Some directors pick a lane and stay in it their entire careers. Some genre-hop, exploring different styles and methods, courting different audiences. So it’s of…
Western movies come with certain promises: of adventure and lawlessness, of chiseled jaws and gun smoke, of riding into the sunset with the horizon for…
Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado’s The Fortunate Isles begins with images of gently undulating water accompanied by a brief text providing historical context for their…
Carol Nguyen is a Canadian-Vietnamese filmmaker who has steadily climbed the ladder of the national industry since her prolific run of breakout short projects, in…
Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto forged his legendary cult status with ultraviolent, psychosexual Japanese films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Tokyo Fist, and A Snake in…
“Intergenerational trauma” is a phrase that comes up often as a therapeutic buzzword, but less often is it talked about in systemic terms. When Colette…
In 2020, HBO began airing one of the funniest and most significant docuseries in the history of the form, How To With John Wilson, in…
Jonatan Etzler’s Bad Apples takes place somewhere in the United Kingdom, most likely a studio somewhere near Bristol, though it may as well be mistaken…
In this dispatch: Wild Horse Nine, Ha-Chan…
Two depressed guys, a remote location, and loads of shit hitting the fan. Martin McDonagh doesn’t need much more to make sophisticated black comedies that…
Love buds during summer on an idyllic Korean island. At least, it does for Jin (Sim Su-bin), a 17-year-old girl native to the island. Her…
As a certain theory of Baudrillardian post-intellectualism would have it, we now live in what could be referred to as an “anti” age — an…
Hong Kong cinema is dying, or at least so says the BBC (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQd3BiwYM1E). But keen observers will note that Hong Kong cinema, like cinema itself,…
The power wielded by Thierry Frémaux and the Cannes Film Festival is such that countries can become defined, for a decade or even longer, by…
Aardman Animations has long been the last oddball left in an increasingly homogenized world of American animation. Founded by Peter Lord and David Sproxton over…
A stunning bird’s-eye view of the Pacific Northwest’s sprawling vistas appears several times over in The Weight, Padraic McKinley’s tense, atmospheric Depression-era thriller; it’s the…
During a published 2025 conversation with Barry Jenkins, Charles Burnett takes a moment to acknowledge the L.A. Rebellion. This cinematic movement, which he helped spearhead,…
A secret screening is always exciting. As part of Muscle Distribution’s recent Musclefest, a weekend of queer and transgressive film screenings at The Roxy Cinema…
In this dispatch: Trash Mountain, Idda…
The 2026 Toronto International Film Festival seems intent on making lightning strike twice. Last year, Obsession went from a Midnight Madness premiere to one of…
Volcano as woman, women as volcanoes. This simile describes the driving force behind Idda, Italian director Irene Dionisio’s deeply affecting memory film about a symbiotic…