Exemplified once more by the recent Donda rollout, Kanye’s productivity subsists off embattled energy, his “Soon as they like you make ’em unlike you” ethos…
Blue Bayou’s reach for authenticity is entirely undermined by its empty, saccharine sheen of melodrama. In its broad strokes, writer-director Justin Chon’s Blue Bayou seeks…
Malignant isn’t a start-to-finish success, but its final 30 minutes solidify it as one of the wildest, weirdest horror films in some time. In interviews and…
Titane What is the role of “transgressive” art in an ostensibly liberal society? Or, to put it another way: In a cultural context where the…
Reflection While Ukrainian writer/director Valentin Vasyanovych has been making films for a number of years, his breakthrough didn’t come until 2019’s Atlantis, which garnered awards…
Wife of a Spy can be too reserved in stretches, but is ultimately fully invigorated by its monumental conclusion. Though over three decades into his…
Little Girl misunderstands where its focus should be and strips away most of its ambiguity, leaving little to really contend with. In the opening scene…
Another year, another TIFF. Due in part to its situation in the calendar year relative to other major international fests, and in part to its…
The Card Counter takes a similar shape to many of Schrader’s Lonely Man films, but this latest can’t quite overcome the template and thrive on…
Kate isn’t doing anything new from an action-narrative perspective, but slick choreography and gleeful violence helps this girlboss brutality go down smoothly. Kate, a female…
TMBMZM oddly tilts toward authenticity rather than camp, to disappointing results. The Manson Brothers Midnight Zombie Massacre is a title that promises a lot. For…
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is famous for its portrayal of an inscrutable facial expression, that indelible half-smirk-half-smile that…
Striding Into the Wind One of the central tensions in cinema is that of authenticity: The inherent power of this medium comes from its depiction…
The Alpinist suffers a bit thanks due to a lack of access and more substantive commentary, but the frequent breathtaking feats captured are memorable enough…
Martyrs Lane is the latest horror film built around a metaphor for trauma in which boredom and cliche trump any catharsis. There’s a palpable sense…
Hiruko the Goblin Shinya Tsukamoto: unapologetic termite artist, jack of all cinematic trades — besides merely directing all of his feature-length freak shows, he also…
Fucking with Nobody is a radical, playful bit of meta-comedy that executes its risky conceit with aplomb. For her sophomore feature, Fucking with Nobody, Finnish director…
Azor is a fascinatingly oblique quasi-thriller that grows in unsettling power across its runtime. Andreas Fontana’s Azor is a fascinatingly oblique quasi-thriller, carefully organizing a deceptively…
Diaz’s signature long-takes here work more to push the material into territory of fatalism rather than substantive political observation. Lav Diaz knows violence. The director’s…
“Imagine there’s no heaven / It’s easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us, only sky.” On October 11, 1971, John…