In town to open the 34th Singapore International Film Festival with her debut feature, Tiger Stripes (2023), Amanda Nell Eu settled into a cafe at…
Playing exactly how one expects a film inspired by a book of photography might, Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders is a series of striking images of a nascent…
Sadly, the title of Ariane Louis-Seize’s debut feature tells you virtually everything you need to know about the film itself. The Quebecois horror-comedy Humanist Vampire…
When Russia invaded Ukraine in the winter of 2022, it was widely observed how accepting bordering nations were of millions of displaced Ukrainians fleeing the…
It’s an awkward phase, that post-graduation purgatory where possibilities seem endless, endlessly limited, or both — or so I’m told, I never went to college…
From VR to AI and NFT, from Metaverse to cutting-edge computer games and interface technologies, it’s quite clear that both our existential and psychological states…
Nuked Imbued with plenty of allure and the potential for surprise, friendly get-togethers and familial gatherings in cinema sustain such an appeal that they never…
The playful vignettes of various cheesemongers, makers, and even competition judges in Ian Cheney’s Shelf Life are much like the dairy product itself — each…
Writer-director Qiu Yang’s first feature film, Some Rain Must Fall, begins during monsoon season. Cai (Yu Aier) is in the midst of finalizing her divorce…
The dominant perspective in Pixar’s films about childhood — most significantly, the Toy Story entries and Inside Out — is that of the parent trying…
In the opening moments of Firebrand, we meet Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), a fervent reformer preaching against the Church of England during King Henry VIII’s…
Since 2011, animator and director Don Hertzfeldt has focused on one topic: memory. In the tripartite It’s Such a Beautiful Day, the loss of memory…
Director Jang Jae-hyun’s new supernatural thriller Exhuma covers a lot of ground during its two-plus hour runtime; what begins as a detailed procedural gradually gives…
“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…