She Dies Tomorrow is a fever-dreamy reflection of modern existential anxieties. Rodney Ascher’s 2015 documentary The Nightmare follows multiple subjects that have experienced bouts of sleep paralysis, a real phenomenon involving the sensation of being lucid but with an inability to speak or move. It’s not…
Hirokazu Kore-eda feels distinctly uninterested in his own material here, a sentiment sure to be echoed by audiences. Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda has consistently shown an affinity for highlighting the often fractured dynamics that exist within families both real and manufactured, from 1995’s Maborosi to 2018’s Palme d’Or-winning Shoplifters.…
Relic is a nifty work of ambiguous horror built on the duality of destruction and creation. Relic, the debut feature from Japanese-Australian director Natalie Erika James, is a haunted house drama with a thrillingly cerebral core. Edna, the family matriarch (Australian theater veteran Robyn Nevin),…
The Ross Brothers’ latest is a uniquely heady, tonally dexterous work that operates at the intersection of documentary and fiction. An official selection of this year’s Sundance U.S. Documentary Competition, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets chronicles the final business day of a Las Vegas dive,…
Lewis Klahr’s latest example of collage cinema is his most explicitly political, and perhaps creative, yet. Over several decades of consistent output, collage artist Lewis Klahr has been recontextualizing the past to make sense of the present. A student of avant-garde titan Paul Sharits,…
The director’s latest work is built on quiet moments of spiritual and professional reflection, a Fellini-esque inward gaze at the artist and his art. Originally premiering in the Special Screenings section at 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Tommaso marks Abel Ferrara’s return to narrative filmmaking…
Liberté is gorgeous and confounding, a Brechtian presentation of passion, tedium and perversion. Albert Serra’s Liberté continues the director’s penchant for placing human rot, literal and metaphorical, within the garish trappings and knowing artifice of re-creation. Presented here are the wanton sexual and violent revels of…
Kelly Reichardt’s latest treads familiar thematic territory, but her minimalist leanings here lend toward something altogether more expansive. First Cow is a film of beginnings and endings (and thusly also of returns). Kelly Reichardt‘s second period film marks the return of the 4:3 aspect ratio, once…
Bacurau‘s initial promise of a raucous genre celebration ultimately devolves into a shallow approximation of those pleasures. There’s an undeniable sensuousness to the surfaces of Bacurau: from the music choices (including a John Carpenter composition, speaking volumes to the film’s influences), to the mixture of…
The Wild Goose Lake is a thrilling neon noir and incisive commentary on the degradation that comes with rapid economic boon. There’s a particularly pleasing synesthetic joy to watching a movie that values style as much as substance; Drive’s shimmering neon palate immediately comes to mind,…
