In his introduction to Olivier Assayas’ autobiographical essay/memoir A Post-May Adolescence: Letter to Alice Debord, Adrian Martin writes that “Assayas has always identified himself with…
There There executes a rather ingenious approach to the Covid shoot and delivers another win for Bujalski. Over the last few years, Andrew Bujalski’s career trajectory…
Riotsville, USA traces an alternate history on top of official record and crafts an incisive examination that is as hypnotic as it is fervent. It’s almost…
I Love My Dad employs a risky outsized gambit in telling its tale, but it thankfully registers as darkly hilarious and often poignant. It’s easy to…
There’s nothing much profound going on in Anaïs in Love, but its languorous, late-summer tenor makes for a lightly pleasant watch. A warm, sandy romance…
Italian Studies is a banal, ponderous work that fails to land on any interesting or governing thesis. Dislocation and dissociation lie at the heart of…
Bad Luck Banging borders on the didactic, but smartly allows its archetypes to conflate and contradict, turning its sketchbook designs into a platform for equal-opportunity…
None of Mayday’s ideas are bold, and it presents its revolutionary possibilities as nothing more than mere daydream. At the beginning of Karen Cinnore’s Mayday, Ana,…
Cryptozoo is both technically and thematically potent, but it’s the film’s third act which cements it as an exceptional and surprising animated work. In Cryptozoo,…
Swan Swan’s good intentions get lost amid its tonal disarray and narrative faceplants. Character actor extraordinaire Udo Kier takes center stage in Swan Song, writer-director…
“I find ghosts in Japanese horror much more terrifying. In the standard American horror canon, because a ghost violently attacks you or comes after you,…
About Endlessness is a gentler than usual work from Roy Andersson, one that reflects humanity’s ability to create both great beauty and profound suffering. Those complaining…
Stray is a restrained, poignant study of abandoned souls, dog and human alike. Stray, the title of Elizabeth Lo’s mesmerizingly observational documentary, nominally refers to the…
A Glitch in the Matrix is a shockingly tame study, likely only of interest to those yet to encounter even a Wikipedia summary of Simulation Theory.…
Some Kind of Heaven finds legitimate pathos within the oddball trappings of a would-be utopian retirement community. From the cold and gloomy vantage of New York’s…
Much like the iconoclast at the center of this doc, Zappa is singular, uncompromising, and riveting. Whether you appreciate Frank Zappa’s work, few would deny the…
Collective is a compelling portrait of bureaucratic inertia and stasis and a rich study in the difficulties of actual progress. On October 30, 2015, a fire…
Out Stealing Horses is a lame prestige film knockoff that trades in empty platitudes. Based on the acclaimed 2003 Norweigan novel of the same name, the…
The Whistlers makes the most of its basic parts, tying some nifty knots and glossing up proceedings, but it fails to offer anything memorable. Corneliu Porumboiu’s The…
The films of Jessica Hausner can be maddeningly opaque, but obfuscation is a feature, not a bug. Her newest film, Little Joe, makes a fascinating double feature…
Early in Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s documentary, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, Morrison tells a story from her childhood about when she first came to understand…