Oeuvre: Varda: One Hundred and One Nights
demonstration than One Hundred and One Nights. Set mostly in the palatial chateau of Simon Cinema (Michel Piccoli) a centenarian cinephile whose life has spanned the entire history of film, the film...
View ArticleThe Addams Family
Somehow, Tim Burton never got the chance to ruin the Addams family. But like so many of the death-defying hijinks that the altogether ooky clan has indulged in over the years, it was a near miss....
View ArticleGemini Man
Throughout the first 20 or so minutes of Gemini Man, the one question that’ll be burning a hole in the minds of even the most casual cinephiles will be why, of all the stories in the world, would Ang...
View ArticleParasite
Bong Joon-ho returns to South Korea after a decade of making films abroad with Parasite, a film that fits as comfortably among the warped class portraits of his American work as it does the grisly,...
View ArticleRediscover: Death in Venice
Venice, with is stunning Basilica and serpentine canals, has always played magically on the screen. From Don’t Look Now to The Wings of the Dove, the Italian city is almost a character in itself....
View ArticleEl Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who never want Vince Gilligan’s creative interests to stray very far from the New Mexico desert and boring, uninteresting folks. El Camino: A Breaking...
View ArticleThe Dead Center
An effective, slow-burn thriller that manages a relatively fresh spin on the dead-returning-to-life-in-the-hospital horror subgenre, Billy Senese’s The Dead Center is particularly notable for its...
View ArticleAlong Came the Devil 2
Perhaps best known as a young man with an affinity for rats, Bruce Davison has a decades long career in television and film as both a reliable supporting actor and occasional leading man, and it’s...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Jimmy Orpheus
At first glance, MUBI hardly seems to constitute any sort of hell. The streaming service, funded in part by the European Union, takes a 30-films-at-a-time approach to proffer a sophisticated buffet of...
View ArticleA German Youth
“I mean, is a German able to make a picture?” Posed in the first moments of Jean-Gabriel Périot’s A German Youth, the question could be understood an inquiry into aim, bias or subjectivity. But there’s...
View ArticleOeuvre: Varda: The World of Jacques Demy
After releasing The World of Jacques Demy in 1995, Agnés Varda would take a six-year break from filmmaking before returning with one of her most acclaimed works, The Gleaners and I. It seems that the...
View ArticleMaleficent: Mistress of Evil
The sequel to 2014’s baddie-turned-goodie Sleeping Beauty origin story, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is the rare live-action Disney movie that actually take some risks. Directed by Kon-tiki co-director...
View ArticleThe Lighthouse
Over the last few years, several debut films have been released within the completely arbitrary confines of what some were calling “elevated horror,” a marketing term gone awry denoting a lowbrow genre...
View ArticlePain and Glory
After more than 10 years of creating masterpieces (or near masterpieces) beginning with All About My Mother in 1999, Pedro Almodóvar retreated from the well from where he drew inspiration for films...
View ArticleBy the Grace of God
By the Grace of God, François Ozon’s drama about a real Catholic Church child abuse case unfolding in France as we speak, is an elegant and powerful depiction of how abuse changes its victims and how...
View ArticleThe Laundromat
After this year’s unsung High Flying Bird, relentless innovator Steven Soderbergh drops the iPhone and returns to the RED for his latest Netflix-produced outing, the experimental comedy The Laundromat....
View ArticleGreener Grass
Greener Grass is, at heart, a film about female friendships, but not one that traverses the usual arcs of inseparable trust, momentary fracture and ultimate reconciliation. The relationship between...
View ArticleRevisit: Onibaba
There’s a hole at the center of Onibaba, a film fixated upon the darkest depths of human depravity, the material conditions that lead to such degradation and the emotional ones which countermand it....
View ArticleCyrano, My Love
Though the name Edmond Rostand does not enjoy the ubiquity of William Shakespeare, his key creation has survived and remains much-loved by readers to this very day. Cyrano de Bergerac, Rostand’s...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: The Long Kiss Goodnight
Last month, it was announced that Geena Davis would star in a film called Cowgirl’s Last Ride, which will chronicle the adventures of an elderly Texas cowgirl who escapes from a nursing home to live...
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