While musical virtuosity and compositional genius are indisputable bona fides for any great artist to possess, and are indeed the key ingredients behind any number of remarkable records throughout history, such elements aren’t necessarily requisite. This is a sentiment especially true when considering a unique and prolific era…
As Jazmine Sullivan’s first album in six years, Heaux Tales puts her talents on display and successfully ignores the standard R&B industry traps. Jazmine Sullivan has built a rather remarkable career for herself over the last decade, the sort that few contemporary pop artists are allowed the time to…
Jazmine Sullivan Jazmine Sullivan has built a rather remarkable career for herself over the last decade, the sort that few contemporary pop artists are allowed the time to properly nurture. This is, in part, because she was able to step away from the industry for a time, for…
Music is a generic, offensive slog that co-opts ASD in service of bland musical pomp and an imbalanced plot. Pop songstress Sia titling her directorial debut Music pretty much sums up the film as a whole: generic pap entirely devoid of depth or originality. It’s the equivalent of Bobby…
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is yet another time loop flick that fails to do anything to energize its exhausted conceit. Note to Hollywood: No more time-loop films. The concept has been exhausted, at least if the last several efforts have anything to say about it. It’s not…
Black Medusa In a thankless role as one of the most morose femmes fatales in memory, Nour Hajri plays Nada, a (mostly) mute office worker by day, serial killer (men only, natch) by night. We never find out why. Such is the pseudo-provocative premise of Black Medusa, the…
The myth of Orpheus seems to tell us that in the face of overwhelming grief, the hardest thing to do is have faith that things will get better. Grief-stricken after the death of his wife, he seeks out Hades himself and is told: Eurydice will return to you,…
Bipolar The myth of Orpheus seems to tell us that in the face of overwhelming grief, the hardest thing to do is have faith that things will get better. Grief-stricken after the death of his wife, he seeks out Hades himself and is told: Eurydice will return to…
Of all the different horror sub-genres, the zombie flick is perhaps the one with the most innate spectacle. With a few obvious exceptions — low-budget fare like Shaun of the Dead or The Dead Don’t Die’s Jarmusch treatment — zombie movies keep getting bigger, whether in pomp, scope,…
The idea of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, set in an ultra-modern Taipei with an all-female cast, certainly sounds appealing. As does the idea of transmuting Shakespeare’s Edenic Forest of Arden into an internet-free zone of play and gender non-conformity. Unfortunately, filmmakers Chen Hung-i and Muni…
The Year Before the War begins with an impressive sequence shot; in closeup, workers methodically cut huge blocks of ice out of a frozen lake. The camera pulls back to reveal a man whispering to frozen fish about death, before immediately plunging himself into the icy maw while…
Sode Yukiko has no qualms with announcing her Aristocrats as a literary project, unveiling its status as an adaptation of the novel Ano Ko wa Kizoku by Mariko Yamauchi before any credits, and even the title card. Its novelistic sweep is modest, but still manages to follow different…
As We Like it The idea of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, set in an ultra-modern Taipei with an all-female cast, certainly sounds appealing. As does the idea of transmuting Shakespeare’s Edenic Forest of Arden into an internet-free zone of play and gender non-conformity. Unfortunately, filmmakers…
Little Fish is a pointless exercise in bleakness that boasts neither interesting characters nor much visual character. Chad Hartigan’s Little Fish dares to answer a question that not a single soul on the planet has ever asked or even pondered: What if Michael Haneke’s Amour instead featured…young people? That’s…
The Wanting Mare is a genuine CGI novelty, a delicate, low-key work of great sensitivity. More often than not, when one thinks of special effects extravaganzas, the mind wanders first to the Marvel/DC superhero industrial complex, or perhaps to something like Robert Zemeckis’ lost decade of mo-cap experiments. Further…
In the Same Breath For a while, Nanfu Wang’s In the Same Breath makes for a fascinating companion piece to Ai Weiwei’s 2020 documentary CoroNation. Neither director has been shy with their criticisms of the Chinese government, and so it’s immediately fascinating to see how their approaches to…
If there’s one all-too noticeable thread running through this year’s Sundance slate, it’s the presence of an unofficial COVID-themed lineup set apart by their incidental, and intentional in some cases, alignments of setting, scope, and content. An obvious outcome, perhaps, but more pressingly a sign of standards to…
Pleasure “Are you here for business or for pleasure?” “Pleasure.” Leaving her Swedish small-town life for the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles, 19-year-old Linnéa (Sofia Kappel) carries herself with a worldly confidence that belies her delicate naïveté. She has come to seek pleasure in the porn industry,…
John and the Hole Tapped by Cannes for its theoretical 2020 slate, John and the Hole carried a bit more intrigue than most films heading into Sundance ’21. This designation, regrettably, is mere red herring, as Pascual Sisto’s debut is but another in this millennium’s spate of creepy…
Dara of Jasenovac borders of propaganda, more concerned with stoking ongoing political turmoil than honoring the tragedy at its core. Dara of Jasenovac, Serbia’s official submission to the 93rd Academy Awards, is perhaps one of the more obscure titles currently vying for the Best International Film Oscar, but it’s…