Horror and comedy share much in common. Both are affect-driven genres that hinge on build-up and release while helping us navigate through cultural taboos. For…
In her 2019 memoir, In the Eye of the Wild, French anthropologist Nastassja Martin grapples with the aftermath of a near-fatal bear attack in the…
Allan Dwan’s happenstance journey into Hollywood is marked by a myriad of right time-right place encounters that allowed the young engineer to become one of…
Like an oak presiding over what came before and what might follow, Kier-La Janisse’s documentary study Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched (2021) roots folk horror…
Conspicuously absent from the fall festival circuit, Fatih Akin’s Rhinegold bowed at the Filmfest Hamburg back in October 2022, and is only now getting a…
Seemingly willed into existence by hungry fans, the Deadpool movies may not have been great action films or even superhero installments, but at their best…
The Killers Between Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, the seemingly never-ending V/H/S franchise, and even Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, which premiered at the Cannes…
Between Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, the seemingly never-ending V/H/S franchise, and even Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival…
Norris Wong’s first feature film, My Prince Edward, was one of the better Hong Kong indie movies of recent years. It starred singer/actress Stephy Tang…
“In the end, they swallowed up the nation as a whole.” The last lines of the epilogue intertitle of Kim Sung-soo’s 12:12: The Day roll…
The A24ification of world cinema continues apace with Brief History of a Family, a dreary Chinese genre exercise that premiered earlier this year at Sundance.…
Growing up is a complicated mess. That has always seemed to be the primary message behind most — if not all — coming-of-age films about…
At their core, and among other things, great documentaries draw viewers in by focusing on compelling subjects and structuring their stories in captivating ways. Whether…
Although his name may be unfamiliar to some, Chinese director Wei Shujun has already made several feature films, including 2021’s Ripples of Life, which also…
Where does a song come from? And how does it happen? In November 2021, driven back inside to obsess about air particles again thanks to…
Nearly the entire 90-minute runtime of Tim MacKenzie-Smith’s Getting It Back: The Story Of Cymande is filled with the titular band’s music. This never feels…
In his cryptic new film Whale Bones, Takamasa Oe attempts a “how we live now” exploration of disaffected youth and the aimless ennui of modern…
Without further context, one could be forgiven for conflating Skywalkers: A Love Story with yet another Star Wars spinoff. Donning the Jedi’s patronymic and draped…
In the canon of the silent cinema, only once has it been truly silent. The purifying beam of Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc,…
Passion projects like Kubi almost always deserve greater appreciation and more careful interest than a mere evaluation of their qualitative values can merit. Takeshi Kitano…