There are few rings of cinematic hell worse than bad broad comedies. Watching Rasmus Merivoo’s Alien 2 or: The Return of Valdis in 17…
Arriving at the Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) in Estonia this year, I found myself witness to a brewing controversy. Deaf Lovers, a new…
“We don’t want to scare people,” a director says at the beginning of Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man. It’s the set of a workplace…
As Lav Diaz’s films have shrunk in reception, they have only grown in eclecticism and importance. A decade on from Norte: The End of…
Slackers have been the bread and butter of indie cinema since 90’s mainstays like Clerks and Slacker helped jumpstart the whole modern American independent…
“Toys are too preoccupied with fun,” Alejandro (Julio Torres) declares in a cover letter to Hasbro during the opening of Torres’ debut feature film…
It’s become a cliche to point out the cliche of the arthouse festival darling that amounts to essentially two hours of a marginalized person…
A gangster movie, a story of post-colonial alienation, a broad satire of academia, and a romantic comedy, Mexican director Fernando Frías’ latest film, I…
With its title referring to the scar left behind by a suicidal person who hesitates and fails to deliver a mortal wound, Selman Nacar’s…
“Camels are adored by their jockeys,” a Bedouin camel herder sings out to the snow-covered desert at the beginning of Abu Bakr Shawky’s Hajjan.…
A 32-minute queer cowboy melodrama paid for by Yves Saint Laurent, Strange Way of Life is Pedro Almodóvar’s second English-language short and, like The…
It’s hard to be too critical of a work like I’m A Virgo, which so clearly has its heart in the right place. It’s…
It’s 2023, and while movies barely exist anymore, franchises certainly do. Hence John Wick: Chapter 4, a film that brings the whole John Wick…
White Noise regrettably sees Baumbach prioritize shallow spectacle and satire over human passions. “The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation,” eminent Car Crash…
Armageddon Time is far from Gray’s best and can occasionally risk eye-roll liberal apologia, but the director is ultimately too smart a filmmaker to…
“Telling the truth can be dangerous business,” sing Lyle (Warren Beaty) and Hawk (Dustin Hoffman) in Ishtar (1987), words that seem especially true for…
Cousins’ latest The Story of Film entry largely trades in hyperbole, platitude, and bland observation, rendering it little more than a 150-minute trailer binge. For…
It’s the stuff of a million shoddy programmers from Hollywood’s golden age and twice as many cheap exploitation films from the heydays of the…