Reviews
The Souvenir is a memorable cinematic lesson, so rich and articulated as to be better described as lived rather than seen. The emotional ecstasy it evokes is like falling in love for the first time.
This might seem to suggest a bit of a creative about-face, for Happy Hour, running a bit over five hours, was not precisely a commercial proposition, but in fact Asako I & II, in the space of two incident-heavy hours, works in every bit as much feeling and active intelligence as its predecessor.
Ferrara places an unusual emphasis on the quiet, placid environment in which his subject worked, the bedrock of domesticity which anchored him though ultimately could not protect him.
Assayas has consistently returned to, and been keenly attuned to, the ways technology affects and reflects our social interactions and familial dynamics—with permanence, or the lack thereof, being a common focal point.
Mitchell crafts a shaggy dog mystery with various potentially aimless threads to create a pervasively hallucinatory atmosphere that suggests danger behind every corner and answers just out of reach.
Rafiki was banned by the Kenya Film Classification Board ahead of its Cannes premiere in 2018, yet it was not erotic content that unnerved those in power and triggered censorship. Instead, it was her compassionate handling of the young love between Kena Mwaura and Ziki Okemi.
The repetitiveness of his project lulls us into surprising moments of realization. We are trained, as when Ji-young repeats herself, to fix our eyes on the slight alterations between films.
Elisabeth Moss plays the character at the center of this swirling psychological vortex, and does so with a reckless abandon that is cathartic and very impressive, if not slightly unnerving in its commitment.
There is some satisfaction that comes in seeing motifs and symbols established within the first part of the film as they re-emerge in the galvanizing high-wire act performance of the second, though I am unconvinced that the seeding of these symmetries can entirely justify the moribund experience of what has preceded.
In typical Denis fashion, she presents the story through an unfolding series of sensory details: a humid garden, a pile of lifeless bodies, a gathering puddle of sweat and semen.
Diane asks what it means to build your life around other people, and what happens when those people begin to slowly disappear.
Peele unleashes a bevy of conceptual ideas about race, class, and American-ness that are only difficult to grasp if the viewer is not really looking. Us is supremely confident filmmaking, a thrill ride shot through with existential urgency.
The theme of honor among thieves, and its embedded suggestion that outlaw principles are a form of resistance in a fundamentally lopsided society, is fulfilled at epic length in the new Jia Zhangke crime drama Ash Is Purest White.
The slow escalation throughout the film builds to show quite clearly how the confluence of time, boredom, prejudice, and weaponry create a situation with devastating consequences for all involved.