The Last Word from Your Editor, Sam C. Mac: With the 2010s officially over, the time seems right for another departure: after 12 years (with a small break in the middle), I’m stepping down as this site’s Editor-in-Chief, to be succeeded by co-founder (and unapologetic…
Iranian writer/director Asghar Farhadi understands the nature of secrets and their revelations, that they rarely signal resolution and instead work to further complicate situations. Whenever one of his characters confesses to some long-standing deception or discloses a crushing truth, the weight of this disclosure…
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…
Deviating from protocol a bit with our timing (we swear we know when the halfway point of the year is), the following list is nonetheless our best approximation of a staff consensus for best films released from January to June of this year. Admittedly, the…
2017—so far at least—hasn’t been spectacular. In between the deaths of beloved auteurs like Jonathan Demme and Seijun Suzuki, you had 25 beating Lemonade at the Grammy’s, Tom Brady smugly winning another Super Bowl, and Donald Trump being sworn into office (this one might…
#30: Hearts and Glowers: A Rough Ride Through Rom-coms of No Repute Download episode here. Episode Description: Like a chance encounter with a long-forgotten lover… like a sore that came from a night of loving unwisely… like an inescapable Celine Dion song… Bad Idea Podcast is…
Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman and Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation navigate similar thematic territory—that of patriarchs finding their ethical boundaries pushed when their self-perceived altruistic defense of family becomes distorted— and demand empathetic viewing. Each film offers a study of imperfect people acting imperfectly, daring the audience to offer…
The 41st Toronto International Film Festival recently wrapped, and our writers were on hand to soak up the cinema bounty. Our first of two dispatches includes hotly anticipated fall releases like Denis Villeneuve’s mysterious sci-fi film Arrival and Barry Jenkins’s decades-spanning character study Moonlight; holdovers from…