In a city-state as vibrant and fast-paced as Singapore, the encroachment of work into various facets of social life appears inevitable, so much so that…
If stardom, traditionally, was a superhero who fought the bad guys and saved the world, then the fief of anonymity would fall to their unseen…
There is a good deal of sentimental value, both real and inflated, in Michael Kam’s The Old Man and His Car, most glaringly clued in…
The concert film documents the ecstasies of performance; the biopic narrativizes its painstaking preparations. In between these two modes stands the rehearsal film, capturing the…
Now in its 36th edition, the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) has taken on a most prominent role within the country’s cultural landscape, drawing younger…
A Summer Tale A man has fallen: Argentine director Matías Szulanski’s A Summer Tale opens with a classic noir setup, one rendered gorgeously in Sunset…
A man has fallen: Argentine director Matías Szulanski’s A Summer Tale opens with a classic noir setup, one rendered gorgeously in Sunset Boulevard, Le Jour…
Misery isn’t a genre, but it’s a motif and an emotion that many independent and arthouse films seem to think is the defining state of…
Follies If the sex comedy has become a rare breed in the two decades since its American Pie-to-Apatow heyday in the aughts, the marriage comedy, a…
Should war documentaries be fun? At the very least, we don’t expect them to be boring. It often feels like the whole genre is less…
“Life is cheesy sometimes,” says Liz (Valerie Pachner) in voiceover, moments before turning around at the airport and running back to embrace her lover, Ahmed…
If the sex comedy has become a rare breed in the two decades since its American Pie-to-Apatow heyday in the aughts, the marriage comedy, a…
Now in its third year, Film Fest Knox continues to be a model for what a small regional festival should be, combining highlights from the…
Eugène Green’s The Tree of Knowledge offers us, in movie form, the sad spectacle of a man who insists on cracking jokes without realizing that…
Because all this writer knew about Wind, Talk to Me entering its screening had come from a couple of synoptical lines that mentioned a “family”…
There are movies we find undoubtedly bad — movies that get us worked up, that offend us, that ruin our day — but that at…
Nouvelle Vague An older couple congratulates producer Georges de Beauregard on the success of his magnificent new film — politely interrupting young Jean-Luc Godard, who…
Die, My Love There comes a tale from an antique land. A King ruled over a thin Isthmus, above and below which were two unfathomably…
Troubled souls trapped: the parameters of a typical Claire Denis narrative are rarely complex. Beau Travail’s French Foreign Legion soldiers were confined to their base…
François Ozon is a peculiar filmmaker. The French director’s output is as prolific (25 films in nearly 30 years) as it is full of odd…
Hamnet A single work of art may, or may not, be able to change the world, but it can surely change a mind. To those…