“I see so much, burns my eyes.” – Godflesh, “Xnoybis” (1994) “I can see, I can see, I’m going blind.” – Korn, “Blind” (1994) In…
In Tiger Stripes, Amanda Nell Eu’s debut feature, a trio of twelve-year-old girls contend with the sudden and inexplicable physical changes that occur inside one…
Co-opting traditions as metaphors for the struggles of everyday life has always been cinema’s staple, either because these traditions romanticize the world or because they…
A French drama exploring a complicated, ultimately toxic marriage told from the perspective of a desperate wife and mother, Valérie Donzelli’s Just the Two of…
Vulcanizadora Joel Potrykus offered viewers a kind of hell on earth in 2014 when he released Buzzard, a crusty cumrag of a movie about the…
Asif Kapadia has had an enviably diverse career as a director, but he’s established himself over the last 15 years — across three films, in…
Steady hums and inverted camerawork in the early moments of Justin Anderson’s psychological drama Swimming Home are strategies of disorientation, signaling its intent to unmoor…
Given the baffling and total absence of any marketing from Netflix, the fact that cult movie mainstay Takashi Miike made his return to the genre…
Enough time has passed that it’s possible for one to feel vaguely nostalgic about the myriad young adult film franchises, and would-be franchises, that sprung…
We’re in an odd place when it comes to “Covid cinema.” The time between the World Health Organization first declaring Covid-19 a pandemic in March…
Pop quiz, hotshot: if a city bus is rigged with explosives and speeding down the highway at 50mph, what is the probability that Keanu Reeves…
Late in Queendom, the queer Russian performance artist Gena Marvin (alternately styled as Jenna Marvin) struts during a go-see where a fashion designer calls her…
Baseball and film aren’t so different. Both are a national pastime, and both traditionally enforce a sort of spiritual mindfulness that is otherwise associated with…
The 1960s to early 1970s was a truly utopian moment. In the hangover of Imperial Japan, the concomitant decolonization of the “Third World,” and the…
Set in the rural Spanish countryside, Estíbaliz Urresola Solaguren’s 20,000 Species of Bees centers on a transgender eight-year-old girl who happens to be visiting family…
Appreciating the work of Barry Gerson in recent years has been somewhat difficult. His work remains noted in high regard when it’s shown and mentioned,…
It’s rare, but not unheard of, for a filmmaker to land their debut feature in competition at Cannes. Such instances include Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies…
2020’s Bad Boys for Life, the third installment of the series after a 17-year gap, was “lucky” enough to come out mere months before Covid…
Kit Zauhar should probably be one of the shining bastions of American independent cinema today. Her two features to date represent two forms of the…
There’s an immediate insecurity to The Watchers, the directorial debut from Ishana Night Shyamalan. Mina (Dakota Fanning), a flatly cynical American decamping in a dead-end…