Review

By Zhuo-Ning Su. The Ukranian dramatic thriller The Tribe marks the arrival of a major directorial talent in Miroslav Slaboshpitsky, who delivers a feature debut here that’s artistically challenging, topically provocative, stylistically assured, and an all-around daring, alluring, searing work of vision. Set in an educational institution for the deaf […]

By Christopher Neilan.  Pialat is not celebrated in the US like Truffaut, nor adored in critical circles like Godard and Melville.  He’s a palme d’or winner who emerged in the post-new wave environment – Truffaut, in fact, produced his first feature in 1968 – but one whose rigidly realist, langorously […]

By Jakub Wojnarowski. (Warning: Spoilers ahead.) Every human writes her own story. But how could one make this narrative coherent, if every chapter is being erased as soon as it is ready? That is what happens to Christine Lucas in Before I Go to Sleep (written and directed by Rowan […]

By Eija Niskanen.  Sion Sono, Japanese cinema’s enfant terrible, has delved into the topic of the 2011 Northern Japan 3/11 triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant accident in two of his recent films, Himizu (2011) and Land of Hope/Kibo no kuni. Himizu, based on a manga by Minoru […]

By Christopher Sharrett. Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves was one of the few films of the last season that deserved real recognition and got only a little; it was swamped, as per custom, by the usual blockbusters and played only in the cities and university towns. Reichardt is emerging as an […]

By Zhuo-Ning Su.  Marking the sixth collaboration of what’s shaping up to be the most compelling and fruitful auteur-actor duo in modern German cinema, writer/director Christian Petzold’s Phoenix starring Nina Hoss is a well-realized drama with a singular concept soaring in its intellectual reach and emotional resonance. Set in a […]

By Noah Charney. For performance artists, their bodies are the canvas on which to paint, the marble from which to sculpt. Some have pierced their bodies with pins, others with vicious hooks linked to chains from which they hang by their nearly-torn flesh, as in some grotesque fresco of martyrdom […]

By Matthew Sorrento. In 2008, the Criterion Collection issued Anthony Mann’s The Furies (1950) with the restored film sleeved alongside the 1948 source novel by Niven Busch. The film will remain “lesser” Mann, with The Naked Spur (1951), The Man from Laramie (1955) and Man of the West (1958) as […]

By Robert Kenneth Dator.  As with any truly influential director, Federico Fellini—simply, Fellini—has been talked to death. However, with so much talk generated through so much derivative thought, it is possible to perpetuate precept rather than forge original observation. So, let us come out from behind all the humanism, neo-realism, […]

By Sam Littman.  Within the first fifteen minutes of David Mackenzie’s prison drama Starred Up, it becomes clear that the titular felon, 19-year old Eric Love (Jack O’Connell), belongs in prison, though in this case the offense that sent him to a Young Offender Institution and the misbehavior that caused […]