The sixth Herman Yau film released in the last two years is probably the strangest. Long a denizen of Hong Kong’s underground, making his name in the ’90s with a series of ultra-violent and gory Category III thrillers that had a strong element of social and political protest…
Nicole Riegel’s debut feature Holler was an unusually sharp bit of indie realism, an unvarnished look at economic depression in the aftermath of NAFTA via a dilapidated Rust Belt by way of the opioid epidemic. It’s taken a few years, but Riegel has finally returned with a sophomore film,…
Crossing opens with a title card stating that Georgian and Turkish are gender-neutral languages, with grammar not containing gender-oriented articles. We then are introduced to retired teacher Lia (Mzia Arabuli), as she visits a former student living in a shack on the beach with his family, trying to…
The clean and well-organized business environs of Sho Miyake’s All the Long Nights seem to come straight from the catalogue; the city skyline casts an ambient evening glow; each member of the professional class is wearing an in-style ensemble; the soundtrack is a recurring theme of anodyne electronic…
Confusing glibness for frothy irreverence, Greg Berlanti’s Fly Me to the Moon primarily caters to two long-underserved segments of the audience: those yearning for the reemergence of the mid-sized, movie star-driven romantic comedy and the conspiracy theory-curious. A speculative history of the events leading up to the July 1969…
Lazaro at Night Medium-length features; a small but consistent troupe of actors in every picture; every scene just another conversation; little-to-no camera movement; and beguiling, inventive narrative structures that make otherwise simple movies anything but — these are the artistic hallmarks that have granted director Hong Sang-soo a…
Medium-length features; a small but consistent troupe of actors in every picture; every scene just another conversation; little-to-no camera movement; and beguiling, inventive narrative structures that make otherwise simple movies anything but — these are the artistic hallmarks that have granted director Hong Sang-soo a well-deserved cult following.…
ESSAYS WORLD WIDE WEB OF DREAD: HORROR FROM THE YEAR OF THE WEB, 30 YEARS LATER FEATURE BY: Mike Thorn CRAFT AS POLITICAL PRAXIS OR: FUCK THAT, FREE PALESTINE — MASAO ADACHI & KOJI WAKAMATSU’S RED ARMY/PFLP: DECLARATION OF WORLD WAR FEATURE BY: Vicky Huang A SURVEY OF…
Lichens Are the Way As documentaries go, the subject of plant life tends to suffer from a lack of tangible movement. Inertia, ascribed to the slow-moving, still hearkens back to the animate, whereas vegetative existence — although a step up from the mineral — takes stillness to be…
What is the difference between a filmmaker and a filmer? Watching archival films assembled from home movies, it’s difficult to escape the long shadow of Jonas Mekas — a man who did not view his work as artistic, but compelled by a “necessity” to move forward, to keep…
The premise is familiar: three young women spend their holiday by the sea, relaxing, flirting, and drinking; Jacques Rozier fertilizes this unremarkable narrative turf with a freewheeling spirit and melancholic edge in his second feature, Du Côté d’Orouët, premiering at 2024 FiDMarseille in a new 4K restoration. Made…
Actor-turned-director Monia Chokri’s The Nature of Love opens with a philosophical debate. In a brown-toned home, inflected with ember and golden highlights, old friends discuss the question of romantic love. Children scream in the background, and wine is being spilled as they speak frankly and intimately about the…
Primarily set in a single, sparsely-dressed location and embracing archness and theatricality, Niclas Larsson’s Mother, Couch could be mistaken for being based on a stage play. The film, in actuality adapted from the novel Mamma I Soffa by Swedish author Jerker Virdborg, unpacks a contentious family dynamic set off by a…
Late in Mary Chase’s Pulitzer-winner, Harvey, the theme of the play is delivered by — who else? — a salty cab-driver. The aptly-named E.J. Lofgren starts his speech with characteristically regional bluster (“Listen, lady, I been drivin’ this route 15 years”) and details the changes he sees in…
Amusement Park There is a provocation inherent in the depiction of sex as sensation: shed the vows and the assurances of deep emotional connection, and all that remains is pure, pulsating libido. Such libidinal currents, placed before the camera’s eye, have caused offense on two diametrically opposed counts:…
One of the hallmarks of rapid-onset social change is a general sense of confusion. We often understand that some sort of intervention is absolutely necessary, but just as often we face the fact that we really don’t know what to do. What does productive resistance look like? What…
Richard LaGravenese’s (P.S. I Love You) new Netflix rom-com A Family Affair — which offers viewers an easy-sell reunion for A-listers Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron, 12 years after their last (and categorically different) on-screen collaboration in campfest The Paperboy — quite clearly intends to offer something of…
It’s incredibly rare in our super-connected, social media-fueled media ecosystem for a new film to arrive with no notice, no awareness of which to speak, and definitely no fanfare. But a couple of weeks ago word started to spread on Twitter about a straight-to-VOD action film starring a…
Read a review of any of Angela Schanelec’s feature films and you’re bound to encounter adjectives like “elliptical,” “confounding,” and “obscure.” It’s true — the German filmmaker has a peculiar approach to storytelling, favoring all manner of narrative obfuscation while honing in on movements, gestures, and that most…
As Catherine Breillat’s first film in a decade, Last Summer scans initially as an altogether more mannered affair for the director. Known for her sexually frank inquiries into desire, taboo, and transgression, Breillat’s latest drops us into the upper-crust world of Parisian couple Anne (Léa Drucker) and Pierre…