Preacher’s Daughter suggests fascinating and unpredictable future stardom for Ethel Cain. Ethel Cain arrived right on time, America currently enraptured with the style and cultural signifiers of its southern and midwestern states (a reaction to “Trump voter” media voyeurism, or the lasting legacy of American Honey?), which the…
Wilco For a while, it seemed like nothing ever came easy for Wilco. Early classics like Being There and Summerteeth bore the marks of personal and professional strife, from inter-band turmoil to lyrics gesturing toward substance abuse. The band’s masterpiece, 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, had an incubation so…
“…love must be regarded as one of the religious and dangerous experiences, because it lifts people out of the arms of reason and sets them afloat with no ground under their feet.” – Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities If I was given a Sight & Sound ballot…
A coming-of-age story about a sensitive, artistically-minded young man with filmmaking aspirations sounds like a recipe for mawkish solipsism, so it’s nothing short of a miracle that January deftly avoids cliches and easy catharsis. Recently anointed the Best International Narrative Feature by this year’s Tribeca jury, Viesturs Kairišs’…
Lakota Nation vs. United States “U.S. history is a branch of a larger tree of history… but it’s that covetous branch that thinks it’s the tree.” Proffered somewhere partway through Lakota Nation vs. United States, this assertion operates as a rough thesis for Jesse Short Bull and Laura…
Jack Harlow “Back when I was a young man / I liked them girls that was in the Abercrombie / I likеd them girls that was in the Aeropostalе / Now them same girls got coke in they nostrils / Somethin’ done made the youth hostile / Maybe it’s…
Jack Harlow’s sophomore effort is a tedious affair to work through, built upon a disappointing collection of stock hip hop beats and routine bars. “Back when I was a young man / I liked them girls that was in the Abercrombie / I likеd them girls that was in…
Good Girl Jane Writer-director Sarah Elizabeth Mintz’s debut feature, Good Girl Jane, treads a well-worn path in its portrayal of an innocent teenage girl’s eventual corruption at the hands of “subversive” classmates. The year is 2005, and the titular Jane (Rain Spencer) has recently transferred schools after being…
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…