As landmark movies go, Lisandro Alonso’s 2001 debut Freedom could hardly have been less fitting. A documentary/fiction hybrid chronicling one day in the life of…
The very best instances of allegory are those that allow themselves to be completely ignored. Too often, an artist only pretends to be interested in…
Toward the beginning of Too Many Beasts, aging farmer Raoul Brun (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h) intentionally runs over several large boars, packs their bodies in the trunk…
By way of disclaimer, some years back I collaborated with one of the lead organizers of Spectacle Theater’s STRUCTURE. WAVE. YOUTH. CINEMA. (SWYC) series (and…
Long before Russia commenced its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the winter of 2022, preeminent cineast Andrey Zvyagintsev already saw dark clouds gathering over his…
The gifted prodigy who’s gone to seed is a time-honored trope that will never leave us because it flatters both filmmakers and actors. A streetwise…
Sometimes the first shot of a film tells you enough to know you’re in the hands of a great director. Arthur Harari’s The Unknown —…
Saccharine was inevitable. In the Western world, there’s never been a worse time to have a body. Navigating the Internet is an exercise in polarity…
To fully appreciate — or even comprehend — a project like Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe would require extensive foreknowledge of…
Karim Lakzadeh seems to be someone who takes his competition titles very seriously. His latest film, Living Twice, Dying Thrice (LTDT from now on), premiering…
From a certain point of view, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War is emblematic of the state of modern filmmaking. For one thing, a resurgence…
Out of the diamond-blue depths of the night sky over southern France, Jean Moulin parachutes down. By the time the film opens in 1943, the…
Harmony Korine gleefully threw genre cinema in the deep fryer with the hitman miasma of Aggro Dr1ft (2023). This year, Nicolas Winding Refn took it…
Centered in a sepia-toned frame, two young, Black girls sit on a park bench, their backs to the camera. Another child passing by smears one…
Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is across from Jericho. And the Lord…
Patrick Wang has been operating on his own terms since his filmmaking career began in 2011 with In the Family. The nearly three-hour story of…
A monkey’s paw-inspired horror film that’s not-so-secretly about the loss of free will and specifically women being subjugated by their partners, Obsession — from 26-year-old…
While possessing the backdrop and aesthetics of a social realist drama, the narrative foundation of writer-director Pierre Le Gall’s debut feature Flesh and Fuel takes…
Not Arthur Rimbaud, but A. Rimbaud. The title of Patrick Wang’s latest film is the skeleton key that unlocks the principles behind its approach to…
When Affection opens, our protagonist (Jessica Rothe) is facedown on a road. It would appear she’s been in a car wreck. She stands up, stumbles…
Surely critics will be quick to note that The Beloved (El ser querido) strongly recalls last year’s Sentimental Value, as Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s seventh feature film…