“Un Couteau dans le Coeur” tries to achieve some semblance of self-awareness, a sly wink at its own garish kitsch in neon lettering. But unlike Anne’s pornography, the film never reaches its—ahem—climax.
In “Capharnaüm,” director Nadine Labaki paints a depressing tableau of a vicious cycle that Zain unfortunately gets caught up in, one that starts one node up in Zain's family tree with his parents.
Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” is a testament to the director’s ability to weave the politics of the past and present, of identity, race, and religion, in an alternatively comedic, disturbing, and suspenseful thrill ride based on an unbelievably true story.
Mitchell’s imagery simmers evocatively, refreshingly trippy—though it all seems to gesture at a statement that he hasn’t clarified, even to himself, like a string of blissed-out, drug-addled musings he scribbled while half-asleep.
"Climax" is a trippy prism of an arthouse film that succeeds in its attempt to destabilize its audience into the same debauchery as its characters, though at times the actors and director, too, fall into the easy trap of overdoing it.
Bi Gan makes 3D film into a cinematic experience integral to the film’s second half, in a way that amplifies the first half’s slow-moving narrative—both in direction and in plot—a beautiful tale of a man in search of the ghost of his past.
Part synchronized swimming training practice, part group therapy session, the group of aging, out of shape, and hopelessly dedicated men make an unexpectedly supportive and uproarious—if not unoriginal—party.
During a time when the freedom of speech and the importance of facts are being threatened, it’s a shame that Bahrani delivers a watered-down version of a complex novel that demands so much more.
Oh, what’s that? A yellow press badge? I don’t… I’m afraid I don’t see anything… Hmm… Did you hear something, Jacques? Mm… I don’t think so? Maybe the light Riviera breeze? Or perhaps a Chanel No. 5-scented fart slipped out of Dame Helen Mirren over there? Hmm.
Marlene treats Elli less like her daughter and more like an adult friend, or more accurately, like an extension of herself—binge-drinking in front of her, making her over in garish neon lipstick and glittery eye shadow. It’s fun playing dress-up, until it isn’t.
The end result is, like the film’s protagonist, a strange hybrid of several genres that is one part Swedish noir, one part romance, one part moralistic fable for a film that plays jump rope with the border of what viewers can bear to see on screen.
“How much love can be repeated? How many people are worth waiting for?” croons an amateur singer, words that echo throughout Jia Zhangke’s “Ash Is the Purest White.” As it turns out, not that many—if any at all—at least for Qiao.
By shirking away the potentially moralizing and prescriptive tone the movie could have taken, Desrosières goes too far and instead turns sexual assault into the punchline of a tasteless joke of a movie.
In part over-stylized mini-rock musical, and in others, cinematic manifestation of the music at the heart of the movie, “Summer” toes the line between genuine and overambitious.
In “Birds of Passage,” Guerra and Gallego create a Shakespearean play set in ’70s, indigenous Columbia with expert pacing, understated but effective acting, and an eye for exquisite cinematography.
Loznitsa’s vignettes, exaggerated as they are, appropriate the farce of political decline, proving the power of satire to weaponize corruption in its own, brutal way.
