Larrain is given massive assists courtesy of Stewart and Spencer’s A/V artists, but everyone is let down time and again by the film’s wildly unsubtle script. With…
The Souvenir: Part II plays out largely as protracted epilogue, a fumbling, detached work that negates the first film’s powerful ending. Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s 1778 painting…
Obayashi’s final film is an apporpriately madcap, delirious submersion into the very heart of cinema, and is an articulation of its power in a despairing…
The French Dispatch is the latest Wes Anderson film to be utterly encumbered by the director’s propeller-beanie twee and flattened storytelling chops. For better or for…
After Asako I & II, Hamaguchi’s latest can’t help but feel like something of a step backward into less aesthetically daring filmmaking. “Once Again”, the third…
Bergman Island is an intentionally ephemeral, frictionless bit of meta-fiction, conceptually justifiable but all the more frustrating for it. Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island is, quite literally,…
Titane admirably reconciles opposites and piles on texture and sensation, but ultimately reveals itself far too content to trade only in cliché. What is the role…
Wife of a Spy can be too reserved in stretches, but is ultimately fully invigorated by its monumental conclusion. Though over three decades into his…
The Card Counter takes a similar shape to many of Schrader’s Lonely Man films, but this latest can’t quite overcome the template and thrive on…
Isabella is another bold effort from Piñeiro, and a indication of the direction his particular art is headed. Isabella, the latest feature from Argentine writer-director…
Flag Day’s aesthetic cribbing and histrionic character result in a floundering film that feels too desperate by half. The realm of biography occupies an uneasy…
CODA’s personal storytelling and intelligent subversion of its middlebrow formulae make for a surprisingly affecting viewing experience. The title of Siân Heder’s sophomore feature is…
Ema is Larrain’s best film yet, a technical marvel and narrative step forward that hopefully anticipates the tenor of his next stretch of work. It hasn’t…
Annette is somehow both Carax’s weirdest and safest film, a letdown even as its vision remains bold. One-time enfant terrible Leos Carax, foremost contemporary purveyor…
Tsai’s latest, like the director’s best works, revels in the unexpected, sublime textures of daily routine and understated tenderness. Those familiar with Tawainese auteur Tsai Ming-liang will…
Stillwater tiptoes around complex, potentially rich discourse without ever committing to any real ideological principle. Who is Tom McCarthy, really? Once a semi-successful TV actor, he’s…
Her Socialist Smile is yet another landmark work from Gianvito, more intimate than his usual but no less fiercely and formally intelligent. John Gianvito’s Vapor Trail…
The Woman Who Ran continues Hong’s run of affecting personal exorcisms, here crafting a memorable protagonist who is equally mysterious and familiar. Hong Sang-soo’s excoriating relationship…
Siberia takes on nothing less than the very nature of reality, and is an emphatic statement on the necessity, not luxury, of creativity. Relating to an…
Summer of 85 is a weightless trifle, built on an unsophisticated narrative and featuring a patently ridiculous ending. The trailer for Summer of 85, the…