While musical virtuosity and compositional genius are indisputable bona fides for any great artist to possess, and are indeed the key ingredients behind any…
Within French cinema, it’s not hard to discern a tradition of films that revolve around groups of youngsters who spend their leisure summertime in…
McCartney III finds the artist in a familiar playful mood, experimenting across various forms, genres, and lyrical modes. Considering the lukewarm (even arguably harsh) response…
Savage State is more fetish than flesh, settling for cyphers that vaguely reflect old Western classics. Although the Western may be long past its heyday,…
Billie offers a look at one complex woman through the lens of another, each with a distinct story that director James Erskine manages to…
Kill It and Leave This Town is an impressive technical achievement and often stunning, but its central nihilism is oppressing and is bloated at feature…
Wild Mountain Thyme is a hurried, generic The Quiet Man-Hallmark fairy tale mashup, with all the mess and none of the fun that description suggests. From…
Much like its main character, Another Round is a film firmly situated somewhere between thrill and disappointment. The 19th-century French poet, Charles Baudelaire once wrote,…
Few debut albums have, since their initial release date, so easily defined themselves as a milestone and game-changer for a genre in the way…
Happiest Season is trite, platitude-heavy Christmas offering that fails on nearly every front. Five years ago, when Todd Haynes’ Carol hit theaters, a moment was marked in…
Much like the iconoclast at the center of this doc, Zappa is singular, uncompromising, and riveting. Whether you appreciate Frank Zappa’s work, few would deny…
Leap of Faith is a fascinating fireside-style docu-chat that affords William Friedkin the space to freeform story-tell. It’s a particular challenge (if not entirely futile…
La Belle Èpoque is superficial at best, and an endless string of clichés at worst. Time travel is a popular mechanism throughout film history…
Pierre Cardin, indisputably, is one of the most iconic names in the realm of fashion — known to many as a genius, a hyper-modernist,…
In recent years, Venezia has been a strong catalyst for auteurs to premiere some of the year’s most internationally acclaimed films. While Daniele Luchetti’s…
After the international success of Asghar Farhadi’s socio-familial, “realist” dramas, there were a litany of Iranian films that tried to copy the winning formula…
From an aesthetic standpoint, there’s nothing particularly extraordinary or ambitious about Kim Ji-young, Born 1982. It’s a work that could just as easily function…
Nomad is a passionate and heartfelt work, but Herzog’s foregrounded presence sometimes distracts from film’s more mystical ambitions. In January 1989, the legendary British adventurer,…