In the debate between mimesis and anti-mimesis, Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear proffers a third possibility — that life is art in organic action. It’s perhaps inaccurate, and is certainly reductive, to suggest that these are three answers to the same question, as Levine…
On its surface, Dea Kulumbegashvili’s debut, Beginning, immediately recalls Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light. It’s an obvious connection, as both films are set within cloistered religious communities that rarely see representation on screen; Light takes place in a traditional Mennonite colony in Mexico while Beginning…
The Forty-Year-Old Version deploys a charming lead but never manages to coalesce its many and varied influences. Within the relative glut of 21st-century hip hop cinema, The Forty-Year-Old Version is a curious fit. Unlike so many other such films, it’s not a biopic, and while…
Steve McQueen has always been a fine purveyor of potentially rich and powerful narratives, but he’s been much less consistent as their steward. His first three features (Hunger, Shame, and 12 Years a Slave) all focused on singular individuals locked in combat with dominant cultural…
Kajillionaire is both July’s most restrained and most maudlin work to date There’s no denying that Miranda July’s particular idiosyncrasy shares DNA with a number of forgettable, mid-aughts indie comedies, but her weirdo shtick, then and now, is too outré to be regarded as stereotypical…
Enola Holmes is a cartoon. Or perhaps the problem is that it should have been. The film follows the title character (played by Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown), Sherlock Holmes’ teenaged sister, as she attempts to solve the mystery of her missing mother and…
Inconvenient Indian succeeds where so many other documentaries fail — namely, in justifying its existence as a visual text. At first, Michelle Latimer’s documentary exhibits the character of a thesis film, and in fact opens with a bit of introductory, hyper-literate voice-over from Thomas…
The final film in Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart’s informal Irish folklore trilogy (following The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea), Wolfwalkers is also arguably their most gorgeous effort to date. Set during Oliver Cromwell’s barbarous colonization of Ireland (obvious subject matter…
Director Kornél Mundruczó knows how to open a film (see the otherwise underwhelming White God, for example), and with Pieces of a Woman he sets out to obliterate his previous benchmark. After quick, separate introductions to Shawn (Shia LaBeouf) and Martha (Vanessa Kirby), a…
Emir Ezwan’s debut feature, Soul, is part of an emerging Malaysian cinema heavily composed of genre fare. Made for roughly $80,000 USD, the horror film is clearly a labor of love and, on the strength of its slick jungle compositions and dark, dynamic vistas,…
