Artist and critic Fred Camper once called Howard Hawks (and I’m paraphrasing from memory here) the “hardest to define of all the classic Hollywood auteurs, an artist whose sensibility was built around gestures, movements, and hands rather than more obvious kinds of stylization.” It’s easy to see what…
Brian and Charles is so lightweight as to risk blowing over at any moment, but is also a wholly endearing affair that will charm more viewers than not. British comedy Brian and Charles is yet the latest entry in the increasingly ubiquitous “man and robot” subgenre, following closely on…
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, or so the title of Sophie Hyde’s latest feature goes. It’s a peculiar statement from the outset, one that only becomes more confusing once the proper context has been provided by the film’s end. Why would…
Natalia Sinelnikova’s We Might As Well Be Dead begins with a bedraggled family slowly traversing a long road through dense forest, a towering high rise perched in the middle of the woods looming far in the distance. It’s an ominous opening, the stuff of fairytales perhaps, and upon…
Tahara isn’t a subtle film — formally or thematically — but it is an exceptionally executed one, striking a impressive balance between emotional realism and affectation. Olivia Peace’s debut feature Tahara opens with an adolescent epiphany on perspective — that you may think you’re looking at a square…
Lost Illusions is a lush, ravishing work that avoids the lethargy and empty aesthetics of so many literary adaptions and fully embodies the spectacle of Balzac’s source material. For anyone who’s even mildly familiar with the grandeur and delicacy of 19th-century French writer Honoré de Balzac, one reflected…
Clint Eastwood likes inky color patterns, tar-black shadow cutting across battleship grey sterility, and drab, olive-green dress. The actor-director has performed a gradual shift towards this palette, eschewing the blood-red paint of High Plains Drifter, the magic-hour light of The Outlaw Josey Wales, the seaside ambience of Sudden…
Saul Bass’ poster for Otto Preminger’s Advise & Consent (1962) shows the dome of the Capitol neatly dissected from the building itself, the title emerging as if it were stowed away in a Pandora’s Box, which in some ways, the film is. Open one line of political inquiry,…
Ayuma Watanabe’s latest anime is both bland and loathsome, dull when its not offending and contemptible the rest of the time. Let’s not beat around the bush: Ayumu Watanabe’s Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko is — to an almost impressively obnoxious level — cloying and fatphobic gobbledegook that believes…
Clint Eastwood is perhaps as iconic a figure as there is in the last half-century of Hollywood cinema. Gunslinger machismo, a hard-nosed boomer ethos, and, especially in certain cinephile circles, a dedication to artistic self-interrogation are among the numerous qualities practically synonymous with his name and image. But…
Throughout modern history, pop and rock music have certainly played a crucial role in a broader socio-political history. Filled with joyful and energetic dynamism, the genres have provided many generations of teenagers across the globe with a sense of liberation and an epicurean amusement in identifying themselves against…
One Fine Morning Stepping back from Cannes’ main competition in favor of the somewhat cooler (in 2022, anyhow), awards-less Directors’ Fortnight lineup, Mia Hansen Løve is already back at the festival with a follow-up to her 2021 entry, Bergman Island. That film, while certainly her highest profile to…
A sharp, intelligent, and character-driven LGBTQ riff on Austen, Fire Island is one of the best things to happen to the rom-com genre in a minute. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a…
Watcher stumbles into the territory of predictability that has sunk many a better horror-thriller before it. Horror inspired by the unique voyeurism of apartment-living and being a stranger in a strange land is nothing new, and with Watcher, director Chloe Okuno attempts to pull these well-worn tropes into…
Léonor Serraille’s Mother and Son is the sort of coming-of-age film that aims to capture life in both small and broad strokes. With a three-part structure that spans a couple decades, Serraille centers each section of the film on a different member of a family — the spirited…
Tori and Lokita Even by their standards, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Tori and Lokita is a relatively to-the-point affair. Set in an unnamed Belgian city, it follows a pair of young immigrants, originally from Benin and Cameroon, who are passing themselves off as brother and sister. When first…
A Beautiful Time is as rich an emotional experience as it is a masterful work of craftsmanship. Truly great Willie Nelson albums come in many different shapes, sizes, and styles: there’s the murder ballad-cum-redemption narrative of Red Headed Stranger, which wouldn’t have fared so well post-cancel culture, but which is still one…
Palomino reminds us that Miranda Lambert is one of our most intuitive record-makers. In 1976, Joni Mitchell sang about the “Refuge of the Road” — about seeking meaning and belonging through constant motion; about the itinerant life as both quest and escape. It’s a powerful concept that many other…
Future It’s been a while since we last heard from Future — if, and only if, one goes off of his previous track record’s metrics. For a while there, starting in 2010 and continuing into the next decade, fans could, at a bare minimum, reliably expect one, maybe…
War Pony The past decade suggests an encroaching — or, perhaps at this point, arrived — renaissance in Indigenous art. Regardless of the medium, native voices are becoming not only pervasive, but essential to the spectrum of modern American art. Authors like Tommy Orange, Brandon Hobson, and Stephen…
Triangle of Sadness Like its titular metaphor, Ruben Östlund’s follow-up to his caustic and controversial Palme winner unfurls in cryptic yet characterizable fashion; in physiognomy, the “triangle of sadness” delineates the space between a person’s eyebrows which, extended thematically, alludes to all the ambiguity or malleability present in…