“Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then,” Philip K. Dick wrote in A Scanner Darkly. Thom Yorke, modern music’s paranoid soothsayer, has,…
Another in a long line of action comedies made by people who can’t shoot action, Michael Dowse’s Stuber is frequently funny and buoyed by two…
To refer to action films as ‘violent ballet’ is to flirt with cliché — but there’s a kernel of truth there. Not for nothing is…
We’ve decided to do something a little different this year for our 2019 (so far) lists; instead of a formal poll, we’re using this as…
Innocence and experience materialize in the poetry of William Blake as opposing forces; the former embodied within natural objects, passions and love, whereas the latter,…
Carlos Reygadas, the provocateur of Japon and Battle in Heaven, seems to have finally matured. Some might argue that he took a step forward with Silent Light; others (me) would…
Ten minutes in and you would be forgiven for thinking that documentarian Marcus Lindeen has struck gold with The Raft, a seemingly ready-made story of pioneering…
The enduring impulse to defamiliarize — that is, to (re-)present something as novel or new — is at the heart of Peter Parlow’s The Plagiarists. Directed from…
Predicated on a plot that details a man with a troubled past finding his place in the world through his job at a warehouse market,…
This One’s For the Ladies promises to deliver the goods that a major studio flick like Magic Mike could never accomplish — namely naked, erect…
The Chambermaid, the first feature from actress-turned-theater-director-turned filmmaker Lila Aviles, centers on Eve (Gabriela Cartol), a luxury hotel cleaning lady working in Mexico City. Part of…
Early in Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s documentary, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, Morrison tells a story from her childhood about when she first came to understand…
Using animation to sensitize young audiences to the horrors in our world is not an altogether novel approach, particularly in the realm of international cinema…
An ongoing conflict that remains popular within the modern music industry is one between the signed artist and the controlling label that wishes to stifle…
Jim Jarmusch’s new horror-comedy, The Dead Don’t Die, is a missive from the other side. For one thing, it’s a zombie film in the tradition…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into some…
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is over-directed: The camera impersonates the POV of a pop fly ball, the images frequently are affected by…
Otoboke Beaver: What is an all-female Japanese punk outfit from Kyoto? Itekoma Hits: What is a compilation of new tracks plus singles and EPs from…
Youssou N’Dour has always been a huge personality — as has been expressed through both his music and his status as a public figure and…
Tricot pack a lot of musical ideas into a single song — and they unwind or abruptly pause their guitar playing, all based on a…
Maluma is currently having ‘a moment’ on the global stage — but not exactly in his home country, where he’s been having a moment since…