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 Gerardo Naranjo hadn’t already taken the title I’m Gonna Explode for his 2008 portrait of adolescent rebellion, it would have made a fitting option for Permanent Green Light, the sophomore feature from co-directors Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley. Then again, perhaps that would have been too literal…
Radu Jude begins his magisterial I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians with actress Ioana Iacob introducing herself to the audience, announcing the name of her character within the film, and then bidding us a cheerful “I hope you enjoy the film.” More…
Though not wanting for the anticipated grisly violence or digressions into pop pastiche, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood might be Quentin Tarantino’s sweetest, most thoughtful, and most tender film in a couple of decades — at least since Jackie Brown. While Tarantino himself has criticized his third…
Sho Miyake’s And Your Bird Can Sing, based on a novel by the late Yasushi Sato, is sort of like Jules and Jim in Japan. The film version shifts the action of the novel from 1980s Tokyo to present day Hakodate. An unnamed protagonist (Tasuku Emoto, listed as…
The 2019 edition of New York-based film festival Japan Cuts runs from July 19 to the 28th (find the full schedule of screenings here). We are forever grateful for Japan Cuts for many reasons: there’s that Sion Sono triple feature they programmed back in 2016, which in large…
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is at his best when he’s unabashedly romantic. For more than a decade, he’s crafted ambient tracks that tend to brim with overwhelming sentimentality. In hearing his works, one gets the sense that every single melody has the uncanny ability to lure listeners inside its beauty.…
We’ve decided to do something a little different this year for our 2019 (so far) lists; instead of a formal poll, we’re using this as an occasion to plug some of the most positive stuff that we’ve written this year, with just a few fresh write-ups on albums…
Innocence and experience materialize in the poetry of William Blake as opposing forces; the former embodied within natural objects, passions and love, whereas the latter, like any good romantic, is found in the blackened corruption spreading across the land, engendering the extreme squalor of England’s industrialization. This kind…
The Chambermaid, the first feature from actress-turned-theater-director-turned filmmaker Lila Aviles, centers on Eve (Gabriela Cartol), a luxury hotel cleaning lady working in Mexico City. Part of that précis may sound familiar. But similarities mostly end there: While Roma’s central figure was an idealized, saintly figure with a hazy backstory — viewed…
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…
In her biography on her late husband — renowned Chilean singer/guitarist Victor Jara— Joan Jara recalls the days leading up to the impending sea-change in Chile’s political landscape, in the early 70s. The Popular Unity party, a left-wing alliance behind Chile’s then-socialist president Salvador Allende, was in the…
In an effort to reboot our music coverage, In Review Online has launched some monthly features devoted to reviewing new album releases. One such feature is Foreign Correspondent, a survey of new releases from the international music world — which, going forward, will now be published bimonthly. The latest issue…
We’ve decided to do something a little different this year for our 2019 (so far) lists; instead of a formal poll, were using this as an occasion to plug some of the most positive stuff that we’ve written this year, with just a few fresh write-ups on films…
Vampire Weekend were anachronistic from the moment they formed: clean-cut Ivy League youths writing exceptionally clear songs, both in terms of structure and recording clarity. Their first self-titled album officially dropped January of 2008, almost exactly one year before Animal Collective’s Merriwether Post Pavilion, which itself paved the…
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…
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s intimate epic of friendship between women, Happy Hour, was my favorite film of 2016, so needless to say Asako I & II, which premiered in competition at Cannes last May, was eagerly anticipated. Adapting an acclaimed novel by Tomoka Shibasaki, Hamaguchi initially seems to scale back…
The Souvenir is that rare kind of great film, one that teaches you how to watch it as it goes on. There’s a constant tension between precise, careful framing and offhand, casual observation. Small details and gestures accumulate gradually, inviting you to sink into the film, luxuriate in…
“Give a fuck what you sayin’ about a n***a, I used to be homeless” asserts 03 Greedo on the outro of “Bet I Walk,” a brief moment of unexpected humility from a dude who once called Tupac “a bitch-ass.” For Greedo, making it doesn’t mean having an endless…
SoundCloud junkies Paul Attard and Joe Biglin run down some rap releases from the months of March and April in the latest What Would Meek Do?. This eighth official issue features takes on a few bland chart-toppers (Rich the Kid’s The World Is Yours 2 and Nav’s Bad…