Whenever a film critic, especially one who has probably only played a very limited number of games in their life, argues that a film is…
There’s a moment near the end of the first act of The Black Sea when Khalid (Derrick B. Harden), a Brooklynite stranded in the port…
Eternity and ephemerality are frequently taken to be worlds apart, but they each belie a wistful attitude toward the enterprise of life. In Ghost Cat…
Humphrey Bogart was one of the most prolific and widely admired actors of the Hollywood studio system, and though he is still known for the…
“This city takes time away from you,” says one of the seven disembodied voices introducing us to the wide-awake-at-night Mumbai city in the lyrical opening…
Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn’s (L for Leisure, Two Plains & a Fancy) new film Dream Team boasts two assets not often paired together in…
Despite boasting one of the cringier on-the-nose titles of the year, one that on its face would seem to promise overt sentimentality, painter and installation…
Now with three feature films under his belt, Tyler Taormina has become our premier chronicler of a certain kind of suburban dreamscape — opaque, occasionally…
The perfect film for anyone who’s ever pondered the existence of a gift shop at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is consumed…
Lithuanian myths, folk songs, and hallucinations guide Deimantas Narkevičius’s film Twittering Soul. Set in the late 19th century before the Lumière Brothers began making films…
There’s a scene early on in Conclave, Edward Berger’s twisting, surprisingly pulpy thriller about the election of a new Pope, in which Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence…
Robin Wood begins the introduction to his 1965 book Hitchcock’s Films with a question: “Why should we take Hitchcock seriously?” It’s a deceptively simple query; as…
Claymation, most readily identified for its craggy, almost comedic artificiality, can, in fact, most truthfully express our deepest and, at times, darkest emotions. The four…
A smog of displacement and destiny envelops the opening minutes of La Cocina. As a homeless man on the streets of Manhattan waxes poetic about…
It wouldn’t be a stretch to claim that Daaaaaalí!, Quentin Dupieux’s 77-minute portrait of the surrealist artist, is a biography of some kind. Nor would…
Frat lives fall flat. That, at least to the outsider, is a reasonable conclusion to draw from the many unwelcome instances of its bearers disrupting…
The new documentary from Brett Story (The Hottest August) and Stephen T. Maing (Crime + Punishment) is an imperfect film, in that it often raises…
One approaches the release of Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice with equal parts morbid curiosity and dread. Mired in what was almost certainly expected controversy since…
Throughout Nora Fingscheidt’s film The Outrun, we are thoroughly stuck in Rona’s (Saoirse Ronan) head. Fresh out of rehab, Rona has returned to the Orkney…
Girl meets boy. Boy meets girl. Love blossoms. Reality sets in. The pandemic hits. They grow apart while remaining tethered to each other in explicable,…