I Am Keiko is a film caught within the dimensions of its maker’s head, composed of and consumed by the limits of that brain’s…
From the start we’re reminded of Kubrick. Atop a lovely bed of Michael Nyman’s strings, the camera ascends gracefully from a basement of snarling…
As middle-aged philosophy professor Ben Hardin (Robert Longstreet) endures an existential nosedive, Sabbatical responds by redirecting that void on the audience through stylistic deprivation. Director Brandon Colvinshoots…
In an overhead shot, a 4×4 full of jihadists crawls down a cramped village alleyway, where it’s greeted by a lanky woman in flowing…
Pinastri, a scientific term given to a specific moth family, is the safe word for S&M lovers Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara…
Some of Eric Rohmer’s sharpest skewerings of male psychology take as their focus guys defined by disjunctions between appearance and intention — take, for instance, the exceedingly…
Many of the interactions in Two Days, One Night occur on opposite sides of doorways, liminal spaces echoing protagonist Sandra’s (Marion Cotillard) temporary suspension…
It would be a mistake to overstate the similarities between the events presented in Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan — a series of non-violent protests gone awry in…
Casanova, that notorious 18th-century lady-killer, ravenously consumes food during every one of Story of My Death’s first several scenes. Shortly thereafter, he defecates it…
With The Homesman, Tommy Lee Jones’s torch-carrying efforts on behalf of the tried-and-tested beauty of the American West continue to be moving. Taking into…
Part of the fun — and the discomfort — of watching Nightcrawler is in gradually adapting to the rules of its nocturnal world, a sprawling network of photojournalism…
Though it touches upon the comedy of remarriage film, the family vacation film, the bourgeois critique film, and the male-id exposé film, Force Majeure…
For an actor, part of the art of embodying a morally questionable character is to first seek a point of empathy rather than glaring…
The handheld, behind-the-head following shot loosely trailing a character in movement is often a staple of nonjudgmental, naturalistic filmmaking, coming as it does with…
Kevin Jerome Everson’s The Island of St. Matthews plays like something that might be unearthed in the furthest reaches of a “community films” search…
It’s an acknowledged perceptual truth that we tend to ignore things about ourselves and the world around us that are uncomfortable to deal with.…