TIFF Review: Alex Ross Perry’s ‘Her Smell’
Alex Ross Perry’s latest feature, Her Smell, focuses on the career of a rock star, Becky (played by Elisabeth Moss),…
Reviews
Of Broken Bones and Ecstatic Dreams: On Chloé Zhao’s ‘The Rider’
When Lupita Nyong’o ascended the stage to accept her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2014, the straight-out-of-drama-school newcomer…
TIFF Review: Margarethe von Trotta’s ‘Searching for Ingmar Bergman’
Searching for Ingmar Bergman opens with acclaimed German director Margarethe von Trotta in Gotland, on the rocky beach from several…
Carol Morley’s ‘Out of Blue’: Refractions of “The Female Investigative Gaze”
Following the TIFF world premiere of Carol Morley’s fourth feature-length film, Out of Blue (2018), the director, seated adjacent to…
In praise of teenage self-disgust: ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’
The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but in The Miseducation of Cameron Post, it is those…
Suffering and the Limits of Criticism: Jenny Lu’s ‘The Receptionist’
When Jenny Lu graduated from London’s Chelsea College of Art in 2009, she left with the same bright-eyed optimism typical…
We Need to Talk About Violence in Lynne Ramsay’s ‘You Were Never Really Here’
In You Were Never Really Here (2017) – Lynne Ramsay’s first feature film since 2011 – Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) is…
Madonna, Whore, ‘Alanis’
In the poster for Anahì Berneri’s Alanis (2017), the eponymous female protagonist (played by Sofia Gala) sits on a chair…
‘Ocean’s 8’, Anna Delvey, and our love for the woman who wants to own the world
Debbie Ocean has been in prison for five years, eight months, and 12 days. Her brother Danny is dead. Probably….
Men will never save you: On Coralie Fargeat’s ‘Revenge’
At the start of Coralie Fargeat’s debut film Revenge, Jen, the protagonist, could be an image plucked from a…
On Valeska Grisebach’s ‘Western’ and its borderlessness
Valeska Grisebach describes her latest feature, Western (2017), as a “dance with the genre”.¹ Here the cinematic evocations of the…
Lean on Pete, the anti-Odyssean epic
Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete takes the Yorkshire-born filmmaker to the luxuriant plains of America’s Pacific Northwest, where a fifteen-year-old…
Jaume’s World: The Patriarchal Imaginary of Jaime Rosales’s ‘Petra’
Note: Review contains a few of many spoilable plot points. Petra, the sixth feature from Spanish arthouse director Jaime Rosales,…
“Learn to love your claustrophobia”: Jason Reitman’s ‘Tully’
Watching either of the two trailers for Tully, the third collaboration between Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman, you’d be forgiven…
Cannes Review: Agnieszka Smoczynska’s ‘Fugue’ (‘Fuga’)
There’s a scene in Agnieszka Smoczynska’s second feature film, Fugue, where the husband of amnesiac protagonist, Alicja (screenwriter Gabriela Muskała),…
Cannes Review: Alice Rohrwacher’s ‘Happy as Lazzaro’ (‘Lazzaro Felice’)
The idea for Happy as Lazzaro (Lazzaro Felice) reportedly came to Alice Rohrwacher when remembering an article she had read…
Cannes Review: Jafar Panahi’s ‘Three Faces’ (‘Se Rokh’)
Jafar Panahi’s Three Faces begins with a suicide video that may or not be real. A well-known actress, Behnaz Jafari…
Care at the Margins: Debra Granik’s ‘Leave No Trace’ (2018)
What does it mean to retreat, to withdraw, to leave the village for the forest? Is it a rejection of…
Cannes – Zsófia Szilágyi’s ‘Egy nap’ (‘One Day’)
Zsófia Szilágyi’s debut film One Day (Egy nap) is a study in the purgatory of motherhood and is riddled with…
Speaking at Cross Purposes in Claire Denis’s ‘Let the Sunshine In’ (2017)
“So it is a lover who speaks and who says:” So begins Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, a philosophical…
The Provincialism of the White Hipster: On Wes Anderson’s ‘Isle of Dogs’
Isle of Dogs presents, without a hint of irony, an American filmmaker’s fiction about the horrors of an internment camp…