Olivier Assayas produced a stunningly idiosyncratic series of works in the 2010s, even by his typically eclectic standards. From the mammoth Carlos to the autobiographical Something in the Air to the cryptic chamber dramas Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper, Assayas seemed to be searching for new forms, new avenues…
The Last Word from Your Editor, Sam C. Mac: With the 2010s officially over, the time seems right for another departure: after 12 years (with a small break in the middle), I’m stepping down as this site’s Editor-in-Chief, to be succeeded by co-founder (and unapologetic…
Our third and final dispatch from the 2019 New York Film Festival is offers a smaller pool of takes but checks off one of the year’s biggest players — Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems. Also featured here are thoughts on Olivier Assayas’s latest,…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into some DVD bargain bin assuming that those still exist by the time this sentence finishes. In other words, while the title of In Review…
More generationally distinctive than his recent output, Olivier Assayas’s latest, Non-Fiction, engages with a specific vein of cultural discourse regarding technology: e-books as a corruption of literature. Of course, this is a synecdochical take on a far broader conversation, the particulars of which are…
The finest films of 2017 simultaneously offered us a respite from, and a deeper reflection on, our fraught and fractured social and political realities. In sharp contrast to our unfortunate tendency to segregate ourselves with social media-fueled enclaves and ecosystems that do little more than…
Deviating from protocol a bit with our timing (we swear we know when the halfway point of the year is), the following list is nonetheless our best approximation of a staff consensus for best films released from January to June of this year. Admittedly, the…
That advice may well be applied to Olivier Assayas’s slippery, sensual Personal Shopper, which does for horror what Irma Vep (still the high watermark of this genre-hopping auteur’s filmography) did for the self-reflexive film-within-a-film. Filtering its central ghost story through a filmic hall of mirrors,…
The 35th Vancouver International Film Festival is past its halfway point and continues to deliver a refreshingly varied cinematic slate. This second dispatch covers three less-heralded films from the fest’s Dragons & Tigers program, and two higher-profile world cinema titles, the Olivier Assayas ghost…
#10: The Bad Idea Podcast Holiday Special: A Very Belated Renny Harlin Christmas Download episode here. Episode Description: This time on Bad Idea Podcast, Simon & Steve tackle Finnish enigma Renny Harlin. The idea: figure out what makes him tick—why some of his films are exemplary, incomparably…
