In an old interview with David Ehrlich, filmmaker and critic Kent Jones recalls a conversation with Arnaud Desplechin in which the great French director told…
At the beginning of Lucrecia Martel’s first feature-length documentary, Our Land (originally titled Landmarks), we’re presented with satellite images of Earth. From this zoomed out…
Can there be any reward for tolerance in an intolerant world? Fatih Akin’s Amrum opens with the arrival of German refugees to the titular German…
Tarik Saleh’s Eagles of the Republic, the final installment in the Swedish-Egyptian filmmaker’s Cairo trilogy following 2017’s The Nile Hilton Incident and 2022’s Cairo Conspiracy,…
Existing at the nexus of fashion, popular music, and horror, David Lowery’s Mother Mary, a multi-genre whatsit, proudly wears its pretentiousness on its (couture) sleeve.…
Against the notion of cinematic auteurism, it has sometimes been thought enough to respond that, after all, cinema is a collaborative medium to which certain…
When is the ideal time to learn your significant other’s most shameful secret? The new comedy The Drama argues the best time is “never” and…
“Listen Mr. Mersault, You’re not the first nor last to kill an Arab. You won’t be faulted for that. Trust me, I know the French…
Marc Jacobs is everywhere. In Marc by Sofia — the Sofia of the title being Coppola — the Lost in Translation director makes a case…
One would be hard-pressed to identify a film director on the world stage who has done a better job of articulating our historical moment than…
In the face of ongoing, ever-intensifying genocide, nuance is arguably out of order, and so agit-prop wisdom becomes a creative’s necessary juice. But for Israeli…
An 11-minute standing ovation at Cannes can’t be called a total disaster. Nevertheless, Alpha arrived at the 2025 London Film Festival trailing a, shall we…
Seeking to reduce a filmmaker’s chief thematic preoccupation is usually a waste of time, for any one worth their stuff works in a storm of…
No matter how common the surroundings or how ordinary the story may be, a Christian Petzold film always catches the viewer by surprise. His films…
Ever since his debut fiction film My Joy (2010) premiered in the main competition of Cannes, Sergei Loznitsa has been a repeat visitor to the…
There is a scene, not long into Werner Herzog’s Ghost Elephants, that may explain the purpose behind not only this movie, but the entire catalog…
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! brashly announces in its opening title card that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein on a dare, and that’s an ethos the film itself has…
For the most part, the documentaries that have made Gianfranco Rosi’s reputation have a firm basis in geography. Sacro GRA (2013) explored life in Rome…
After nearly half a decade of putting out two movies per year, Hong Sang-soo has slowed from a full-on sprint to a jogger’s pace, releasing…
Allow this writer to save you some time: Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC, a concert film made in the wake of the eponymous director’s newfound (and lucrative)…
A surprisingly faithful retelling of the Ealing Studios comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (although one has to dig around in the film’s credits to confirm…