At first blush (and the next few, for that matter), actress Brittany Snow’s directorial debut, Parachute, which premiered in the Narrative Feature Competition at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival, seems lab-created for a certain other, Park City-set fest. It’s a drama cut through with some messy romance and…
With 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, director Adam Wingard became one of the few Western filmmakers to realize that the kaiju movie is more a graphic exercise than a narrative one. Over the many years and films and iterations of all of these characters, they’ve been avatars for all…
Slackers have been the bread and butter of indie cinema since 90’s mainstays like Clerks and Slacker helped jumpstart the whole modern American independent film scene in the first place. For young artists and bohemians drawn to filmmaking, that stultifying sense of dissatisfaction and aimlessness key to the…
Russell Crowe plays ex-cop Roy Freeman in the mystery thriller Sleeping Dogs, a film that feels like it was made dispassionately by a committee of business school graduates trying to squeeze every last nickel out of beleaguered fans of such receding specters as Memento and Se7en. The film…
How old were you when you recognized that the villain of Ivan Reitman’s original Ghostbusters was the Environmental Protection Agency? Obviously, it’s the text of the film — no parsing of hidden meaning required — with the government agency personified by sniveling bureaucrat Walter Peck (played by perennial…
Part of a generation of First Nations filmmakers that also includes Rachel Perkins (Radiance, Bran Nue Dae), Warwick Thornton (Samson and Delilah, Sweet Country, The New Boy) and Wayne Blaire (The Sapphires, Top End Wedding), Gamilaroi filmmaker Ivan Sen has, for over two decades, been an important figure…
To the uninitiated, written descriptions of Radu Jude’s cinema might give the wrong impression of his films as dizzyingly dialectical exercises requiring a complete working knowledge of the last century of Romanian politics, 20th-century philosophers and artists, and, perhaps, a good deal of patience. While it’s true that…
A curious counterpoint to Celine Song’s much-lauded Past Lives may be found in Mimang, Kim Tae-yang’s feature debut, and the relative prestige of the former — also a first full-length effort from its filmmaker — speaks, perhaps, to the way introspection has been mediated and even altered through…
Irish Wish marks the second collaboration between Janeen Damian and Lindsay Lohan, after their lukewarm yet distinctly feel-good Falling for Christmas. Far from the wintry Yuletide atmosphere of that film, the director-star combo here moves to the emerald summertime of Ireland. Irish Wish follows Maddie Kelly (portrayed by…
A favorite of the Cannes selection committee for the last 20 years or so, Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner has enjoyed a semi-embattled relationship with attendees of the festival for just as long. Well suited for the Un Certain Regard category under which most of her feature films have…
Writing about Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus is a challenge, not least because of its stark minimalism. I can’t recall a concert film as ascetically committed to documenting little more than the intimate dynamic between a musician and their instrument. Produced six months before the iconic composer died of…
Larry Fessenden has co-starred in nine films between his last directorial effort, 2019’s Frankenstein riff Depraved, and his latest feature, Blackout. An elder statesman of modern low-budget horror, Fessenden keeps very busy, having produced or otherwise shepherded films by the likes of Jim Mickle, Ti West, Mickey Keating,…
Cinephilia is a dangerous game. Follow the director’s rules closely, and you are, more often than not, rewarded with insider access. These are reference points that the filmmaker usually calls attention to by placing them on the same (fore)ground as the film’s narrative; it’s their way of honoring…
There’s a difference between a breakfast of scrambled eggs (with sausage, tomatoes, and mixed peppers) and a proper omelet. The combination of the same ingredients — perhaps with a few extra spices thrown in the mix — makes all the difference between a sufficient (even good!) multi-dish breakfast…
Arriving less than a month after the release of Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s queer crime-comedy Drive-Away Dolls, Love Lies Bleeding, from British filmmaker Rose Glass, signals a mini-trend of high-profile, lesbian-noirs hitting theaters in early 2024. A late ’80’s-set bit of nastiness awash in sex, a pervasive air of…
In his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach was not considered one of the great composers. He was known for his virtuosic ability, but his vast oeuvre remained largely unheard and unsought. After his death, his music dwindled into obscurity: certain keyboard pieces remained in general circulation, though generally for…
The Book of Solutions Michel Gondry feels like an artist from another time, even if that time wasn’t very long ago. The only movie he directed with any real staying power, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, has long been claimed by the Charlie Kaufman oeuvre, and it’s…
The staff of In Review Online have come to the collective decision to abide by the international call from Strike Germany. We will be withholding coverage of the Berlin International Film Festival on the grounds that its institutional backing from the German government is marred by the latter’s…
We return to the year 10,191 for Dune: Part Two, the cleverly named second half of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal, beloved work of sci-fi literature. When last we saw Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), he’d survived an otherwise completely successful ambush attack on his family’s rule…
In the AI-drenched bizarro world that is 2024, the premise of Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, released 20 years ago this spring, seems almost ludicrously simple. We’re so used to being fed marketing doublespeak about improving and optimizing our future selves that the flip side…
Danis Tanović might be the most personal, visually compelling, and thematically thoughtful political auteur working in European cinema. And regrettably, his name will largely go unrecognized by even the most globetrotting and well-watched of cinephiles. With very few exceptions, Western film lovers have failed to properly appreciate Tanović’s…