God, girlhood is tough. Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all experience of being a young girl; we all likely know this, but the diversity of youth…
In this dispatch: The Debut, For the…
A couple of weeks ago, I went to a screening of Tsai Ming-liang’s Stray Dogs (2013) at the Metrograph in Lower Manhattan. I am a…
Ava DuVernay’s 13th is one of the most influential documentaries of the 21st century, for better or worse. Released at the tipping point between the…
After having seen A Real Pain, one might ascribe a certain set of proclivities to Jesse Eisenberg-as-director: an easygoing affability, a penchant for the gentle…
Ted Fendt’s films have always had a proclivity for the esoteric; analog film stocks, long takes, conversation amongst intellectuals, 20th-century novels. Yet they remain primarily…
My Undesirable Friends: Part 2 – Exile picks up right where Par 1 – Last Air in Moscow left off: Russia is a little over…
There’s something weirdly admirable about just how shamelessly Matchbox: The Movie (yes, that is the actual title) behaves as a piece of corporate synergy/IP. It’s almost…
For the first time in his feature career, Cristian Mungiu has shifted his critical gaze from Romania to its western neighbors. A Cannes luminary par…
It would be an exaggeration to call Julia Loktev’s previous documentary, My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, a smash hit. Clocking…
Indonesian horror films are having a moment. Not only are home video labels like Severin producing box sets of the films of genre icon Suzzanna,…
In Victoria Hely-Hutchinson’s documentary Vacances, time is measured by changing bodies. As the summers roll by over the course of nine years, lines in backs…
In many respects, each of the works by Wang Bing at Cannes this year exemplifies the now-reigning axes of Wang’s interests and style. Youth (Spring)…
Fourteen years ago, Dan Sallitt burst into the indie film scene with his transgressive, funny, and ultimately sweet, The Unspeakable Act. It wasn’t Sallitt’s first…
What’s the actual value of a documentary about Elon Musk in 2026, let alone an exhaustive one that runs nearly four hours long? Like President…
Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle’s Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency opens with a bright red “WARNING. This film contains environmental destruction, explicit ecosexuality and…
Renny Harlin has no competition. That he has managed to corner the market on a genre-diverse yet highly specific form of popular filmmaking is somewhat…
In the mid 2000s, American duo Silibil N’ Brains were the next big thing in rap. The only problem? They weren’t actually American. Instead, Gavin…
In Review On Mic: The Debut by In Review Online Read on Substack
In this dispatch: zi, Sour Minnows…
Kogonada’s latest film has a “latest by Kogonada” problem. The video-essayist-turned-director burst onto the scene with Columbus (2017), a quiet, poetic meditation on friendship and…