Sexual Drive draws the straightest possible line between food and sex, never striving for anything deeper or more creative than basic simile. For nearly as long…
Poppy Field carries the veneer of importance but isn’t much more than a series of lazy ironies, a shallow character study in need of a character.…
Servants is a brutal, efficient affair, unconventional in its dramaturgy but landing with considerable force. Director Ivan Ostrochovský’s Servants begins with a cryptic, murky sequence…
Playground is a penetrating, enveloping, and often brutal portrait of childhood. Playground, Laura Wandel’s first feature, is indeed set on an actual playground, but perhaps its…
The Whaler Boy undermines any potential for naturalism and rawness with slick artifice and discordant commercial style. Philipp Yuryev’s debut feature The Whaler Boy takes us…
Odagiri’s somber observations about transition within tradition make for a meditative, rewarding viewing experience. Ten years after his debut feature, Looking for Cherry Blossoms (2009),…
Roh trades only in tropes, and subverts any inherent eeriness with its heavy-handed application of mood. Emir Ezwan’s debut feature, Roh, is part of an emerging…
After Asako I & II, Hamaguchi’s latest can’t help but feel like something of a step backward into less aesthetically daring filmmaking. “Once Again”, the third…
Memory House is little more than a mélange of affectations and overt symbolism, opaque for its own sake and succumbing to the worst arthouse pretenses. In…
Wildland suffers for its underdeveloped characters and themes, but its sense of intimacy stands out in a genre often tilted only toward style. Watching Wildland, the…
Curiosa is a shallow bit of French period erotica, sometimes visually compelling but devoid of much insight. Loosely conceived and freely adapted from the photographs and…
Tailgate is a thriller in name only, mostly devoid of tension and entirely schematic. One wonders what exactly the point is of such a thoroughly incurious…
Sweet Thing is one of the most gorgeous films in recent memory, but it fails to develop beyond its pretty packaging. Titled in homage to…
The Columnist successfully balances a line between the satirical and sobering, and delivers some nice genre play in the process. Ivo Van Aart’s darkly comic horror…
Nina Wu’s early patience and promise unfortunately gives way to a more sensationalized, ill-conceived study of trauma. Hailed as Taiwan’s answer to the #MeToo movement…
Rose Plays Julie ultimately relies too heavily on well-worn revenge tropes at the expense of any substantive study of identity. So cold and somber that it…
Lapsis mines much of its dystopic power through appropriately small-scale world-building and clear-eyed rhetoric. Noah Hutton’s Lapsis is a genuine curiosity, a micro-budget sci-fi feature that…
True Mothers bears Kawase’s familiar textures and ambiance but is hampered by a few too many banal plot beats. Adapted from a 2015 bestseller by Mizuki…
You Will Die at Twenty contains plenty of allegorical power, but its ineffectual plotting ultimately teases out more stimulating questions than it does answers. As a…
Once Upon a River is frequently pretty to look at, but Rose fails to build much depth into the film’s fable-like narrative. Once Upon a River…
An effort of self-serious arthouse aspiration, Song Without a Name brings nothing new to the table. Melina León’s Song Without A Name is representative of a…