Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho has narrowed his scope with Aquarius, after the hustle and bustle of his last feature, Neighboring Sounds. Filho gives his latest drama—a…
From the opening credits, something seems off about Under the Sun, and the “truth” it projects. “My father says that Korea is the most beautiful country in…
Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey, was always going to be a thing of beauty. In fact, the only visual surprise is just how seamlessly the…
At the start of American Honey, Jake and Star, its two lead characters (played by Shia LeBeouf and newcomer Sasha Lane, respectively) meet and somehow…
A director of compassionate, deeply human portraiture, typically of decent people navigating the currents of their respective worlds, director Kelly Reichardt manages to ratchet up the…
Kate Plays Christine offers an intriguing setup at the expense of an ultimately unjustified exploitation. Director Robert Greene invites actress Kate Lyn Sheil to perform…
Werner Herzog’s latest documentary demonstrates the master’s ability to both simulate an evenhanded exploration of multiple view points and assert his own, unwavering allegiances with…
Comprised of almost nothing but movie clips and interview footage, De Palma features none of its subject’s formal innovation, and so it’d be easy to write…
In Tobias Lindholm’s A Hijacking, the filmmaker staged a Somali pirate hostage negotiation in real time. The film was all business, keeping any opinions about morality and…
A stain of blood remains on a shower window after a night of debauchery, a son miles away from home tells his mother, “I love…
Like someone’s old love letters or the keepsake wilted flowers of a first love, Carol has the feel of a kind of attic picture that’s…
Where to Invade Next is really a whole bunch of different movies, but just about each one of them is incisive and humane. Michael Moore’s approach…
The biggest surprise of Brooklyn is how determinedly sweet it remains to the end, its period vibrancy bordering on the genteel. In navigating the push-pull narrative of Eilis…
Joy begins with an on-screen dedication to “daring women” and a scene from a hypothetical cheesy soap opera in which two women argue about the…
Period homages or allusions to Hollywood’s past can be diminished without a new perspective to contextualize them. This is to say, reviving a given style can be limiting without some…
The re-emergence of the culinary arts as part of the zeitgeist has been an evolving narrative for the past decade, most noticeably found on the…
Ma (Brie Larson) and her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) live in Room, the backyard shed of a man who has kept Ma (real name…
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 stories…
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 gonna…
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 colored…