To understand the ostensible intent of Jon Stewart’s latest film, Irresistible, it’s best to begin at the end: “Money lived happily ever after…reveling in its outsized influence over American politics,” a postscript reads. This is a uniquely unifying idea in contemporary America, one that all but the most…
There’s a willful naivete many cinephiles employ when attempting to wax poetics about “the theater-going experience,” one that blatantly ignores sociopolitical and economic dimensions in favor of embracing the notion that because one has the financial means to A). reside in a city that provides you access to…
In many ways, Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour follows (or establishes, given its chronological situation within his filmography) many of the director’s most characteristic tendencies. From the outset, wonky angles capture images in slight distortion; primary characters exhaust nearly half of the film’s runtime before any speak to each other,…
In many ways, Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour follows (or establishes, given its chronological situation within his filmography) many of the director’s most characteristic tendencies. From the outset, wonky angles capture images in slight distortion; primary characters exhaust nearly half of the film’s runtime before any speak to each…
Typically regarded as a key director of the Taiwanese Second New Wave, Tsai Ming-liang and his debut theatrical feature Rebels of the Neon God exhibit, at this early moment, an observable relationship in content and visual grammar to that of the 80s New Taiwanese Cinema. The film is…
Prior to the solidification of Tsai Ming-liang’s career, which is arguably realized with his first Lee Kang-Sheng collaboration (in the television commissioned project Boys), there was Li Hsiang’s Love Line, a rather frugal yet quietly evocative film which offers an intriguing relationship explicated through a formal usurping and…
In 1954, a 19-year-old girl named Sylvette David sauntered past Pablo Picasso’s window. The aging artist was instantly beguiled. A few weeks later, he revealed a portrait of David, the first of 60 that he would paint that spring. She became his inspiration, his Girl with the Ponytail,…
After writing the early blueprint for ’90s R&B, Mary J. Blige laid out her own musical foundations on 1994’s My Life. The influence of hip-hop began to seep into R&B by the end of the ’80s — a period that soon saw Bell Biv
My wife and two children have been at home since March 14th. I worked until the 17th, as my company waffled back and forth over reducing hours of operation before finally giving up and shutting its doors entirely, furloughing all employees until further notice. We are living in…
It’s only appropriate that Dusty Springfield’s 1969 record — which found the singer’s vocal sensibilities shifting over to R&B, and to more deliberately paced arrangements — took its time to accumulate the canonical status that it enjoys today. Comparing “Son of a Preacher Man,” the most successful single…
“I didn’t know you never wake up from some dreams.” says Officer 663 (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), one of many lovelorn characters in Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 cult classic Chungking Express. Shot in less than a month on handheld cameras, it was meant to be something of a palate cleanser…
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 In Review Online’s new monthly feature devoted…
If there is only one trait which distinguishes Bird Island from other contemporary documentaries, it is of the singular way in which the directorial duo of Maya Kosa and Sérgio da Costa bestow a fictiveness upon their work. It is obvious, even from the earliest moments, the influence…
With theaters closed and film releases temporarily cancelled, there isn’t a whole lot of film content to produce over here at InRO. But one thing we can do is put a bow on our coverage of the 2020 Portland International Film Festival. Below is our final dispatch from…
The Hollywood machine may be pumping its brakes right now — with an ever-growing list of release date delays announced across the next month and rumors of movie theaters temporaily suspending operations in the wake of COVID-19’s recently-announced pandemicity — but we at InRO are soldiering on. In…
We at InRO have never covered the Portland International Film Festival, but we’re all about evolving in 2020, and so here is our first ever dispatch (and the first of several we’ll be publishing across the next week). Featuring a slate packed with fall festival regulars and an…
Our fourth (and tentatively final) dispatch from the 2020 Berlinale catches up with a pair of the festival’s biggest premieres (Cristi Puiu’s Malmkrog and Tsai Ming-ling’s Days) as well as a couple docs (The House of Love and Little Girl); it offers thoughts on decade-later sophomore effort from…
The 2020 Berlin International Film Festival may have closed its curtains on another year, but we’re still here talking its slate. Our third dispatch begins by making a liar of me — we go long once more, in service of tackling Abel Ferrara’s latest. But below that opening…
A spectral trilogy concludes under refracted conditions in Christian Petzold’s diagnostic landscape of 20th Century anxieties, which actualizes the magical realist gestures methodically peppered throughout his last two projects, Phoenix and Transit. This development has evinced the increased crystallization of a certain kind of ghost story, one fixated,…
Our second dispatch from the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival does something a little different from our familiar festival coverage pieces. Below, a trio of writers go long on three international master filmmakers — Philippe Garrel, Jia Zhanke, and Christian Petzold — providing retrospective contexts that inform these,…
Our first dispatch from the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival takes on a diverse mix of 2019 festival circuit frequenters and a pool of debuting international fare, including: Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow; Lois Patiño’s sophomore effort, Red Moon Tide; Guy Maddin look-alike (courtesy of fellow Winnipeg native Matthew Rankin) The Twentieth…