Raoul Peck’s latest documentary certainly has timeliness going for it. There is of course a rise of authoritarianism around the world, a set of schemes…
Of Kelly Reichardt’s many talents behind the camera, historically, she is not a filmmaker you would refer to as “a trickster” — there is little…
In the last 10 or 15 years, the micro-universe that we call the experimental film world has made a decisive shift toward a form of…
How refreshing it is to see a debut film. Movies by established directors, even directors one likes, carry the burden of expectation. “Every movie is…
Benny Safdie, formerly of the eponymous directing team the Safdie brothers, makes his solo feature-directing debut with The Smashing Machine, and at a glance, the filmmaker…
Toward the beginning of Jay-Z’s “The Story of O.J.,” the rapper-cum-boardroom fixture adlibs a lament about a missed opportunity in real estate. “I coulda bought…
“We learned punk rock in Hollywood.” – Minutemen Film culture feels at times like it’s reached a dead end in the Letterboxd generation, cinephilia no…
In Kogonada’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey two attractive yet emotionally wounded people take a magical mystery tour of their complicated pasts, traversing space, time,…
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…
In Neo Sora’s Happyend, Tokyo — indeed, all of Japan — is preparing itself for a 100-year earthquake. The mood of the film’s opening scene,…
Comedies don’t get more uproarious than This Is Spinal Tap. The 1984 rockumentary has transcended its modest origins and settled into cinematic Hall of Fame…
It’s been a while since the world has been treated to a new Hal Hartley film. The writer/director’s career, which kicked off with 1989’s The…
“There is no dead matter,” the narrator’s father proselytizes in Bruno Schulz’s 1937 book Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, “lifelessness is only a…
The central tension of Caught Stealing — an ostensibly breezy “wrong man” comedic-thriller set in Giuliani-era New York City that finds our besieged main character, Hank…
The erotic thriller has encountered a resurgence in popularity of late, partly due to how well the genre plays at home, making it ideal escapism…
Can an auteur just take the piss every now and then? There’s always something distinctly perverse and ultimately scintillating about major figures going minor. It’s…
There’s an innate novelty to Ron Howard directing a film like Eden, and it’s disingenuous not to mention it. The filmmaker has by all reasonable…
Given the muted critical response and prolonged time period between its festival premiere and eventual (limited) distribution, the new Olivier Assayas film has apparently been…
While at 5’5” both he and Woody Allen are the same height, Roman Polanski stands tallest on the Mount Rushmore of reviled living filmmakers. As…
In the intro to My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 – Last Air in Moscow, director Julia Loktev states that none of the subjects or herself…