Celine Song’s directorial debut Past Lives has the kind of confidence that one would expectfrom a seasoned filmmaker deep into their career. The narrative is built around the concept of in-yun, which is essentially the belief that the relationships built amongst people are ultimately the Read More …
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. is essential viewing because an unexamined faith is not a wellspring of beliefs, but a list on inclinations inscribed on a wet napkin. Following Abby Ryder Fortson (Ant-Man; A Dog’s Journey) as Margaret, the daughter of a Jewish man (Bennie Sadie — Read More …
Killers of the Flower Moon lays plain yet another appalling chapter of American history. The Reign of Terror in the 1920s saw the Osage people murdered by white people who felt the wealth from oil was their God-given right as the superior race. Apparently, they Read More …
The absolutely brilliant Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a cantankerous, foul-mouthed prep-school teacher, who is somewhat forced into taking care of a bunch of misfit students during winter break in Alexander Payne’s newest masterpiece The Holdovers. The film, which also stars Dominic Sessa as Angus Tully, Read More …
“You don’t get to commit the sin, then have us all feel sorry for you that it had consequences,” Kitty Oppenheimer reprimands her husband Robert midway through 2023’s Oppenheimer. For most of the film, J. Robert Oppenheimer leads the Manhattan Project without reserve, arguing the necessity Read More …
Listen. This is the first word spoken in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes’ latest masterpiece, a parabolic moral mystery that is at-once quite ordinary in terms of its genre conventions, yet extraordinary in its formal brilliance and ethical considerations. Listen. The speaker is Jenny (Adèle Haenel), a youthful, Read More …
Winner of last year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, The Salesman did not receive a wide release until this year, and it is one of Farhadi’s most powerful films yet. The imitation between art and life blurs after two married actors are forced to evacuate their Read More …
Cinema about the marginalized pockets of the world is becoming more common, but back when The Florida Project first came out, what director Sean Baker was doing was quite new. The film features what he calls the hidden houseless, guests but never permanent residents of Read More …
I grieve, therefore I am: if there is a single characteristic that grounds the personal identity of Kristen Stewart’s dissociative expat Maureen, it’s the yearning she feels to reconnect with her recently deceased twin brother. It’s the mark not only of her existence, but also Read More …
“Our world has set itself afire. I must look elsewhere to quench the blaze.” James Gray’s film tells the story of British explorer Percy Fawcett’s search for an ancient civilization deep in the Amazon jungle in the years before and after the First World War. Read More …