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‘Land’: Robin Wright Directs Herself Through A Familiar Wilderness Grieving...
Take the nomad out of “Nomadland,” and you’re left with “Land,” Robin Wright‘s feature-directing debut (she previously directed 10 episodes of “House of Cards“), in which she also stars, as a grieving...
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‘Prisoners Of The Ghostland’: No Brains, But Big TesticaaAARRRGHLs [Sundance...
So Nic Cage is a bank robber sprung, naked except for a sumo-nappy, from a lengthy stint in jail by the white-hatted, black-hearted Governor (Bill Moseley) of a fake Japanese cowboy town populated...
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‘Cusp’: A Beautiful And Bruised Teenage Summer Fling [Sundance Review]
A sun-flared and bong-addled tumble into a teenage Texan summer rife with bombshells and boyfriend problems, “Cusp,” from debut directors Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt is one of those...
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The Snubs And Surprises Of The 2021 Oscars
Well, that was weird. Oscar night felt a bit like an off-brand version of an Oscar night – and not in a bad way (at least until the end). But there were times when the rehearsal-dinner vibe was...
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Bless Us ‘Benedetta,’ For Paul Verhoeven Has Sinned [Cannes Review]
For just a moment, as a particularly sepulchral stretch of Anne Dudley‘s liturgical score plays over a solemn black screen emblazoned with the words “inspired by real events,” you might think Paul...
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‘Evolution’: Kornel Mundruczó’s Drama Is A Misguided Three-Parter About The...
One should perhaps not read too much into the fact that the press screening of Kornel Mundruczó‘s “Evolution” was timed to coincide with the final of the UEFA European Football Championship. But if...
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‘Bergman Island’: Mia Hansen-Løve’s Breezy Relationship Auto-Fiction Is A...
There’s a lovely wind that blows across the island of Fårö, Ingmar Bergman‘s actual home for several years, and his spiritual home for several decades. Even in the summer, when Mia Hansen-Løve‘s...
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‘The French Dispatch’: Wes Anderson Dazzles With A Whimsical New Missive Of...
July 12th, 2021, Cannes – Reader, I ratatat out this missive in haste on my trusty Smith-Corona from the South of France, in the paltry hopes it may adequately convey my delight in viewing the latest...
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‘Titane’: The New Flesh Is Thriving, Living Rent-Free in Julia Ducournau’s...
We can all stop wishing it a long life: the new flesh is thriving, living rent-free in Julia Ducournau‘s fucked-up titanium brain, oozing from every frame of her bizarrely beautiful, emphatically queer...
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‘Petrov’s Flu’: Kirill Serebrennikov’s Contagious, Crazed Drama Is Unhingedly...
It’s a good thing you can’t catch a virus from an image because if you could, just a few frames of Kirill Serebrennikov‘s fabulously yeasty, bilious, dank Competition title, “Petrov’s Flu” would bring...
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‘That Was Life’ Is A Continually Surprising Delight About Later-Life...
Brush past the terrible English title (also sometimes written as “That Was Life” which is marginally more comprehensible but still needlessly generic) and David Martín de los Santos‘ debut feature,...
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‘The Flood Won’t Come’ Is A Challengingly Distorted Image Of The Pitiless...
Replete with peculiar ideas about the nightmare of modern conflict, especially in bleakly undefined, but vaguely former-Soviet territories, Armenian director Marat Sargsyan’s debut, which started its...
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Netflix’s ‘Beckett’ With John David Washington, Alicia Vikander & Vicky...
For a film in which John David Washington lurches, staggers, stumbles, shambles, flounders, falters, wobbles, scrabbles and totters across an entire Greek province, getting shot, stabbed, cuffed (often...
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‘Sinkhole’ Is A Silly, Sentimental, Satisfying Comedic Disaster Movie About...
Look, sometimes even the snootiest of cinephiles, with the most obscurantist of cinematic palates (generally well served by the Locarno Film Festival selection), just needs a movie about a massive...
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‘Ida Red’ With Josh Hartnett, Frank Grillo And Melissa Leo Asks: What if...
John Swab‘s fourth feature film as writer-director-producer, “Ida Red,” (and if it’s your first of his, don’t feel too bad; it well may also be your last) starts with a police stop that turns out to be...
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Abel Ferrara’s ‘Zeros And Ones’ With Ethan Hawke Is A Flashbulb Pop Of...
Lockdown affected us all in peculiar ways, and given that veteran provocateur Abel Ferrara was pretty damn peculiar to begin with, it’s no surprise that “Zeros And Ones” — a fiction that makes use of...
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‘Parallel Mothers’: Pedro Almodóvar’s Latest Is Bold, Messy, Ridiculous &...
Some opening films merely open their festivals; Pedro Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers” bursts the Venice Film Festival wide like a piñata that’s been crammed with storylines as contrived as its feelings...
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Kristen Stewart Is An Incandescent Diana In Pablo Larraín’s Tremendous...
If you have even the smallest dislike of the grotesquely redundant and regressive institution that is the British monarchy, one of the greatest pleasures of the shamelessly pleasurable, archly...
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‘Last Night In Soho’ Sees Edgar Wright Running On The Fumes Of Old...
Guess it had to happen sometime, but it’s a shame that the previously-thought-to-be inexhaustible energy resource of Edgar Wright’s omnivorous, giddy cinephilia should finally be showing signs running...
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Ana Lily Amirpour’s ‘Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon’ is a Sweet, Scuzzy Blast...
Like finding a grubby, balled-up bill in your spangly g-string and uncrumpling it to discover doughy old Ben Franklin staring benignly back at you, Ana Lily Amirpour‘s third feature is a sweet, scuzzy...
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