The Old Guard navigates familiar genre terrain but with enough punch to put the hetero white male actioner ethos on notice. Every big-budget action flick should be as effortlessly entertaining as The Old Guard. Written by Greg Rucka, adapted from his own comic book co-created with Leandro Fernandez, and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, The Old Guard balances its high-concept sci-fi conceit with top-notch character work, philosophical and existential musings, and absolutely kick-ass action. The film follows a roster of near-immortal warriors who have…
The summer of 1996 saw the release of three huge blockbusters that would in one way or another influence the next 20 odd years of Hollywood filmmaking. Twister revived the moribund eco-disaster picture, while Mission: Impossible gave global superstar Tom Cruise his very own (ongoing) action franchise. The…
Olivier Assayas produced a stunningly idiosyncratic series of works in the 2010s, even by his typically eclectic standards. From the mammoth Carlos to the autobiographical Something in the Air to the cryptic chamber dramas Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper, Assayas seemed to be searching for new forms, new avenues…
Aviva has the distinct feel a Personal™ film, and one that mistakes gimmickry for depth at every turn. Boaz Yakin has had a bizarre career, a textbook case (or cautionary tale) of a young, independent director struggling to finance personal films while finding steady work…
It’s perhaps presumptuous, a little reductive even, to speak of an artist’s filmography as movements or periods, particularly when they are still making new, vital work. Still, it’s useful to look at 2009’s Face as both a kind of grand summation of certain formal…
Given his relative renown amongst a certain type of adventurous, festival-savvy cinephile, interviews with Tsai Ming-liang tend to focus on either the ‘slowness’ of his films or their symbolic meanings. The short, behind-the-scenes documentary Sleeping on Dark Waters, released in 2008 but made from…
Speaking in 2008 of what was then his most recent feature, 2006’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Tsai Ming-liang said: “I did not want to make a political film. I only wanted to film the body — its suffering, sickness, loneliness, fatigue, longing,…
For a world-renowned auteur, it’s surprisingly difficult to find information about Tsai Ming-liang’s early television work. It’s not clear if this is due to general indifference or a lack of availability here in the U.S., but based on the 1991 film Give Me a…
For virtually his entire career, Abel Ferrara has seemed to occupy a liminal space in film criticism, not unlike the spaces his characters seem to so often find themselves in — seedy bars, brothels, hotel rooms, all way stations on the road to nowhere.…
Since being plucked from relative obscurity by uber-producer Kevin Feige, the Russo brothers, Joe and Anthony, have become two of the most commercially successful directors of all time. They now seem determined to emulate their former boss, albeit on a smaller scale. Creating their…
