Broad Horizons and Shallow Vistas in Chloé Zhao’s ‘Nomadland’ —TIFF 2020
As I write this, the reviews for Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, which premiered earlier this week at the Toronto International Film…
Reviews
Cao Fei’s ‘Blueprints’ finds freedom in fantasy
Cao Fei’s ‘Blueprints’ begins in a room decorated to look like a mid-20th century foyer in China: the kind you…
Despite its Name, Maya Da-Rin’s ‘A Febre’ (‘The Fever’) Wards Off Pathologising
In Maya Da-Rin’s first narrative feature film, A Febre (The Fever), Justino sits with his grandson Josué in the kitchen…
Against Inheritance: Stanya Kahn’s ‘No Go Backs’
Stanya Kahn’s latest short film ‘No Go Backs’ (2020) opens with two teenage boys pissing into the grassy scrub with…
The Luxury of Savouring in Kelly Reichardt’s ‘First Cow’
One of the pleasures of Kelly Reichardt’s narrative films is that their plots (where they exist) never feel artificial: the…
Dreamscapes and Ethnospheres: Ben Rivers and Anocha Suwichakornpong’s ‘KRABI, 2562’ (2019)
Describing the motivation behind his feature The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not…
As a Woman in America, Always: Eliza Hittman’s ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’
Autumn, the 17-year-old protagonist of Eliza Hittman’s sophomore film Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), first stands out because of her…
A Hellish Commons: Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite’
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019) is an upstairs-downstairs tale of contemporary class inequalities, as a poor and a rich family become…
Elizabeth Banks’s ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and the death of early millennial camp
When I heard that Sony was going to be rebooting Charlie’s Angels in 2015, my heart – to cite Ariana…
‘Little Women’, Little Change
If the radical potential of adaptation lies in its ability to harness the energy of an established text for new…
The Impossible Profession: On Justine Triet’s ‘Sibyl’
In Promises, Promises, Adam Phillips writes, “When people need a new question to ask of themselves, then it may be…
The 57th New York Film Festival: Looking Towards Convergences in a Cluster of Films
Having just seen Alla Kovgan’s documentary about the monolithic figurehead of modern dance, Merce Cunningham, it is now my job…
Mati Diop’s ‘Atlantique’ (‘Atlantics’) turns to the women left behind
In Mati Diop’s short film Atlantiques (2009), three young Senegalese men sit around a bonfire in Dakar at night, one…
Intimacy, Distance and Detail in Ute Aurand’s ‘Rasendes Grün mit Pferden’ (‘Rushing Green with Horses’)
Watching Ute Aurand’s Rushing Green with Horses is like being spirited sideways into a pastoral. Shot entirely in 16mm with…
Céline Sciamma’s ‘Portrait de la jeune fille en feu’ (‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’) explores the boundlessness of poetic love
“Do all lovers feel like they’re making things up?” one woman asks another in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait de la jeune…
Lorene Scafaria’s ‘Hustlers’ and the Anatomy of the Scam
Recently our headlines have been dominated by young female scammers: scammers whose exploits are spoken of with breathless fascination. Their…
Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger: A Canadian Wake-Up Call —TIFF
“Racism and discrimination is what’s keeping services away from our children and that’s the bottom line.” So says Carolyn Buffalo,…
Dominga Sotomayor’s Unstable Utopias: ‘Too Late To Die Young’ (‘Tarde para morir joven’)
Utopias critique by differentiation, springing from a lack. They work, writes Lucy Sargisson, “by creating distant spaces whence to interrogate…
A Magnificent Filial Debt: Love and Family in Lulu Wang’s ‘The Farewell’
It’s difficult for me to process The Farewell, a film so acute in its approximation of the shape of my…
Fantasy Without Catharsis: María Paz González’s ‘Lina From Lima’ —TIFF
María Paz González’s first narrative feature Lina from Lima (2019) is a musical comedy about migrant life in Chile that…
Fate and the State: Sophie Deraspe’s ‘Antigone’ —TIFF
Sophie Deraspe’s film adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone updates the central themes of the original – family, exile, state power and…