At the core of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s cinema is a deep investment in the rift formed between an independent Taiwan and a possessive mainland China. Tender…
Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg opened with Greta Gerwig’s character, a young woman working as a wealthy man’s personal assistant, trying to merge into traffic, saying “Are you…
In an overhead shot, a 4×4 full of jihadists crawls down a cramped village alleyway, where it’s greeted by a lanky woman in flowing…
Many of the interactions in Two Days, One Night occur on opposite sides of doorways, liminal spaces echoing protagonist Sandra’s (Marion Cotillard) temporary suspension…
During the 1960s, painter Margaret Keane’s artwork, largely depicting children with outlandishly large eyes, was sold under the name of her husband, Walter, who…
If you haven’t seen Karel Reisz’s 1974 The Gambler before seeing Rupert Wyatt’s new Mark Wahlberg-starring remake, don’t watch it in close proximity to…
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep opens on the smoldering aftermath of a brushfire, gray smoke rising off the charred earth as the wind blows…
Many consider Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel Inherent Vice to be a minor work; the New York Times’ review dubbed it “Pynchon Lite.” Choosing a seriocomic…
It would be a mistake to overstate the similarities between the events presented in Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan — a series of non-violent protests gone awry in…
Noted experimental filmmakers Ben Rivers and Ben Russell have a lot more in common besides sharing a first name. Their respective oeuvres are filled…
Ostensibly a biopic about pioneering mathematician Alan Turing, The Imitation Game’s opening credits play out under a recording of King George VI’s 1939 radio…
Casanova, that notorious 18th-century lady-killer, ravenously consumes food during every one of Story of My Death’s first several scenes. Shortly thereafter, he defecates it…
With The Homesman, Tommy Lee Jones’s torch-carrying efforts on behalf of the tried-and-tested beauty of the American West continue to be moving. Taking into…
Producer-writer-director-editor Josephine Decker’s debut feature Butter on the Latch is simultaneously vague and direct in its intent. Decker mixes styles from shallow focus and…
Opening with a tableau of a woman dressed in red, standing over her kitchen sink with her back to the camera, Robert Greene’s (Kati…
Part of the fun — and the discomfort — of watching Nightcrawler is in gradually adapting to the rules of its nocturnal world, a sprawling network of photojournalism…
Though it touches upon the comedy of remarriage film, the family vacation film, the bourgeois critique film, and the male-id exposé film, Force Majeure…
Whether or not one ultimately finds David Fincher’s recent film Gone Girl feminist, misogynist, or somewhere in between, it is thrilling to see a…