OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into some DVD bargain bin assuming that those still exist by the time this sentence finishes. In other words, while the title of…
The Spine of Night The Spine of Night is a whole lot of movie. Despite the film’s relatively straightforward fantasy logline — sorcerer goes mad with power, attempts to take over and/or destroy the world, unassuming hero saves the day — both its narrative and animation feature a…
Fucking with Nobody For her sophomore feature, Fucking with Nobody, Finnish director Hannaleena Hauru opts to play an on-screen alter-ego of herself. Hanna is a filmmaker who, after losing a project to her nemesis Kristian, gets involved in a fake Instagram catfishing scheme with a group of her…
As an inadvertent result of the world’s continued struggle against COVID-19, writer-director Martin Edralin’s Canadian family drama Islands evinces an unexpected form of empathy; with thousands upon thousands of single adult children around the globe forced to spend quarantine with their aging parents, this tale of a lonely,…
Gaia There’s an ancient, malevolent force living in the depths of the forest in director Jaco Bouwer’s Gaia, a psychedelic bit of eco-horror that finds nature taking over and transforming the human body in hideous ways. Forest Rangers Gabi (Monique Rockman) and Winston (Anthony Oseyemi) are doing their rounds…
The Fever has plenty on its mind and is considerably weighty in its own right, but feels somewhat too indebted to obvious, superior arthouse touchstones. “They woke up something that was asleep inside of us. They made us see what we didn’t know.” The imprecision of this statement —…
A deceptively boilerplate film noir with shades of drab eroticism, Nicole Garcia’s Lovers belies an astonishing sublimation of its cultural and existential milieux. Premiering amidst an especially weak lineup at Venice, and receiving an almost-unanimously negative response, her much-maligned latest originally bore the title of Lisa Redler, named…
Lovers A deceptively boilerplate film noir with shades of drab eroticism, Nicole Garcia’s Lovers belies an astonishing sublimation of its cultural and existential milieux. Premiering amidst an especially weak lineup at Venice, and receiving an almost-unanimously negative response, her much-maligned latest originally bore the title of Lisa Redler,…
Distractions isn’t the most high-profile release from Tindersticks, but it symbolizes a step in a bold direction for the band as they embark on their fourth decade together. Distractions marks Nottingham outfit Tindersticks’ 13th studio album, and while the sessions were certainly affected by the conditions of the pandemic,…
Tindersticks Distractions marks Nottingham outfit Tindersticks’ 13th studio album, and while the sessions were certainly affected by the conditions of the pandemic, the group’s front-man, Stuart Staples, has indicated that it shouldn’t be regarded as the mere result of some restrictive circumstance. That isn’t only because the album’s…
Like several films in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema lineup, Love Affair(s) is a title that was meant to premiere at Cannes 2020, under “The Newcomers” banner (meant to highlight directors of note making their Cannes debuts). Also like other Rendez-Vous offerings, Love Affair(s) is clearly indebted to…
Following the travails of a middle-aged woman looking for new purpose after the death of her husband, Ludovic Bergery’s Margaux Hartmann is a gentle, unassuming drama featuring a remarkable lead performance by Emmanuelle Béart. Margaux, a relatively reserved, even quiet woman in her late 50s, has decided to attend…
Love Affair(s) Like several films in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema lineup, Love Affair(s) is a title that was meant to premiere at Cannes 2020, under “The Newcomers” banner (meant to highlight directors of note making their Cannes debuts). Also like other Rendez-Vous offerings, Love Affair(s) is clearly…
Come True is an empty-headed, poorly-conceived horror flick that mistakes endless stylistic detail for substance. Anyone who has ever experienced night terrors can attest to the indescribable, otherworldly horror that only the human mind is capable of conjuring; to even attempt to replicate such a nebulous thing is a…
Petite Maman Celine Sciamma’s characters have always existed on a precipice of some essential awareness, riding the ebbs and flows of emerging self-knowledge, and arriving at necessarily unsettled places. Specifically, her films explore that bardo between childhood and adulthood — often, but not always tethered to sexual awakening…
In the summer of the Year without a Summer, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. She, her husband Percy, Lord Byron, and Byron’s physician John Polidori — whose existence in Byron’s mansion resembled something more like an in-house drug dealer than a typical country doctor — wrote ghost stories and…
Bloodsuckers In the summer of the Year without a Summer, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. She, her husband Percy, Lord Byron, and Byron’s physician John Polidori — whose existence in Byron’s mansion resembled something more like an in-house drug dealer than a typical country doctor — wrote ghost stories…
There are certain iconic questions in cinema history that have endured long after the credits roll. Who shot first, Han or Greedo? Did the spinning top ever fall at the end of Inception? In 1989, director Rob Reiner and screenwriter Nora Ephron introduced their own query to the…
Social Hygiene Retreating from the weight of actions into the weightlessness of words, Denis Côté’s latest finds a rambunctious solace in the oratorial. Serving possibly as a stylistic antithesis to 2019’s dialogue-free Wilcox (centered around the life of a drifter), the opportunely-titled Social Hygiene recalls, instead, a linguistic…
Less a feature debut than a marked progression in a career of interdisciplinary video work, Prapat Jiwarangsan’s Ploy makes no attempts to distance itself from its creator’s tenure as an installation artist, even if it is in possession of an overarching narrative, and runs a comparatively hefty 51…