Cliff Walkers
Mere months after the long-delayed, China-only debut of his drama One Second and with another title, Under the Light, already in the can, Zhang Yimou’s espionage thriller Cliff Walkers finally enjoys...
View ArticleThe Virtuoso
The Virtuoso is a strange movie, and from the start, we can easily gather why that is. The characters have not been afforded any names, credited only under monikers like “The Mentor” or “The Waitress”...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Universal Soldier: Regeneration
Direct-to-video – nowadays, video-on-demand or shunted-to-Netflix – is a phrase that arguably still has unfair pejorative connotations of cinematic dross and has-been casts and cheap cameras. But if...
View ArticleWrath of Man
There is nothing inherently wrong with grim, humorless characters and atmosphere. Some of the finest films ever made are punishing and relentless. In order for that milieu to succeed, viewers need...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Oeuvre: Fellini: Nights of Cabiria
Following the critical and commercial successes of his previous three films, Federico Fellini found himself in possession of three extremely potent tools: his own ingenuity as a visual storyteller; the...
View ArticleThe Paper Tigers
With his feature debut, director Tran Quoc Bao manages a tricky balance of old…and old. The Paper Tigers embraces the tropes of the martial arts genre’s heyday – a throwback to Shaw Brothers and Golden...
View ArticleThe Human Factor
The opening titles of The Human Factor perform the unenviable task of simplifying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its core: Israelis have occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since...
View ArticleThe Unthinkable
Russia has long been pilloried in Hollywood as a hostile nation, a country interested in world domination, destroyer of Western values. It is the boogeyman hiding in the closet in Cold War-era films, a...
View ArticleAbove Suspicion
Above Suspicion sems to be a callback to the ‘90s erotic thriller–indeed, director Phillip Noyce made such a movie, the 1993 drama Sliver starring William Baldwin and Sharon Stone. Noyce’s latest is in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rediscover: Trances
Already a decade old when Trances debuted in 1981, Nass El Ghiwane was wildly popular across Northern Africa, their concerts drawing large numbers of fans who ecstatically give themselves over to the...
View ArticleState Funeral
Ukranian director Sergei Loznitsa’s latest archival footage project, State Funeral, shows the pomp and regalia of the death of Joseph Stalin and the massive spectacle of his interment. Scoured from...
View ArticleBenny Loves You
Low budget independent horror comedies probably aren’t the first type of movie that comes to mind when one hears of years-long production periods. Complex, troubled shoots like Apocalypse Now, perhaps,...
View ArticleEnfant Terrible
No, that’s not David Spade playing Andy Warhol late in the overwrought melodrama of Enfant Terrible. But it might as well be. This lurid biopic of iconoclastic director Rainer Werner Fassbinder too...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Legally Blonde Turns 20
To call Legally Blonde a feminist classic would be a vast understatement: 20 years since its release, the film remains even more popular now than it was then—which definitely says something, since Elle...
View ArticleThe Djinn
In TV, a “bottle episode” is an episode of a show produced with limited cast, locations and, naturally, budget. Indeed, it’s often used as a tool to decrease the show’s expenditure, yet the returns are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Oeuvre: Fellini: La Dolce Vita
La Dolce Vita famously opens with an iconic scene of economical absurdity, as a statue of Christ — his arms extended in blessing ― is helicoptered across the city of Rome, on its way to an audience...
View ArticleThose Who Wish Me Dead
For a film so light on character development and heavy on vivid action pieces, Those Who Wish Me Dead takes a long time to get going. When its disparate character threads finally do converge and lead...
View ArticleSpiral: From the Book of Saw
There are plenty of schlocky film franchises that illustrate the Hollywood truth that movies don’t have to be very good to reliably make money, as long as audiences get what they came for. In the case...
View ArticleThere Is No Evil
Arriving on US screens well over a year after its Golden Bear-winning Berlinale 2020 debut, Mohammad Rasoulof’s There Is No Evil marks another step up for the international profile of Iran’s...
View ArticleRediscover: Magnet of Doom
When cinephiles think of Jean-Pierre Melville, they typically associate the French director with taut, detail-heavy procedurals about criminals, gangsters, hitmen or the French underground. He is a...
View Article