Advertisements Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low is the kind of film you watch in a state of quasi-paralysis. The 1963 noir is both taut moral thriller and enthralling procedural — a film of relentless jaw-clenching tension and compulsive rhythm that sets the…
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Advertisements Wes Anderson is, quite famously, a details guy. Perfect symmetry, immaculate composition, and absolute devotion to every tiny element of his dollhouse creations — his work (and that of his behind-the-scenes collaborators) is dazzling in its dedication to the little things.…
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Fittingly, Kelly Reichardt's Cannes-closer is a portrait of a power-keg period of history glimpsed from the periphery, and a wry, withering film about living without integrity in an era that demands it.…
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Advertisements “The epic [is] for Israelis and the documentary for Palestinians.” That’s how legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard is said to have wryly described Palestinian cinema — as being confined by its political reality to capturing only that reality. In the weeks following…
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Advertisements Documentary directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ most popular documentaries, Boys State and Girls State, follow two groups of carefully selected high schoolers tasked with hypothetically creating a democratic government from the ground up, as part of a prestigious summer program.…
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Predators reveals that To Catch A Predator and its modern YouTube byproducts allow for a free pass to buy into the police state and exploitative entertainment founded on useless, fumbling nods to interpersonal justice.…
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'Mad Bills To Pay' is a modern dose of social realism.…
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Advertisements In Melanie Oates’s Sweet Angel Baby, a small fishing town rests calmly against the roiling and raging Labrador Sea. Everything moves with the grain in town — if you grow up here, you either move away or stay forever, marrying your high…
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Advertisements Velvety shadows cut into the pristine fabric of light like sharp daggers, and faces contort with devious abandon under the weight of a brutal existence. Amidst the cold indifference of a stony city, a warm friendship is first forged and then…
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Advertisements There’s something off about Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’s Heretic, something rotten at its pit that leaves the film feeling macabre in its subtext in a way that feels unintentional. The film follows two young women, Mormon missionaries Sister Paxton (Chloe…
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