Hard Truths Six years ago, Mike Leigh produced his first war film, Peterloo, in which domestic unrest in 1819 led British troops to slaughter protesting…
Because of the sheer breadth of work on display — 10 programs, with an average of seven or eight films per program — the annual…
The Seed of the Sacred Fig As titles go, the latest from Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof epitomizes a rare fidelity to its subject. The Seed…
By the Stream In “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” André Bazin famously argued that depth-of-field marked a dialectical leap forward in the development…
Drowning Dry Pilgrims, Laurynas Bareiša’s previous feature, was an accomplished debut that explored a man’s inability to move past the senseless killing of his brother.…
The Sparrow in the Chimney Those who have seen the Zürcher twins’ other works, The Strange Little Cat and The Girl and the Spider, may…
Ababooned There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of André Forcier, the writer-director of the new comedy Ababooned. But he is actually one of the…
As ever, Fantasia’s Retro lineup offered a wealth of riches this year, from the familiar titles to the utterly unexpected. First and foremost is, of…
The Paragon 2024 has been a good year for nostalgia-driven genre cinema so far. Especially with the widespread popularity of films like I Saw the…
Cuckoo The first obvious parallel to Tilman Singer’s horror-thriller Cuckoo is The Shining. A family — Luis (Marton Csokas), the patriarch, Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), his…
The Code If nothing else, Eugene Kotlyarenko is a filmmaker dedicated to understanding how we live with technology, and his greatest strength is a willingness…
The Killers Between Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, the seemingly never-ending V/H/S franchise, and even Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, which premiered at the Cannes…
Let us begin as I started: in media res. Two moths, born far too late to appear in the flurry of wings that made up…
Lazaro at Night Medium-length features; a small but consistent troupe of actors in every picture; every scene just another conversation; little-to-no camera movement; and beguiling,…
Lichens Are the Way As documentaries go, the subject of plant life tends to suffer from a lack of tangible movement. Inertia, ascribed to the…
Amusement Park There is a provocation inherent in the depiction of sex as sensation: shed the vows and the assurances of deep emotional connection, and…
Jazzy Early in Jazzy, Morissa Maltz’s follow-up to her feature narrative debut The Unknown Country, a pair of best friends sit in the sunken center…
Nuked Imbued with plenty of allure and the potential for surprise, friendly get-togethers and familial gatherings in cinema sustain such an appeal that they never…
All We Imagine as Light “This city takes time away from you,” says one of the seven disembodied voices introducing us to the wide-awake-at-night Mumbai…
Anora Following Red Rocket in 2021, Anora marks Sean Baker’s second straight feature in competition at Cannes, and this one comes with reports of packed…
Oh, Canada The title gives it away. Before one even begins watching Paul Schrader’s latest, the tone is effectively set by a little writerly in-joke…