2021 film fest season is underway, and with it comes a whole bunch of movies reckoning with last year’s lockdown and the still ongoing global pandemic. It’s hard to say what the value of these films will be in hindsight, hyper-topicality capable of being…
In 1951, the Minamata-based Chisso corporation was one of Japan’s leading producers of acetaldehyde, a then in-demand chemical compound that the company had begun to synthesize using a mercury sulfate catalyst. This production method would make Chisso very rich and the city of Minamata…
Broadcasting its ambitious scope with its borrowed title, Rita Hui Nga Shu’s Decameron sets out to encapsulate the tenor of current day Hong Kong following a year of COVID lockdown and mass protest against the Chinese government’s significant influence over the semi-autonomous nation. Hui…
A favorite on the international festival circuit with a robust filmography of at least 40 films made over 50 or so years, Júlio Bressane looms large as one of Brazil’s most enduring experimental filmmakers, specializing in postmodern syntheses of the literary, theatrical, and cinematic…
In the Heights isn’t going to save the theatrical experience, but at 143 minutes, will help kill some time. In development since the musical made its Broadway debut (basically), a cinematic adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights arrives this week in the U.S.,…
There’s plenty in Pretty Summer Playlist to interest listeners, but it still feels like a casual stop-off on the way to a future, career-defining project. Saweetie has been an artist on the verge for the last couple of years, having sprung up rather suddenly…
Second Line continues Dawn Richard’s transitional phase, bridging a streamlined sound with her avant-garde style. Though well-received upon release, Diddy – Dirty Money’s Last Train to Paris didn’t really make an impact proportional to its expensive roll-out and ostentatious, high-profile list of features, and about…
Sweep It Into Space is more self-aware tinkering than substantial reinvention, but it affirms that the rockers suitably understand their own strengths. At this point, it’s hard to envision the version of Dinosaur Jr. that became so fractured by the end of the 1990s.…
Georgetown isn’t the worst actor-turned-director debut feature, but it is a drab, superficial affair with little to distinguish it. Since coming to the attention of American audiences in his Oscar-winning turn as Colonel Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Christoph Waltz hasn’t wanted for…
Lei Line Eon reflects a satusfying compromise between the demands of dance-pop and the new worlds Iglooghost has imagined beyond. Since the release of Neō Wax Bloom in 2017 (via Brainfeeder), Seamus Malliagh has taken his Iglooghost project past its initial abrasive collage, finding ways…
