The Night House might only be the latest horror film to supplant subtext with text and dread with loud sounds, but notable for being among the…
The Meaning of Hitler is a bold, risk-taking work from a confident directorial duo. Adapted from Sebastian Haffner’s The Meaning of Hitler, a book that the…
Wildland suffers for its underdeveloped characters and themes, but its sense of intimacy stands out in a genre often tilted only toward style. Watching Wildland, the…
A former student of Michael Haneke’s, now operating under the Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion banner, Peter Brunner seems primed (and positioned) to be Austria’s next internationally…
For many depressing reasons, it’s not surprising to see a film like The River in competition at Locarno in 2021: it’s helmed by an artist…
Training for riots in blue and red gear, the police force, as depicted in Il Legionario, are made to look like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em…
The Sacred Spirit, Chema García Ibarra’s feature-length debut, asks a weighty and fitting question for these unstable times: Is there an unknown force in the…
Snuck into Locarno’s Histoire(s) du cinéma section (generally reserved for restorations and works explicitly about film history), husband/wife directing duo Riccardo Spinotti and Valentina de…
Luzifer A former student of Michael Haneke’s, now operating under the Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion banner, Peter Brunner seems primed (and positioned) to be Austria’s next…
Habit sounds like fun, should be fun, wants to be fun; it’s more like Hell. Bella Thorne plays a Los Angeles party girl who masquerades as…
Cryptozoo is both technically and thematically potent, but it’s the film’s third act which cements it as an exceptional and surprising animated work. In Cryptozoo,…
There’s a perverse gothic sex comedy located somewhere in Jakob’s Wife, but it’s buried under reams of flat, deadening horror comedy. The work that made Barbara Crampton…
If ever evidence was needed of art criticism’s role as a passing functionary in the workings of cultural amusement and consumption, one need look no…
Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It sounds like the name of a failed American sitcom from the ‘50s, and true to that shape, this comedy/horror hybrid…
Unlike the booming fame and splendor of Tokyo’s Shinjuku and Shibuya districts, sister neighborhood Shimokitazawa is most well-known among the young locals for its trendy…
Ohku Akiko’s Hold Me Back is, like her 2017 film Tremble All You Want, a portrait of a lonely young woman whose inner life manifests…
Limbo Photography is the first sign that Soi Cheang’s Limbo is different from the director’s past work. Though his return to Hong Kong was bound…
Demonic suggests a few novel, fascinating twists to the horror template, and then runs away from them as fast as it can. In the six years…
Ma Belle, My Beauty is a lovingly realized and mature look at polyamory, but it fails to probe its emotional core sufficiently. Polyamory is a subject…
Last August, fresh from the premiere of time-bending action thriller Tenet, Tom Cruise giddily proclaimed: “Big movie. Big screen. Loved it.” Nolan’s movie may have…