There is little build-up to the opening of Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s latest thriller, #Manhole. Within the first five minutes, unfortunate salesman Shunsuke Kawamura (Yûto Nakajima) awakes…
Laugh now, but back in the 1950s, the CIA would pay top dollar for any hint of mind control technology, leading to the mass hiring…
Veerle Baetens’ debut feature When It Melts is one of those films that is difficult to discuss without giving the entire thing away, not only…
As we move ever further into the streaming age, the question of what exactly constitutes a film continues to blur. No longer tethered to considerations…
The tenets of toxic masculinity are tried and true, displayed in manifold methods of patriarchal oppression, and specifically in conjunction with a process of internalized…
Xavier Dolan’s career may have began with a rush of praise, but it seems that after a certain point, everyone just grew tired of him…
When we meet Algee Smith’s Brandon in Thembi L. Banks’ feature debut, Young. Wild. Free., he’s already beset by external stressors. A high school senior…
Glorimar Marrero Sánchez’s feature debut opens in a quixotic fashion, offering little exposition and dropping viewers straight into a scene of Noelia (Isel Rodríguez) taking…
As the first Pakistani film to premiere at Cannes, Saim Sadiq’s Joyland — which also won the Un Certain Regard Jury prize and the Queer…
Expanding on the layered, accelerated style first developed in her shorter films, Fox Maxy arrives at Sundance firing on all cylinders. Gush marks a clear…
At its heart, Patricia Ortega’s MAMACRUZ radiates a tender and thoughtful warmth for its sympathetic main character, a woman whose womanhood has, after decades of…
Thanks to its quite odd pairing of collaborators, Sick is a movie awkwardly pulled in two directions at once. On the one hand, you have…
Shot on location in New Mexico in early 2021, Pete Ohs’ Jethica is a kind of minimalist sunbaked noir that gradually transforms into something altogether…
A woman stands in the courtroom witness box, her face tensed, pained, and withdrawn, her hands clasping the railing before her, while the judge’s questions…
Quoth Christine Choy, the Oscar-losing documentary filmmaker, notoriously candid NYU professor, and pseudo-subject of Violet Columbus and Ben Klein’s The Exiles: “You know, the thing…
Hot on the heels of the year’s earlier release of Katia and Maurice Krafft — Fire of Love — comes Werner Herzog’s tribute to the…
Tranquility is a relative concept — inside a prison, one of the most stressful situations known to man, even the white-knuckle pressures of a professional…
Most viewers, though not equipped to discern the problematics of representing indigenous communities they aren’t part of, are still able to quite meaningfully evaluate how…
The Salem witch trials are a historical event rife with modern retellings and reimaginings, from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and its various screen and stage…
Diana Bustamante’s Our Movie casts a peculiar spell; an essayistic documentary of sorts, it’s constructed entirely out of archival Columbian broadcast news footage from (roughly)…
In Wisdom Gone Wild, Rea Tajiri returns to the subject of one of her earliest and best-known works: her mother. That earlier work, History and…