After spending his early career transfiguring the aesthetics of early Jean-Luc Godard and other works from the French New Wave’s starting days for his own…
Since his 2011 debut feature Snowtown, Justin Kurzel’s films have displayed a laser-like focus on rough, sometimes savage men and the environments that foster their…
Six years ago, Mike Leigh produced his first war film, Peterloo, in which domestic unrest in 1819 led British troops to slaughter protesting civilians. At…
One of the more indelible sequences in Joshua Oppenheimer’s breakthrough documentary, The Act of Killing, features one of its subjects, the Indonesian paramilitary thug Anwar…
The title gives it away. Before one even begins watching Paul Schrader’s latest, the tone is effectively set by a little writerly in-joke of changing…
As titles go, the latest from Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof epitomizes a rare fidelity to its subject. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, quite possibly…
In William S. Burroughs’ novella Queer, Lee takes Allerton, the object of his all-consuming desire, to see Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus. “In the dark theater,” Burroughs writes,…
The last image of Jean-Luc Godard’s last film, Scénarios, is one of the most heartbreaking in his long, storied, notorious, glorious, defining, essential career. It is of…
Engaged in a lengthy process of simultaneous expansion and refinement, the indefatigable Hong Sang-soo seems to practice a new, yet knowingly familiar, alchemy with each…
Andrea Arnold is not without talent, but she has some of the worst instincts of any allegedly major director. Take Fish Tank, for example. Not…
Analyzing a Wang Bing is never such a small feat, regardless of length; and Youth (Homecoming), the final entry in the director’s Youth trilogy, premiering…
Clint Eastwood’s latest project Juror #2 is rumored to be his final film after nearly 70 years in the entertainment industry and having directed 40…
Almost 50 years into a career enriched and enlivened by restless motion, Robert Zemeckis tries his hand at total stasis with his latest film Here.…
Wang Bing films have a reputation for their difficulty, but the opening film in his Youth trilogy, Youth (Spring), managed to be surprisingly varied and…
Before making her feature film debut with 2019’s Atlantics, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop produced a series of poetic short films, all of which explored a…
The title character of Sean Baker’s Anora notably does not go by that name for most of the film, and appears uncomfortable when male characters…
The title of A24’s newest tragicomic offering, We Live in Time, recalls the gleeful cliché of romance films from the decade past: The Time Traveler’s…
It’s possible to make the claim that, from a certain point in his career, the works of the veteran (and outcast) Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov…
Since his out-of-nowhere debut feature Tales from the Gimli Hospital in 1988, Winnipeg-based director Guy Maddin has become synonymous with a very particular brand of…
There are no shortage of hagiographies about Saturday Night Live (nee, Saturday Night), which is currently celebrating its 50th season on NBC, including countless books — most famously James…