Few manga adaptations are as alive as Sho Miyake’s Two Seasons, Two Strangers. There are no bright, poppy explosions of color or wacky antics within…
There may not be a scientific definition of a “Sundance” movie, but Cole Webley’s debut feature Omaha could go some way to inscribing one into…
Successful parody requires affection. The reason why something like Young Frankenstein works – and—why anything directed by anyone named Friedberg and/or Seltzer categorically does not…
One of the biggest British hits when it was released in the country last year, I Swear has finally made its way to U.S. theaters.…
What a strange thing, the Olympics. In 1896, with the tools for globalization just barely on the horizon, the world (or, rather, Greece, leveraging its…
When a long-suppressed work of art finally surfaces, it generates unexpected conceptual ripples. We understand that the work was made in a particular time and…
It’s never easy admitting that you’re getting old. As we round the corner into the mid-2020s, an entire generation has to reckon with the idea…
No, it’s not the Brendan Fraser vehicle, nor is Boris Karloff back from the dead; Tom Cruise, mercifully, is nowhere to be found. An original…
In this dispatch: After Dreaming, Selegna…
It’s hard to do justice to the images in Christine Haroutounian’s After Dreaming through words alone. Their quality is of a blinkered, bleary kind, as…
At this point in film history, the city of Los Angeles has been photographed in absurdum. However, the particular neighborhoods in Anouk Moyaux’s Selegna Sol…
Can there be any reward for tolerance in an intolerant world? Fatih Akin’s Amrum opens with the arrival of German refugees to the titular German…
Two things can be true at once — a simple fact of life many folks still struggle to accept. Even with his reputation perpetually tarnished…
Tarik Saleh’s Eagles of the Republic, the final installment in the Swedish-Egyptian filmmaker’s Cairo trilogy following 2017’s The Nile Hilton Incident and 2022’s Cairo Conspiracy,…
A legend like Kiyoshi Kurosawa might not need any introduction, but what you find out when talking with him is that he’s very different from…
In 2018, Saudi Arabia opened its first movie theaters in more than three decades. Just a few short years later, production began on the $150…
It’s almost always fun when a movie hops genres, changing up the structure and tropes you thought it was operating under until you realize it…
Isolationism breeds a variety of affects that spur those involved toward indelibly discrete action. In many, Sho Miyake’s latest, Two Seasons, Two Strangers, courses the…
In this dispatch: Agon, Donkey Days, Fantasy…
Over a small jetty, a cruise ship waits to dock and its passengers get ready to dismount. The process is unrushed, methodical; a throng of…
In German, Kai Stänicke’s debut feature Trial of Hein bears the title Der Heimatlose, which translates as “the stateless person” or “the homeless.” This is…