Boiling Point resists the temptation toward food porn aestheticizing and instead builds a tightly-wound thriller from the anxiety of a working-class existence. Perhaps more so than any other type of workplace, a restaurant is a painstakingly intricate piece of machinery. Each cog needs to be…
Drive My Car is the latest proof that Ryusuke Hamaguchi is thinking much bigger than most of his contemporaries. Ryusuke Hamaguchi has fast become one of the more dependable filmmakers regularly working the international festival circuit, ever since he broke big at Locarno in 2015…
The First Wave isn’t much more than an ornamental object, pointlessly self-assured in its distasteful aesthetic manipulations. The compartmentalization that contemporary documentary tends to engender — divorcing thematic intent from aesthetic misguidedness — is undoubtedly exacerbated in the time of the COVID-19 film. Considering everything…
C’mon C’mon is a distinctly inauthentic, contrived viewing experience more likely to have viewers chanting “go away, go away.” Next only to dead wives, doomed love triangles, abusive parents, and being “the chosen one,” precocious, quirky children might be the single most annoying and commonly…
I Was a Simple Man is a wildly contradictory affair, rife with unresolved ideas and a deluge a thematic material that find little purchase. “Maybe we don’t deserve to go so easily” — this line is offered in response to the gruesome account of a…
Long Promised Road’s focus on Wilson’s present day adds dimension to his story, adding resonant beats to a beloved old tune. Brian Wilson, the singer-songwriter who was the main creative force behind the Beach Boys for the better part of the 1960s, is legendary…
The Power of the Dog gains considerable power in its back half, but Campion ultimately leaves too much simply twist in the wind. The narrative of The Power of the Dog is folded in half: two brothers who each dominate one half of the film,…
Bad Luck Banging borders on the didactic, but smartly allows its archetypes to conflate and contradict, turning its sketchbook designs into a platform for equal-opportunity ire. Radu Jude’s films are an acquired taste, his unconventional brand of humor droller than Wes Anderson, more off-kilter…
Zeros and Ones’ study of violence and digitality is the latest proof that Ferrara thrives in the spaces between knuckleheaded obviousness and total abstraction. A supreme sculptor of the effects of spiritual and physical isolation, Abel Ferrara has made a good number of films…
by Daniel Gorman Film Horizon Line
Mother, I Am Suffocating. This is My Last Film About You. | Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
Mother is both brutal and poetic, a contention with self and homeland, and an introduction to one of contemporary cinema’s most exciting voices. When Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s film This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection was released earlier this year, this critic mistakenly identified it…