Kapadia again expertly maneuvers themes of romance, ambition, and injustice in her second feature, a languid, affectionate triptych of three working women in Mumbai coming to terms with their varying displacements.
His body of work has gotten increasingly whimsical and pedantic; here he substitutes kitchen-sink realism for an aesthetic that feels like a pre-distressed t-shirt.
Touching the Screen
The way we see a game—whether we can control the camera or not, whether the frame moves or is static, how the frame moves—is an artistic quality as important as (and often interlocked with) its interface, its methods of immersion...
It is the very aridity of its emotional content, parched to desert-of-the-real levels by de-aging effects that render Hanks and Wright (and several of their co-stars) as weirdly artificial and subject to illusionistic manipulation as their environment, that is so startling—and, for the most part, beguiling.
Eastwood has no illusions about the legal system, but at no point does he suggest that it is rotten. In fact, the story he is telling puts its faith in the personal integrity of public officials and the facing of inconvenient facts.
In the wake of the Small Axe cycle, McQueen now sets out to submit British cultural identity to a stress test during a period of maximum crisis.
A Few Great Pumpkins
Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Mask, Arrebato, The Stuff, Cuadecuc, vampir, Tall Shadows of the Wind, Drag Me to Hell.
Although shot in 2000, Frailty heralds themes that would trouble the coming era (and its cinema): Christofascist warfare, “cleansing” the region of unsavory figures, the son split between patriarchal fidelity and his own scruples.
In Dahomey, where its namesake country no longer exists in its original form and a community pretty much means all of a new nation’s citizens, the question of who receives the artifacts becomes contentious.
Over the last decade, Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios has established himself as one of the most daring filmmakers working within his national film industry.
The films of Sean Baker, collectively approaching something like a sexploitation genre unto itself, seem to be trying to split the difference between Hollywood and raw grassroots guerilla cinema, landing on a kind of pop realism that feels aesthetically uniquely his, if hollow at the core.
Maddin and the Johnsons here trade their decaying, manic images for something more coolly sustained and unsettling, creating an insular nocturnal mindscape where the banal and fantastic seamlessly mingle.
For better or worse, Aaron Sorkin has made his dramatic metier out of the kind of organized backstage chaos portrayed in Saturday Night; it cannot be understated how strange it is to watch someone poorly imitate his style, draining it of any rhetorical rhythm while retaining the self-importance.
Under the cover of blackout curtains, a woman jolts herself awake with a hair-raising shout. She catches her breath, but cannot shake off her ring of panic, the quiver and cold sweat of constant fear. This will be one of the more peaceful moments of her day.
Caught by the Tides represents a different kind of film that can emerge from unorthodox methods and stands as a testament to the medium’s long-term possibilities.