Reviews
If the identities of Jack and von Trier were previously still separable, this hellish crucible forges them together irrevocably. Whatever else one might say about von Trier, this is filmmaking imbued with terrifying clarity regarding its (self-)destructive nature.
Life exquisitely pours forth out of If Beale Street Could Talk, a film that seems to move on unceasing currents of emotion, of love and pain, of big heartaches and small joys, of revelations and disillusionments.
This complex character study is centered on Esmail (Ardalan Esmaili), an Iranian in Denmark who faces deportation unless he can settle down with a Danish partner . . . Through his struggles, the film explores the performative nature of assimilation and reminds us of the steep costs of trying to forge a new life and identity in a foreign land.
In telling her tale of the eternally disenfranchised, Rohrwacher defies standards of storytelling, character, and even time itself.
Schnabel was already a respected artist at 28, the same age when van Gogh avowed himself to art after dabbling in madness and ministering, and a year older than Basquiat would ever live.
The accomplishment of Roma is experiential. Its attention to sound, setting, and how bodies and things occupy space have the effect of radically aligning the viewer to a particular perspective that is fully located within the narrative world of the film.
The Favourite works in an idiosyncratic register that distills his austere and sometimes brutal gaze to darkly comic effect. Here, he reimagines the period piece as an acerbic battleground of wits, where no behavior, interaction, or pastime is too eccentric or primal.
Talal Derki remains close to this family, capturing meals, the children in bed or at play, men chatting before heading off to combat, rendered as normal as getting into a car for a morning commute.
The Wild Boys is a supremely assured piece of craftsmanship, evincing an active creative engagement and ample imagination in every minute of its nearly two hour runtime.
In the films of Corneliu Porumboiu, seemingly insignificant details, questions, and disagreements ripple outward, like pebbles tossed into a still pond, until they become deep inquiries into history, language, and ethics.
Just like the world we live in, where the inequalities between rich and poor and male and female only grow crueler and less escapable, the rage that undergirds Burning is instantly familiar.
The crowning achievement of this drama is the game and invigorating performance of Regina Williams, from her flinty exasperation to her no-guff candor to her sly, self-protective sarcasm. Hers is a performance suffused with compassion yet devoid of cheap and easy sentiment.
Coming at a time dominated by talk of the bifurcation of the country, Monrovia, Indiana is an excavation of life in the other America. Its place within the career of Frederick Wiseman also works into this dichotomy . . .
By calling attention to what images are projected and received, Ruth Beckermann reveals the process by which narratives can be made and unmade.