Palm Springs (Max Barbakow, 2020)
Diverting enough, Palm Springs is little more than a concept, and a borrowed one at that. To be fair, it's a bit different from Groundhog Da...
2020-11-10 19:38:27 +0000 UTC View Post
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His House (Remi Weekes, 2020)
Thematically, haunted houses are all about history. As such, they can serve as a handy metaphor for ...
2020-11-10 02:55:43 +0000 UTC View PostPromising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)
A curiosity. If you consider Promising Young Woman in the context of the broadly commercial revenge-thriller, comparing it to something like
Kajillionaire (Miranda July)
I was frankly so put off by the melancholy whimsy of Miranda July's first two features that I was kind of dreading Kajillionaire. Her first film...
2020-11-03 20:16:29 +0000 UTC View PostMank (David Fincher)
THIS REVIEW IS EMBARGOED. SO KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY, PLEASE.
Much like this year's major sports championships, the 2020 Oscars will...
2020-11-02 19:53:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Kung-fu Master! (Agnès Varda, 1988)
An undeniably bizarre film, Kung-fu Master! seems almost designed to, well, punch and kick at the boundaries of French cinematic lyricism. From ...
2020-11-01 19:37:19 +0000 UTC View PostRed, White and Blue (Steve McQueen, 2020)
Neither as baldly declarative as Mangrove, nor as poetically open-form as Lovers Rock, Red, White and Blue splits the differen...
2020-11-01 04:05:16 +0000 UTC View PostNasir (Arun Karthick, 2020)
SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
It has to be addressed right off the bat. Nasir is a didactic film. It is made with a very particula...
2020-11-01 00:00:24 +0000 UTC View PostThis Ain't No Galaxy Brain
Sorry for the limited watching and writing in recent days. I have in the midst of a really hellacious headache cluster which has been slowing me down ove...
2020-10-28 05:32:00 +0000 UTC View PostBorat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner, 2020)
Or: Paranoid Racist QAnon Wackos Say Darnedest Things: an Exposé For Make Benefit of Understone Dwellers During Trumptastic Years of 2016-2020....
2020-10-26 02:58:07 +0000 UTC View PostOn The Rocks (Sofia Coppola, 2020)
This is an utterly trivial film, but it's also kind of weird. It's really a fairly standard midlife crisis film from a woman's point of view. We've seen ...
2020-10-26 02:49:42 +0000 UTC View PostServants (Ivan Ostrochovsky, 2020)
Although I hadn't remembered it until I checked my logs, I did see Ostrochovsky's debut feature, a film from 2015 called Koza. It was the story ...
2020-10-25 05:16:29 +0000 UTC View PostI'm Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman, 2020)
This review will contain spoilers.
At first I found myself in a rather bothersome predicament. I was left cold by Charlie Kaufman'...
2020-10-24 04:07:52 +0000 UTC View PostMalmkrog (Cristi Puiu, 2020)
It's true, Malmkrog isn't for everyone. But I must admit to a certain surprise at the criticisms directed at it by the reviewers for Variety and...
2020-10-23 19:15:56 +0000 UTC View PostNew Order (Michel Franco, 2020)
Okay, first things first. Are we sure we're not being punked?
Anyway, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the cinematic career of ...
2020-10-17 18:49:45 +0000 UTC View PostA White, White Day (Hlynur Pálmason, 2019)
The word on the street is true. Hlynur Pálmason's second film is a major leap forward from his already-impressive debut Winter Brothers. That f...
2020-10-16 19:46:34 +0000 UTC View PostBloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, 2020)
Okay, guys, it's Cinephile Confession Time. This is the first film I've seen by the acclaimed duo of Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross. In fact, awhile back I...
2020-10-15 22:42:31 +0000 UTC View PostThe Notes of Anna Azzori / A Mirror That Travels Through Time (Constanze Ruhm, 2020)
Say, have you heard about essay films? They are all the rage right now. In fact, the Currents section of the New York Film Festival featured five of them...
2020-10-13 18:14:30 +0000 UTC View PostThe Woman Who Ran (Hong Sangsoo, 2020)
Hong operates in a minor key here, with the compositional interest primarily hinging on all the things he doesn't do. The Woman Who Ran doesn't ...
2020-10-12 19:06:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Man, "Cuties" sucks.
I was asked to write a statement for the National Society of Film Critics relating to the Netflix indictment, which I've pasted below. So I tried watchin...
2020-10-10 05:56:05 +0000 UTC View PostDick Johnson Is Dead (Kirsten Johnson, 2020)
At one point, during the final third of Dick Johnson Is Dead, the film's subject says something jarringly poignant to his daughter, the filmmake...
2020-10-10 04:55:24 +0000 UTC View PostMarriage Story (Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, 2020)
Dunn Rovinelli's So Pretty was a dense, complicated feature film that encompassed literary concerns, gender identity, the difficulties of collec...
2020-10-08 23:02:53 +0000 UTC View PostFrench Exit (Azazel Jacobs, 2020)
Did you know that Woody Allen had a new film this year? Apparently some nonsense called Rifkin's Festival, about a guy hanging out at the San Se...
2020-10-08 20:13:34 +0000 UTC View PostTime (Garrett Bradley, 2020)
As it happens, I already related most of my thoughts about this incredibly moving film in my third NYFF report for MUBI, which was mostly supposed to foc...
2020-10-08 04:23:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi, 2020)
One of the most critically lauded documentary filmmakers of the moment, Gianfranco Rosi seems to define his films by geographical location rather than po...
2020-10-06 22:52:38 +0000 UTC View PostTragic Jungle (Yulene Olaizola, 2020)
I must admit, I'm a bit confused by the fact that this rather pedestrian film is being hailed as a breakout for Olaizola. And to be honest, the more I th...
2020-10-06 19:29:13 +0000 UTC View Post