Combining absurdist horror with social realism, Good Manners takes the werewolf fable and deconstructs it within the context of modern Brazilian society, taking into account…
In Xavier Legrand’s Custody, viewers may get the sense that instead of the domestic drama this has been billed as, what they’re in fact watching is something much closer…
Araby opens with a teenage boy biking home to take care of his sick younger brother, his parents nowhere in sight. He spends the next…
Denis Côté’s A Skin So Soft is the kind of documentary that lives and dies by its subject: here, the niche subculture of bodybuilding as seen…
Discovering Sara Driver’s No Wave narratives You Are Not I and Sleepwalk during an Anthology Film Archives retrospective of her work several years ago was…
As InRO’s Lawrence Garcia put it, the best thing about film festivals is seeing something that will completely surprise you — and he and I definitely…
Michel Hazanavicius has somehow made a relatively successful career out of feebly imitating established genre tropes or broadly recreating old forms of filmmaking, with The Artist being…
Above all else, Andrew Haigh has proven himself a deeply empathic artist; whether tackling 21st century queer identity (Looking, Weekend) or the devolution of a decades-long relationship…
Ben Russell, previously known for travelogues and semi-ethnographic hallucinatory trips, plays his latest feature straight: Good Luck is a good deal longer than most of his previous films, but…
It’s often a fool’s errand to go searching for themes in a given festival program, but if there’s a common thread running through Future // Present, it’s…
Aaron Katz’s glossy, very surface-conscious mystery opens in high style with an upside-down shot of twilit palm trees, cool vaporwave beats easing the transition to…
Allure, the first film by Carlos and Jason Sanchez (Montreal brothers with nearly identical fine art photographer CVs), spins a thrillery setup concerning a kidnapping, obsession, and…
As its title suggests, transformation is the subject of Ashley McKenzie’s feature debut, Werewolf—a film that is at once empathetic and unsentimental. McKenzie follows Blaise (Andrew…
The name of Dotham, Alabama comes from Genesis and 2 Kings: The Dothan of the Bible is where Elisha sees his vision of flaming chariots, conjured…
The American Western — usually identified by its action, machismo, and its oftentimes flimsy portrayal of Native American genocide — has also always dealt with borders. The Mormons…
In the 1990s and 2000s, Kiyoshi Kurosawa emerged as one of world cinema’s most accomplished and interesting filmmakers: Cure, Pulse, Bright Future, and Doppelganger (among others) are…
The Last Family details the life of painter Zdzislaw Beksinski (Andrzej Seweryn), and wastes no time trying to catch you off guard with “shocking”humor.” An aged Zdzislaw…
The closest thing to a religious presence in The Great Buddha+ is a towering statue of the divine being that sits in a factory run…
Beginning with a group of performers being prepped in a makeup trailer before being escorted onto a stage-managed, faux battleground, Sergey Loznitsa’s Donbass suggests a…
Commissioned as part of Nikkatsu’s line of Roman Porno reboots, and adherent to its rules, Sion Sono’s ANTIPORNO is, as its title suggests, a screed…
With Princess Cyd, Chicago-based director Stephen Cone extends his interest in exploring the push-pull of the mind, body and spirit, with a generous emphasis on the…