Schaumburg, Illinois is a nexus of American suburban living. The Chicago suburb is an affluent village that sits 25 miles outside the city proper; its…
Escaping from the claws of corporate homogeneity and shared cinematic universes is Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, almost certainly the strangest film…
When people talk longingly about escaping to a deserted island, they probably don’t imagine forgoing human contact altogether. Peace and quiet is one thing; total…
In Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, grief bums around like a third wheel. It is needy, morose, fickle; the sort of guest that says they’re not…
Director Michael Dowse is no stranger to the rough-edged antihero, but perhaps he’s a bit less in touch with the management of thematic conciliation when…
There is a sort of integrity in making a film as doggedly mediocre as Without Blood. Adapted from Alessandro Baricco’s 2002 novel, Senza Sangue, by…
In 2020, HBO began airing one of the funniest and most significant docuseries in the history of the form, How To With John Wilson, in…
During a published 2025 conversation with Barry Jenkins, Charles Burnett takes a moment to acknowledge the L.A. Rebellion. This cinematic movement, which he helped spearhead,…
The novelist Salman Rushdie never wanted to become the world’s symbol for free speech against oppressive regimes. He just wanted to be a writer, and…
There’s no shortage of films that tackle generational differences, particularly parental figures and their often limiting expectations for their children. From Zac Efron in Disney…
There’s a certain irony to Padraic McKinley’s new film being called The Weight. Set during the Great Depression and starring Ethan Hawke as one of…
The title of the world’s oldest living person changes hands with inevitable frequency, with long-standing centenarians perpetually fading away to make room for the next…
In Haitian Vodou, “turning someone into a zombie is like putting them back into slavery… forever.” This is among the opening lines of Maya Annik…
There aren’t enough filmmakers, perhaps, still afraid of Virginia Woolf. Tina Gharavi, whose film I Am Nasrine was smuggled out of Tehran before being nominated…
Whether she was shooting her sexual experiences with lovers, the social and political climate of cultural feminism, or an ultimately fatal battle with ovarian cancer,…
Even when Jorge Luis Borges wrote screenplays, they weren’t necessarily “Borgesian” — not, that is, distilled into the particular pleasure of following one of Borges’…
Mumblecore never went away. Arguably the most influential movement in American cinema during the 21st century, it birthed careers for Mark and Jay Duplass, Greta…
Rafael Manuel’s debut feature Filipiñana should go down as one of this decade’s great sweaty films. The humidity of its Philippines setting is touched with…
Tucked into his cozy country home in County Wicklow, Ireland, legendary film director John Boorman — of Point Blank, Deliverance, Zardoz, and Excalibur fame —…
“As Rotterdam burns, they study Sanskrit verb forms,” is how one iteration of the famous proverb goes. This version of the maxim targets scholars with…
It makes sense that an author like Enid Blyton might enjoy a resurgence in popularity in times like these. War, political turmoil, the looming threat…