Among all the defenses for art (as if art ever needed defending), the “timeless and universal” argument has the biggest currency. In this argument, human…
Tunnels: Sun in the Dark is a rarity in the West: a film about the Vietnam War told entirely from the perspective of the Viet…
An unsettling drone hums underneath nearly every scene of Juja Dobrachkous’s sophomore film Accept Our Sincere Apologies, a sound signaling that even seemingly innocuous moments…
As the Hong Kong film industry has been devoured by Mainland China, drawing its stars and directors away with the promise of big budgets and…
First Light Nearly five years ago, Filipino-Australian filmmaker James J. Robinson hit the headlines after breaking into his alma mater St Kevin’s College, Melbourne’s elite…
Nearly five years ago, Filipino-Australian filmmaker James J. Robinson hit the headlines after breaking into his alma mater St Kevin’s College, Melbourne’s elite all-boys Catholic…
Inside a brightly lit Dunkin’ Donuts, Tyler, a construction worker, meets another, Widgey, who is about to hire him for a home renovation job. Tyler…
Kim Allamand and Michael Karrer’s new film First Days begins with a brief opening text, which reads in part, “in your first days after death…
Bulgarian filmmaker Stefan Kotzev had a more traditional scripted drama in mind for his first feature than what he eventually made. Working in close collaboration…
Richard Bernstein is a consummate performer. Better known as Mickey Squires to connoisseurs of gay pornography and erotic photography, fields in which he was one…
It’s low on the list of 21st century horrors, but there’s something uniquely off-putting about watching a self-recorded video of someone crying. It’s tough to…
Jonathan Rosenbaum included an anecdote on Paul Schrader when writing about the revival of Robert Bresson’s first feature, Les Affaires Publiques (1934). As always, Schrader…
Chronovisor Even when Jorge Luis Borges wrote screenplays, they weren’t necessarily “Borgesian” — not, that is, distilled into the particular pleasure of following one of…
Even when Jorge Luis Borges wrote screenplays, they weren’t necessarily “Borgesian” — not, that is, distilled into the particular pleasure of following one of Borges’…
Chaos reigns in Yasuhiro Aoki’s anarchic, wildly imaginative feature directorial debut ChaO, a whirlwind exploration of the breadth of storytelling potential in animated film. Almost…
Long takes involving medium-to-wide shots of landscapes have nearly cemented themselves as festival-cinema staples, so it’s not surprising to see an IFFR Tiger competition film,…
Fuori, the latest film by Italy’s Mario Martone (Nostalgia, The King of Laughter), is curiously inert, especially when you consider that most of the film…
Reflecting on the publication of his novel Box Hill: A Story of Low Self-Esteem, Adam Mars-Jones noted that he intended his darkly humorous narrative of…
Film adaptations of video games can be a dicey proposition. Part of the issue lies in the elements getting lost in translation: the inherently immersive…
If you like Bone Tomahawk, Lucio Fulci’s Conquest, samurai poetry, and Yayan Ruhian being cool as hell, then there’s a new movie just screaming your…
With all the upheaval in recent years, it seems like there is only one constant across the film industry: producing an independent animated feature is…