Depicting larger-than-life subjects has always posed some representational challenges: inch the individual too perfectly into focus, and one runs the risk of hagiography, but impose…
There is no winning in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) — not really. You can reach the end of a campaign or defeat something very nasty,…
Jean-Claude Rousseau may be one of the best-kept secrets in world cinema. But fortunately, in recent years, the word seems to be getting out. Although…
Abbas Kiarostami’s 2008 film Shirin is constructed entirely of closeups of faces as spectators react to a film playing in front of them. But the…
Luke Fowler’s latest feature film reflects a slight shift in his creative project, something that might not be immediately apparent even to longtime admirers of…
Most of La Bonga takes place in darkness; just flashlights serve as key lights while voices (voiceovers? diegetic?) guide the shaky frame to an invisible…
While global headlines are presently dominated by Russia’s ongoing onslaught of imperialist atrocity, Alexander Abaturov’s Paradise turns its eye to the country’s east, where casual…
At times, Laberint Sequences, the new short film by Blake Williams, feels a bit like an experimental feature, despite being only 20 minutes long. That’s…
In her remarkable 2021 book on James Benning’s Ten Skies, critic and scholar Erika Balsom remarks that the film “at once rewards a close attention…
The ghosts of the Vietnam War now outrank the survivors. After fifty years, it may as well be ancient history, with Ken Burns’ recent documentary,…
An overhead shot tracks a car’s snaking glide down a mountain road as a turquoise lake looms below. Credits appear, and the score begins to…
Despite the French New Wave being widely considered obsolete by the 1980s, all of its directors remained active, finding varying degrees of success in adapting…
Our contemporary understanding of film noir tends to valorize the intricate psychological dimensions present within its frames of black and white — dimensions which lend…
Walk Up is Hong Sang-soo’s trickiest film since The Day After (2017), and his most intricately structured effort since The Day He Arrives (2012). With…
Viewers these days are fortunate that movies about nerdy science kids, time and space travel, and all manner of other adventure-fantasies are no longer a…
As any “junkie” can tell you, at a certain point, Oxycontin stopped being Oxycontin, and many Oxy users in the United States turned to heroin.…
Documentarian of the personal, Su Friedrich’s latest film, Today, begins with a story. A friend reads aloud a passage from The Odyssey, in which Odysseus…
It’s 2023, and while movies barely exist anymore, franchises certainly do. Hence John Wick: Chapter 4, a film that brings the whole John Wick series…
Best known as one of three credited writers on Joseph Kahn’s 14-minute Power Rangers (2015) short — alongside the director and James Van Der Beek,…
In his landmark 1993 work Culture and Imperialism, historian Edward W. Said observes, “peoples being conscious of themselves as prisoners in their own land… returns…