An 11-minute standing ovation at Cannes can’t be called a total disaster. Nevertheless, Alpha arrived at the 2025 London Film Festival trailing a, shall we…
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the directing duo that calls itself Radio Silence, have kept busy since the release of 2019’s Ready or Not, making…
Released in 1978 in what was then Czechoslovakia, Beauty and the Beast by director Juraj Herz follows a young woman who, to save her father,…
Jessie Buckley’s hesitant recitation of Bonedog — the achingly painful poem written by Eva H.D. — is one of the most memorably harrowing sequences in…
The mounting anxiety experienced by the protagonist of Petra Biondina Volpe’s Late Shift — Floria, a nurse on a badly understaffed surgical ward — hardly…
There’s something immensely refreshing about a skillfully put together piece of pop pastiche like Project Hail Mary. It’s almost entirely made up of parts from…
Christian Petzold’s Miroirs No. 3 begins with two bodies in motion and ends with a woman trying to remember how to still herself. Somewhere between…
“Cura animarum is a historical Latin term originating from ecclesiastical law, which translates to ‘the care of souls’ or ‘the cure of souls.’ It refers…
Stop me when you’ve heard this one before: Rose Byrne plays a frazzled, confrontational mom who feels that she’s constantly coming up short in supporting…
Seeking to reduce a filmmaker’s chief thematic preoccupation is usually a waste of time, for any one worth their stuff works in a storm of…
While most of the films produced during the heyday of Hong Kong action cinema took place either in Hong Kong or in historical China, some…
No matter how common the surroundings or how ordinary the story may be, a Christian Petzold film always catches the viewer by surprise. His films…
The mainstream romantic drama matters. Movies on the artier end of the spectrum — Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless…
Writer-director-actress Grace Glowicki hasn’t yet ascended to the same level of indie prestige as Kate Lyn Sheil, Deragh Campbell, or (now mainstream power player) Greta…
Ever since his debut fiction film My Joy (2010) premiered in the main competition of Cannes, Sergei Loznitsa has been a repeat visitor to the…
Two Pianos In an old interview with David Ehrlich, filmmaker and critic Kent Jones recalls a conversation with Arnaud Desplechin in which the great French director told him “a script is a very small thing. The movie is the thing.” It's a wonderfully succinct summation of Desplechin's interests as an artist; there's always a story,
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There’s no denying that a long tradition in horror exists of the unseen being scarier than showing the monsters. Hitchcock was famously quoted as saying,…
Honest question: do we live in a post-cinematic world? Equally honest answer: no, of course not, cinema can absolutely meet the moment. The tools afforded…
Eight Bridges James Benning is a master of moments. Over a career that spans five decades and twice as many modal deviations, Benning abstracts the…
“And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said…
Dolly lays its porcelain head at the altar of Leatherface. Rod Blackhurst’s bootstraps indie horror is unabashedly pious toward The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the seminal…