Although Maria Speth is often associated with the so-called group of “Berlin School” cineastes, she might be the least internationally-recognized filmmaker of the bunch. Her latest effort, Mr. Bachmann and His Class, sees the Bavarian director back to filmmaking seven years after 2014’s Daughters,…
The Human Voice is a recent high water mark for Almodóvar, a masterful exercise in depicting both interior and exterior surfaces. In the late 1920s, the French poet, filmmaker, novelist, and playwright Jean Cocteau wrote a new play and brought it to the stage in…
It seems nearly impossible that there’s anyone in the world who isn’t familiar with Tom and Jerry — or, at least, doesn’t recognize them. In fact, the beloved cartoon cat and mouse may be the most famous slapstick act this side of Laurel &…
The World’s a Little Blurry has plenty for die-hards to like and is welcomingly relaxed, but ultimately remains a pro forma exercise with little to recommend it to the uninitiated. During the past couple years, the popstar portrait-documentary has seemed to establish itself as a…
The Future Bites is a post-apocalyptic dance party, one that grooves upon both our failures and our path to progress. Steven Wilson has been known to fans and critics alike as “The Prog Rock King.” But for the last decade, the British singer/songwriter/virtuoso’s output has…
While musical virtuosity and compositional genius are indisputable bona fides for any great artist to possess, and are indeed the key ingredients behind any number of remarkable records throughout history, such elements aren’t necessarily requisite. This is a sentiment especially true when considering a…
Within French cinema, it’s not hard to discern a tradition of films that revolve around groups of youngsters who spend their leisure summertime in Gallic coastal towns. A disparate array of cineastes, each in their own peculiar way, have dedicated attention to this meticulous…
For most of their fans and listeners, a first encounter with Sparks did not result in the assumption that the duo of Ron and Russell Mael were two Californian-born musicians. In fact, at that time, Sparks’ work bore a sound that could suggest many…
McCartney III finds the artist in a familiar playful mood, experimenting across various forms, genres, and lyrical modes. Considering the lukewarm (even arguably harsh) response with which Paul McCartney’s two previous one-man home-recorded solo albums, McCartney (1970) and McCartney II (1980), were initially received, and…
Savage State is more fetish than flesh, settling for cyphers that vaguely reflect old Western classics. Although the Western may be long past its heyday, there are still filmmakers working within the genre who are trying to redefine and revive it, through the introduction of…
