Living as we all are in a post-Romantasy world, certain chain bookstores (RIP Borders) have been financially reinvigorated. This, of course, has simultaneously resulted in the ruination (no, not an overreaction) of poetry and fantasy as respectable, substantive genres of literature — to different degrees, of course; let’s…
As the planet’s future grows increasingly precarious and uncertain, films exploring a post-apocalyptic landscape are certainly having their moment in the sun, particularly ones featuring high-concept monster premises. This year alone saw the release of Arcadian, a low-budget thriller starring Nicolas Cage, E.L. Katz’s Azrael, and, more notably,…
Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie are very serious about film. Film itself, that is, and particularly the consumer-ready format of Super-8 that at one point gave millions across the globe the opportunity to make home movies affordably. They run Australia’s nanolab, where they’ve been processing, selling, and teaching…
Lauded cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto — credited for Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon within the same calendar year — makes his directorial debut with Pedro Páramo, adapted from Juan Rulfo’s 1955 novel. A seminal and celebrated work of magical realism that reportedly shocked Gabriel Garcia Marquez out…
In animator Jérémy Clapin’s live-action feature debut Meanwhile on Earth, Elsa (Megan Northam), sister of astronaut Franck (depicted by Yoan Germain Le mat, voiced by Sébastien Pouderoux), finds herself adrift and grieving after Franck becomes lost in space and presumed dead. She spends her time working at the…
Xu Haofeng makes movies for people who enjoy and understand the finer points of martial arts choreography. His best-known film work (he’s also a novelist) is probably the screenplay for Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster, in which Wing Chun master Ip Man navigates the various schools and styles of…
Lithuanian myths, folk songs, and hallucinations guide Deimantas Narkevičius’s film Twittering Soul. Set in the late 19th century before the Lumière Brothers began making films in France, the film roots itself in the countryside of Southern Lithuania. Vast shots of bucolic greenery sweep across the screen, accompanied by…
Director Mikio Naruse never garnered the acclaim of Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, or Akira Kurosawa. The absence of a clearly legible “minimalism” (a reductive descriptor of Ozu’s style, for what it’s worth), elaborate long takes, and sweeping historical epics from his oeuvre hasn’t quite given Western cinephiles easy…
In our modern world, love and cynicism often seem to dance in a delicate balance. In an age where skepticism frequently overshadows sincerity, it’s easy to question the existence of love stories that transcend either the commonplace or the schmaltzy. We are bombarded with tales of fleeting romances,…
Our multiplexes and home theaters desperately miss the erotic thriller. Every few years, one or two squeaky clean PG-13 studio productions will don the mask of the erotic thriller: recently, The Voyeurs, Sanctuary, and even Challengers. (The latter two at least flash a little bit of sex appeal…
Writer-director David Moreau has set himself a tall task with his new film MadS, namely how to rejuvenate the moribund zombie sub-genre while also justifying the use of the annoyingly prevalent one-single-long-take gimmick. Regarding the later, we’ve discussed before the limitations of this particular formal gambit; for every…
Frat lives fall flat. That, at least to the outsider, is a reasonable conclusion to draw from the many unwelcome instances of its bearers disrupting our quotidian sensibilities: humiliation and hazing rituals gone wrong, casual misogyny substantiated by serious sexual transgression, and even the empty beer cans and…
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 tell her how pretty her birth name is. In fact, Mikey Madison’s character prefers to be called Ani, and it plays into the…
Brad Dourif, known for his madman characters and many cinematic iniquities, is, it’s easy to forget, capable of staggering eclecticism. His career, unimpeachable, daring, perfectly weird, is based on an non-judgmental approach. He’s taken the shape of men both strange and normal, believable and absurd, painfully human and…
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 Wife (2009), About Time (2013), Time Freak (2018), and, more recently, Needle in a Timestack (2021). The title of John Crowley’ latest entry…
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 have emplaced the notion of history as their main focal fascination, at least in a more explicit sense. History, in its grander discursive…
Rumours 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 cinema, a body of work so unique and axiomatic that, were his films more widely known, they would have by now settled…
Revolving Rounds In Johann Lurf’s thrilling 2019 film Cavalcade, a 35mm camera records an apparent long take of a six-foot phenakistoscope water wheel constructed by Lurf. Lit by a strobe light, the device spins, kicks up water, and induces a trancelike frenzy of animation, as the camera’s 35mm…
It’s been hard for me to describe Jinho Myung’s debut feature Softshell (2024) ever since it premiered at New/Next Film Festival on the first weekend of October. The logline I’d reach for is too basic: a half-Thai brother and sister navigate early adulthood in New York City in…
One approaches the release of Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice with equal parts morbid curiosity and dread. Mired in what was almost certainly expected controversy since its premiere at this past spring’s Cannes Film Festival — including toothless threats of lawsuits, a lukewarm reception from skittish distributors, and even…