In a less-than-apocryphal anecdote repeated throughout the French media, Jean Renoir once said, “I made La Bête humaine because [Jean] Gabin and I wanted…
Quebecois director Denis Côté is something of a cinematic explorer. Over the course of his 25-year career, he has established himself as one of…
One often encounters the (admittedly lazy) critical idea that a particular film “would’ve been better as a short,” suggesting that whatever ideas or formal…
In 2014, the Dutch filmmaking duo of Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan made a film called Episode of the Sea, collaborating with…
Whatever else one can say about the merits of experimental film, “it looks expensive” is typically not one of the usual citations. Malena Szlam’s…
When Armand Yervant Tufenkian worked as a fire lookout in the forests of Central California, his protracted, expectant gazing into the distance made him…
In Lee Anne Schmitt’s latest feature, Evidence, which premiered at the Berlinale earlier this year, the conspiracy theory adopts a progressive slant. With Schmitt’s…
Though plenty of movies have been made either focusing on the Covid-19 pandemic in a literal way, and even more movies had been converted…
“Something that starts soon and looks good.” “Okay, so what’s the plot?” Anybody who has ever recommended any work of fiction has surely been…
“Eat the rich” satires didn’t start under Trump, but it certainly feels like they’re accelerating of late. We’re less than a month removed from…
It may seem counterintuitive to use Alfred Hitchcock’s famous quote — “Drama is life with all the boring bits cut out” — to describe…
Since the release of his first short film, Heroes Never Die, 35 years ago, Alain Guiraudie has gradually built a reputation as one of…
As Shadow of a Doubt opens, Joseph Cotton’s uncle Charlie is running away from the police. He has been lying down in his cheap…
Nominated for five Academy Awards, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance has been one of the most talked about movies of the past year. Since its…
In his expansive body of work as a playwright, Harold Pinter dissected the language of power with a scalpel. Characters speak in clipped, ambiguous…
Desert of Namibia At first, Yoko Yamanaka’s Desert of Namibia seems to be just another entry in what this writer is calling Millennium Mambo-core,…
Zodiac Killer Project is, put simply, a strange undertaking. Charlie Shackleton’s expansively stripped-down documentary emerged from a thwarted attempt to adapt Lyndon E. Lafferty’s…
At first, Yoko Yamanaka’s Desert of Namibia seems to be just another entry in what this writer is calling Millennium Mambo-core, after the growing…