Reviews
Anaita Wali Zada, a first-time actor who fled Afghanistan in 2021 with her sister after working for several years as a TV presenter and journalist, is often the lone subject of these images. Her composed, stoic face entrances just as it conceals a dull ache for something Donya struggles to name.
The films of Ira Sachs have balanced their slender narratives with richly resided-in evocations of people and milieus, surveying the uneasy and often breakable bonds between lovers, companions, and kin. But Passages is the first of his dramas whose leanness feels effectively and exhilaratingly taut.
The depictions of trans people and in particular sex workers can be centered around the desires of cis straight men; in contrast, Kokomo City, in which the participants can simply be, feels like an act of resistance.
This 168-minute opus from documentarian Claire Simon exposes the mystery and marvels of what it physiologically and emotionally means to be human in a body that inevitably blooms and wilts.
The film feels emotionally authentic, and while its narrative runs the risk of being a litany of heartbreaking moments, its unparalleled specificity and peerless performances, particularly the two non-actor leads, preserve its integrity.
Oppenheimer, with its achronological historical narrative, crosscuts among different time frames, and though it has just one inevitable outcome (the annihilation of humanity), its biopic structure gives it an inherent tidiness it is constantly working against.
The Barbie doll itself implicitly communicates the paradox of womanhood. Think of the mothers who bought their daughters dolls that promised adulthood would be effortless and beautiful, when they knew that womanhood often meant disappointment, loneliness, and above all, effort.
The film is a stark departure from the mythical terrain of Undine or the hauntological anachronism of Transit. History is here only vaguely alluded to.
Dial has five credited writers and cost 300 million, yet the film plays it safe, which is the worst thing a big budget film can do. It is, as is usually the case these days, an impersonal, idling piece of intellectual property.
The new film by Alain Guiraudie takes place in a world where sexual desire is not just acknowledged as protean and unpredictable but also freely expressed and even accepted.
Casa Susanna is a critical elegy for a time long since passed. The true stories behind these photos offer crucial insight that for years was missing or left as a question mark whenever they were displayed in galleries.
Eleven features and nearly 30 years into his career, it is a given that the form and content of his films are irrevocably intertwined. His controlled aesthetic tends to echo his characters’ meticulous personalities, environments, and routines.
This is a film about two people contemplating the possibilities of what could have been and what still might be, but it is also about the electric charge and covert forces that draw two bodies and souls together.
Alexander Sokurov is renowned for his oblique directorial style, with mesmerizing, painterly effects, so it is surprising that he is proving to have had such influence on the new school of Russian realism.