The Cave
In the context of the Syrian Civil War, Eastern Ghouta has been pivotal. It became rebel-controlled in 2012 and the Syrian government forces have slowly been squeezing the city and its surroundings...
View ArticleJojo Rabbit
If the purpose of satire is to sway an audience towards seeing the inherent folly in a corrupt system, how boring an artist must Taika Waititi be to have birthed this charming, entertaining but...
View ArticleOeuvre: Varda: The Gleaners and I
With its focus on sustainability and its denunciation of the colossal food waste of capitalism, The Gleaners and I is one of Agnès Varda’s most immediately accessible films. Made at the turn of the...
View ArticleGirl on the Third Floor
Whether it’s the final girl or the gritty antihero, the plucky kid or the steely old-timer, the horror genre often gives us someone to root for amid the mayhem. For every axe-wielding Jack Torrance...
View ArticleMaking Waves
After Star Wars took over the culture in 1977, a documentary appeared in prime time that showed the making of the phenomenon. Memory blurs most of what was shown, but there’s an enduring image of Ben...
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Rediscover: The Kid Brother
Many of Harold Lloyd’s films build-up to a jaw-droppingly choreographed scene. Whether it be Lloyd scaling a building in Safety Last! (1923) or a crucial football game in The Freshman (1925), Lloyd...
View ArticleThe Kill Team
Why make a feature film based on your own documentary? That is the question that haunts Dan Krauss and his new movie, The Kill Team, a feature based on the same material as his 2013 doc of the same...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: The Psychotronic Man
Its very title gave birth to a whole subgenre of largely low-budget, exploitation movies that have unfairly earned a reputation as bad cinema. Not to the confused with the kind of commercial megazilla...
View ArticleSynonyms
We meet Yoav (Tom Mercier) walking through Parisian streets to an apartment so bare that it’s not immediately evident if he belongs there. An Israeli expat, Yoav arrives in Paris to discover that...
View ArticleOeuvre: Varda: The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later
When Agnès Varda directed The Gleaners and I on cheap, consumer-grade cameras, she could never have guessed that her political but playful documentary would launch her into the greatest level of fame...
View ArticleMotherless Brooklyn
On the surface, Edward Norton’s long-gestating adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn appears to be one of the most indulgent vanity projects to come out of Hollywood in years. It’s an...
View ArticleTerminator: Dark Fate
Though it’s the latest entry in a 35-year-old franchise, Terminator: Dark Fate is very much a film of our time. It’s a potent blend of nostalgia, newness and girl power in the same vein as recent hit...
View ArticleLight from Light
A part-time paranormal investigator (Marin Ireland) responds to a call from a widow (Jim Gaffigan) who thinks his house might be haunted by his late wife. In any other hands, this would be a rom-com or...
View ArticleBadland
Technically, Badland is a Western. Writer-director Justin Lee’s sixth feature follows lawman Matthias Breecher (Kevin Makely), a Pinkerton detective tasked by Senator Benjamin Burke (Tony Todd) to hunt...
View ArticleRediscover: The Lords of Salem
As a director, Rob Zombie was perhaps born just a bit too soon. His films, predominantly released during the torture porn era of 2000s horror cinema, certainly didn’t require a great deal of...
View ArticleThe King
The King, Netflix’s loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s trilogy concerning young King Henry V, has little interest in its source material. Writer-director David Michôd may borrow much of the Shakesperean...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Man on the Moon Turns 20
When Kanye West first really started to piss people off in late 2015 and early 2016, proclaiming Bill Cosby’s influence with the same carelessness with which he supported his dragon brother Trump, a...
View ArticleMarriage Story
Love and all its messy imperfections are placed under the microscope in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, which is both the writer-director’s finest film and his most transparently reflective. The...
View ArticleOeuvre: Varda: Cinévardaphoto
Stretching all the way back to the initial ethnographic inquiries of La Pointe Courte, Agnès Varda’s films have consistently focused on the subtle conversion of lived experience into indelible images,...
View ArticleLast Christmas
Emilia Clarke is in desperate need of better material. The actress, despite playing one of the most iconic television characters of all time (and playing her exceptionally), has had really poor luck on...
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