There’s a school of thought that would read Pillion’s ending as a positive sentiment, in which a man who blunders his way into the BDSM scene finally discovers his boundaries and directs himself toward everlasting love. That school of thought belongs to maniacal men who dwell in shadows.…
Nightmare’s Advice Renaud Després-Larose and Ana Tapia Rousiouk, along with their frequent collaborator Olivier Godin, represent an alternative stream of Quebecois cinema, one that is both shoestring and grandiose, and that flits between extreme doses of whimsy and self-involved seriousness. The duo’s work is at least partially fueled…
Renaud Després-Larose and Ana Tapia Rousiouk, along with their frequent collaborator Olivier Godin, represent an alternative stream of Quebecois cinema, one that is both shoestring and grandiose, and that flits between extreme doses of whimsy and self-involved seriousness. The duo’s work is at least partially fueled by French…
Among all the defenses for art (as if art ever needed defending), the “timeless and universal” argument has the biggest currency. In this argument, human nature and emotions are constant regardless of the differences in societies, cultures, and histories, and the art which captures the essential emotional core…
First Light Nearly five years ago, Filipino-Australian filmmaker James J. Robinson hit the headlines after breaking into his alma mater St Kevin’s College, Melbourne’s elite all-boys Catholic school, and setting his old blazer alight on campus grounds as an act of protest against the toxic “hypermasculine culture” historically…
It’s low on the list of 21st century horrors, but there’s something uniquely off-putting about watching a self-recorded video of someone crying. It’s tough to say how it became a phenomenon — maybe our increasing isolation demands new avenues for empathy, maybe prefab vulnerability fit itself snugly into…
Chronovisor Even when Jorge Luis Borges wrote screenplays, they weren’t necessarily “Borgesian” — not, that is, distilled into the particular pleasure of following one of Borges’ threads through maybe-real obscure texts to arrive at a sort of academic horror. His screenplay for Hugo Santiago’s Invasión (1969) is a…
Fuori, the latest film by Italy’s Mario Martone (Nostalgia, The King of Laughter), is curiously inert, especially when you consider that most of the film features its two main characters wandering through Rome. This is a noncommunicative film, which may be a problem of cultural translation. It’s about…
Film adaptations of video games can be a dicey proposition. Part of the issue lies in the elements getting lost in translation: the inherently immersive factor of a game rarely makes a successful leap to the screen, and most video games are already so vividly realized that casting…
Three Austrian documentaries from the past two years turn their gaze to the racially marginalized of the small mountain country. The oldest of the three, Favoriten (2024), follows a school class from second to fourth grade in the biggest elementary school in Vienna. It derives its name from…
I once carpooled from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to my small hometown in Northeast Ohio with a stranger. She was an attractive woman two grades above me who had a car and happened to be a Calvin student from the same Ohio town. Circumstances alone brought…
One day, noticing an influx of dust into their apartment due to some construction outside, a person known only as an “academic ladyboy” (as they call themselves and are credited on IMDb) buys a new vacuum cleaner. It seems to work well, but that night the vacuum coughs…
“Look out Mama, there’s a white boat coming up the river!” — Neil Young, “Powderfinger” It’s the sound of waves parting, or maybe an atom splitting. It could be the sound of the beginning and the end of the universe collapsed into one. It’s not the…
It is tempting, in times like these, to ascribe to an archetype its particular incarnation, to historicize it one way or another. Such might be the tendency for toxic masculinity of late, as its critics and fanatics alike clamor to mine metaphor out of mere expression. Sometimes these…
There’s little to say about Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows that hasn’t already been said. Like any great film, it’s animated by an internal lifeforce that wills it to stay open to interpretations and applications from audiences of any time period. Similarly, one person’s experience of the…
2025 is the year of the teeter-totter. We teeter on the first half of the decade, defined by death and the uninhibited embrace of a digital world, and totter on the second half, defined, so far, by malfeasance in all sectors of public life across the globe. The…
Those inclined to immediately exit the theater or press stop on their remotes the instant a film concludes would do well to take a beat once the end credits of The Testament of Ann Lee begin. If not to acknowledge the work of the hundreds of people who…
2025 is the year of the teeter-totter. We teeter on the first half of the decade, defined by death and the uninhibited embrace of a digital world, and totter on the second half, defined, so far, by malfeasance in all sectors of public life across the globe. The…
2025 is the year of the teeter-totter. We teeter on the first half of the decade, defined by death and the uninhibited embrace of a digital world, and totter on the second half, defined, so far, by malfeasance in all sectors of public life across the globe. The…
Adapted from Freida McFadden’s BookTok sensation and starring two of Hollywood’s most in-demand blonde actresses in Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried (both of whom also appear in year’s end, would-be awards contenders), The Housemaid is a twist-filled, nasty bit of business that should be the stuff of irresistible…