Post-Dardenne social realism all too often functions as safe-enough filler material for international film fest lineups, but director Kim Se-in rather confidently finds her own…
Kinetic films that depict their restless women protagonists either in quenchless quest for their dreams or in non-stop endeavor to clear various obstacles should be…
You’d be forgiven if you mistook Shô Miyake’s new film, Small, Slow but Steady, for a documentary about the forest floor’s invisible undergrowth, or maybe…
Far from being a new director or a new film, Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s third feature Once Upon a Time in Calcutta speaks to a director…
The Apartment with Two Women Post-Dardenne social realism all too often functions as safe-enough filler material for international film fest lineups, but director Kim Se-in…
Reflection lacks the scale of Vasyanovych’s Atlantis, but its brutalist Wes Anderson-esque tenor makes for a difficult yet still hopeful study of war. While Ukrainian writer/director…
Inbetween Girl manages to avoid the tepid dramatics of so many teen-screen films, but too often succumbs to bouts of preciousness and self-conscious affectation. The problem…
There’s something to be said for the narrative and structural principles of incoherence, attempting to evoke a fractured place, culture, or time through a jumble…
The Innocents When the director of an arthouse horror film about supernatural children readily admits he was inspired by his own experiences of first-time parenthood,…
RRR once again proves that Rajamouli and co. are virtually unmatched in viscerality and clarity of visionary spectacle. S.S. Rajamouli’s latest epic RRR begins with perhaps…
Fiddler’s Journey isn’t much more substantive than your average love letter doc, and suffers from an ill-conceived late-film detour. Daniel Raim’s chronicling of the pre-production and…
Bubble is an altogether gentler anime product for Araki, aiming for the emotional stakes of films like Your Name, but is slight to the point of…
Los conductos is a disarmingly personal film that is also masterful in its understanding of the way artifice interacts with realism. Camilo Restrepo has made a…
The Earth is Blue As an Orange relies on an immediacy that only somewhat masks its flippant, fleeting nature. It’s difficult to approach a work that’s…
Saturday Fiction is a formally enterprising and experimental work that delivers as an exercise in digital esotericism. Set amidst the spy games of Allied and…
Memory is a pleasantly riveting watch even as it remains a one-trick pony that’s too reliant on shallow deep state caricature. “If I’m here, it’s…
Hatching is an intelligent, visceral film that avoids metaphor-heavy horror pitfalls and delivers an impressive creature feature. The coming-of-age horror film is a staple with good…
9 Bullets is a startlingly bad film, one that struggles to reach even basic competence in any individual or collective regard. In his recent book Why…
Hello, Bookstore is soothing, cozy documentary but one entirely devoid of stakes or storytelling thrust. Hello, Bookstore opens with footage shot in the early weeks of…
The Sound of Violet is a deeply out of touch, frequently offensive bit of nonsense that is best left unwatched. Phrases like “unbelievable” and “batshit insane”…