Few things are capable of riling almost everyone up collectively, and those that do typically pivot toward unambiguous moral spectacle. In the hyper-mediated 21st century,…
Grieving in cinema — often perceived as the most painful remembrance of someone whose body you can no longer possess, but whose soul (consciousness, if…
Writer-director Carmen Emmi, inspired in part by a 2016 L.A. Times article detailing a sting operation by undercover police officers at a popular cruising site…
Megalopolis. It’s the movie that just won’t die. Whatever one’s take on it upon release, and the takes were legion, Francis Ford Coppola has kept…
Unlike the two other entries in Dag Johan Haugerud’s thematically linked Love-Sex-Dreams trilogy, Dreams is not concerned with steadily paced dialogues or mature perspectives. While…
The History of Sound, from director Oliver Hermanus and writer Ben Shattuck, was met with a somewhat chilly critical reception at the 2025 Cannes Film…
There’s been a pandemic-level preponderance of hagiographic documentaries in the streaming era: David Beckham has one, Michelle Obama has one, Billy Joel got one just…
The name Duplass has become so synonymous with indie filmmaking, and Jay’s fingers (along with brother Mark) have found themselves in so many different pots,…
Much was made after the premiere of James Sweeney’s second feature, Twinless, of a steamy sex scene between his and Dylan O’Brien’s characters. Fans of…
What’s the worst thing that can come from a threesome? The storied history of cinematic threesomes and group sex rarely end well. Most often, relationships…
Leni Riefenstahl’s contribution to the evolution of film form cannot be overstated. It follows us like an apparition: look no further than Spielberg’s The Fabelmans…
Bing Liu ascribed a refreshingly unsentimental energy to the coming-of-age genre in his Oscar-nominated documentary, Minding the Gap. For his debut narrative feature, Preparation for…
Late in Angus MacLachlan’s A Little Prayer, as army veteran Bill (David Strathairn) and his daughter-in-law Tammy (Jane Levy) visit an art gallery in their…
Writing in the second issue of the Southeast Asian film magazine MARG1N, Singaporean wunderkind Yeo Siew Hua lamented the incongruence between filmic and lived reality,…
Noémie Merlant’s The Balconettes begins with a corker of an opening shot. Predominantly taking place at adjoining apartment complexes in Marseille separated by a courtyard, the film…
Director David Mackenzie has had a fascinating career; in the past, we’d likely consider him a talented journeyman, the sort of solid professional who can…
Alex Russell’s debut feature, Lurker, is a mask-off exploration of rabid stan culture taken to extremes. When ascendant pop star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) walks into…
In all the consternation over the disappearance of the theatrical comedy, a trend hastened by post-Covid viewing habits that find comedies being largely relegated to…
“Trauma horror,” or “grief horror,” has become so ubiquitous that the subgenre has infiltrated even the most quotidian commercial horror films; it seems that the…
“Welcome to the new West,” in which teenage rodeo riders with undercuts listen to cloud rap and horses are sold on TikTok. In East of…