“The mise-en-scène flexes emotion like you flex your muscles.” So said Bertrand Tavernier of Jacques Becker’s Casque d’or, an observation applicable to the latter’s all…
Lisbon plays itself in Where Is This Street? or With No Before or After, the first collaboratively directed film from partners João Pedro Rodrigues and…
Human Flowers of Flesh Bouncing back from two years worth of Covid-related disruption while still riding out some major switch-ups and art direction, the Locarno…
Bouncing back from two years worth of Covid-related disruption while still riding out some major switch-ups and art direction, the Locarno Film Festival returned in…
Since the advent of an autonomous African cinema in the 1960s, Western audiences have grown accustomed to a realist, declarative style that served to describe…
The latest film from veteran Malaysian director Woo Ming Jin (Monday Morning Glory, The Tiger Factory) is an interesting cinematic specimen. A filmmaker with sensibilities…
Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s A Woman (Une femme de notre temps) could be taken for a statement film: Juliane (Sophie Marceau) is a Parisian chief of police;…
Summering is a clichéd and ludicrous attempt at the coming-of-age tale, both thematically and tonally inept. It’s been nearly a decade since writer-director James Ponsoldt…
Like most of Yuasa’s feature-length works, Inu-Oh lacks the dimension of his small screen output, and indulges the director’s sloppiest storytelling instincts. Masaaki Yuasa simply…
Day Shift tackles familiar territory with refreshing style, breeziness, and memorably enjoyable characters, as well as delivering some of the year’s best action. Despite being a…
Mack & Rita is but the latest lame vehicle for Diane Keaton, a lazy body swap flick with little heart or humor to sell its concept.…
Free Chol Soo Lee doesn’t quite feel like a full exploration of its subject matter, but Ha and Yi’s act of excavation still ultimately proves moving.…
Patrick: So we’ve made it to the finale, Ryan. In our last correspondence I wrote of Assayas’ proclivity for compartmentalization, boxing different characters away once…
Fall is an utterly dull would-be thriller that squanders the visual possibility of its premise and trades only in inane melodrama. 2018’s Academy Award-winning documentary Free…
Aubrey Plaza remains one of our most intriguing stars, but Emily the Criminal imprisons its leading lady within anonymous old-school thriller retread. Anyone not already convinced…
El Gran Movimiento offers a thoroughly idiosyncratic and elliptical approach to the city symphony, one rooted in character and in which the spirit of the…
Laal Singh Chaddha is an abysmal Forrest Gump remake that eviscerates any sense of Zemeckis’ tonal control and bears none of that film’s emotional stakes.…
Like The Outlaws before it, The Roundup is a pretty basic cop movie, but director Ma Dong-seok spins it all into irresistible entertainment. In 2017, Ma Dong-seok, fresh off…
Please Baby Please It’s the rare film that proves capable of achieving genuine novelty, and even rarer to find one that manages to parlay novelty…
Within every poorly constructed jape, at the center of every cringe-inducing bit, lies the art of the dick joke. For the foul-mouthed comics who enjoy…