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…
There’s an early scene in Amy Wang’s Slanted where our main character, Joan Huang (Shirley Chen), is shown scrolling through social media while wearing a clothespin fastened…
The concept of being a flop, a loser, a dud, an empty promise, and a failure in 2026. The new year is already growing old,…
Where Homer’s Odyssey featured the originary myth of homecoming, the modern sojourner often seeks first to venture outside before finding, in the process, his true…
After A New Love in Tokyo, Banmei Takahashi turned beyond the mortal realm. Japan was fine. His films — whether through home video as V-Cinema or…
Sometimes you can tell right away that you’re in for a thoroughly generic bit of junk food, but that’s not always instructive of quality. Often,…
The scourges of the contemporary art world are many, but arguably the largest of them has to do with the widening disconnect between the sanctity…
In a depressive musical landscape where the only things pop stars seem to sing about are wanting to have sex, having sex, and regretting having…
If you weren’t around to experience it in real time, it will be hard to grasp how seismic the 2002 FIFA World Cup feud between…
February Reviews Week of February 1 Spotlight Pillion — Harry Lighton February 6 by Robert Stinner Read Review Genre Views The Strangers: Chapter 3 —…
Given the franchise’s downward trajectory since its requel resurrection, reasonable hopes were never bound to be high for Scream 7. But then came the reprehensible…