**The following discusses the endings of Monster and Evil Does Not Exist. “Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts,” Roger…
MMXX Few directors have explored the implications of real-time continuity — or a reasonable approximation thereof — as resolutely as Romanian director Cristi Puiu.…
Given his recent critically and commercially successful, Oscar-winning film Drive My Car, it was only a matter of time before Japanese arthouse director Ryusuke…
#6. Visual rhymes preside over the three, tenuously interlinked sections of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, drawing parallels across earthbound stories that have…
#3. Of all the innumerable gambits and devices that Ryūsuke Hamaguchi deploys in his immense Drive My Car, his particular use of language may be…
And with that, our Top Films of 2021 coverage comes to a close, with our five favorites talked up below. All films, even if…
Our favorite film of 2021 looms near, but we’re not quite there yet. Today, we’re talking picks 6-10, which is probably the most Hollywood-heavy…
Drive My Car is the latest proof that Ryusuke Hamaguchi is thinking much bigger than most of his contemporaries. Ryusuke Hamaguchi has fast become one…
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…
Drive My Car Ryusuke Hamaguchi has fast become one of the more dependable filmmaker’s regularly working the international festival circuit, ever since he broke…
Introduction It’s somewhat reductive to observe that Hong Sang-soo, so often noted for his diptych structures, seems to have moved into a new triptych…
The Last Word from Your Editor, Sam C. Mac: With the 2010s officially over, the time seems right for another departure: after 12 years…
The Last Word from Your Editor, Sam C. Mac: With the 2010s officially over, the time seems right for another departure: after 12 years…
It’s been a year of confrontation at the movies, as the domestic and international conflicts of the past several years have reached varying degrees…
We’ve decided to do something a little different this year for our 2019 (so far) lists; instead of a formal poll, were using this…
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…
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s intimate epic of friendship between women, Happy Hour, was my favorite film of 2016, so needless to say Asako I & II,…
Our third dispatch from the Toronto International Film Festival (here’s the first and here’s the second) includes our takes on a few hold-overs from this year’s Cannes…