Robin Wood begins the introduction to his 1965 book Hitchcock’s Films with a question: “Why should we take Hitchcock seriously?” It’s a deceptively simple query; as…
Claymation, most readily identified for its craggy, almost comedic artificiality, can, in fact, most truthfully express our deepest and, at times, darkest emotions. The four…
A smog of displacement and destiny envelops the opening minutes of La Cocina. As a homeless man on the streets of Manhattan waxes poetic about…
It wouldn’t be a stretch to claim that Daaaaaalí!, Quentin Dupieux’s 77-minute portrait of the surrealist artist, is a biography of some kind. Nor would…
Frat lives fall flat. That, at least to the outsider, is a reasonable conclusion to draw from the many unwelcome instances of its bearers disrupting…
The new documentary from Brett Story (The Hottest August) and Stephen T. Maing (Crime + Punishment) is an imperfect film, in that it often raises…
One approaches the release of Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice with equal parts morbid curiosity and dread. Mired in what was almost certainly expected controversy since…
Throughout Nora Fingscheidt’s film The Outrun, we are thoroughly stuck in Rona’s (Saoirse Ronan) head. Fresh out of rehab, Rona has returned to the Orkney…
Girl meets boy. Boy meets girl. Love blossoms. Reality sets in. The pandemic hits. They grow apart while remaining tethered to each other in explicable,…
We have so many World War II-era films and biographical films of varying quality that for a new one to feel properly worthwhile it must…
“We don’t want to scare people,” a director says at the beginning of Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man. It’s the set of a workplace educational…
All Shall Be Well opens with a leisurely, near-fantastical tour through what appears to be a typical 24 hours for Angie (Patra Au) and Pat…
By now there’s little ground left to break within the Mockumentary genre, a fact only reinforced by Robert Kolodny’s The Featherweight, a handsomely mounted biopic…
It’s been almost 25 years since the infamous Esquire piece in which Andrew Sarris suggested that Kevin Smith might become “the next Scorsese.” One doesn’t…
At first glance, it wouldn’t be unfair to view My Old Ass, the new feature from Canadian actress-turned-director Megan Park, as a bit of a…
Since his debut feature, Tower, 12 years ago, Kazik Radwanski’s tendency to foreground his characters’ inner turmoil has been matched, and perhaps maintained, by his…
Gia Coppola’s (Palo Alto) The Last Showgirl announces its intentions and approach from its first frame. We open on a tight shot of the film’s…
Any movie that features a theater critic as a main character invites more intentional criticism from even lay viewers through the mere recognition that the…
Mohit Ramchandani’s City Of Dreams is, in actuality, a cinema of nightmares. Or, more accurately, a cinematic nightmare. The film — which follows a young…