Too Late to Die Young
In light of recent political events in the region—the rise of fascism in Brazil, the prospect of a US-backed coup in Venezuela, the nascent peace in Colombia and the continued descent into violent...
View ArticleYomeddine
Writer/director A.B. Shawky’s Yomeddine begins with a metaphor. Beshay (Rady Gamal), a small, wiry man with deformed hands who is covered in scars that mark him as a survivor of leprosy, stands on a...
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Revisit: A Dry White Season
Two boys wrestle over a ball on a vibrant, green lawn. One is white, the other black and together they laugh and smile as the opening credits roll over their horseplay. And although A Dry White Season...
View ArticleThe Fall of the American Empire
For his latest effort, Quebecois writer-director Denys Arcand employs the tried-and-true strategy of basing his film on the premise of another recent hit movie. It’s a classic strategy to get funding,...
View ArticleDomino
For the vast majority of his career, controversial auteur Brian De Palma has been the problematic Kylo Ren to Alfred Hitchcock’s Darth Vader. Throughout his stylish and immediately recognizable...
View ArticleHoly Hell! 10 Things I Hate About You Turns 20
Smarter than other ‘90s teen-led films like Can’t Hardly Wait and She’s All That but dumber than peers like Clueless and Election, Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You is perhaps best known as the...
View ArticleDark Phoenix
If this year’s blockbuster entertainment has taught us anything, it’s that Hollywood still doesn’t really know how to handle a powerful woman. Even ignoring the rushed mishandling of its strongest...
View ArticleKatie Says Goodbye
Playing like a repository of grim indie clichés, Katie Says Goodbye is little more than an extended punishment doled out to its protagonist (Olivia Cooke), a high-school dropout who works as a waitress...
View ArticleLeto
It’s a typical rock ‘n’ roll story: a seasoned musician with a pretty young girlfriend is threatened by a youthful rival who’s not only better-looking but a better songwriter. That’s the premise of...
View ArticlePapi Chulo
Offering a quiet take on grief, loss, race and class, writer-director John Butler’s Papi Chulo is surprisingly affecting despite its creator’s tendencies to easy visual metaphors like heat, rain and a...
View ArticleRediscover: Il Bidone
Before he made the sweeping, baroque epics about the dwindling boundary between reality and fantasy in the Rome of the ‘60s—think La Dolce Vita and 8 ½—Fellini first crafted the Loneliness Trilogy....
View ArticleThe Reports on Sarah and Saleem
Extramarital affairs are so popular as the premises of dramatic narratives because those participating in them are already exposed, vulnerable and ripe for trouble. A man has a small fender bender...
View ArticleLate Night
Historically, movies set in and around the world of comedy have a hard time connecting with mainstream audiences, but not because of these movies tendency towards inside baseball. It’s that for many of...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Eyes Wide Shut Turns 20
When Albert Brooks’s ruthless relationship comedy, Modern Romance, premiered in 1981, the filmmaker got an enthusiastic phone call from an unexpected source, Stanley Kubrick. Bowled over by Brooks’s...
View ArticleOeuvre: Varda: La Pointe Courte
The temptation when watching La Pointe Courte in 2019 is twofold. On the one hand, the viewer wants to search the film for traces of the later Agnés Varda, the indelible qualities that indicate it is...
View ArticleShaft
While the “nostalgic reboot-quel” has become the du jour method for reinvigorating a stagnant film franchise, it’s far from a one size fits all solution. What worked in The Force Awakens, David Gordon...
View ArticleThe Dead Don’t Die
Sometimes even the best directors need a break. After coming off a run of his best films, Pedro Almodóvar took a breather with I’m So Excited, a trifling comedy that returned to his roots of flimsy sex...
View ArticleHampstead
Older viewers are a shamefully overlooked demographic at the cineplex, though it’s noteworthy that when films do get made for and about elderly people they tend to fall within narrow confines....
View ArticleBeing Frank
Jim Gaffigan’s stand-up schtick often revolves around the stress of fatherhood—self-deprecating dad bod jokes and all—and Being Frank gives him the opportunity to double down on that approach. After...
View ArticleRediscover: Soleil O
Among the many cultural upheavals of the 1960s was the wave of independence that swept across Africa, where one country after another was nominally released from colonial control. With this transition...
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