand’s new film Endless Summer Syndrome comes to us in the wake of Catharine Breillat’s Last Summer.…