By Ali Moosavi. The difficult, tumultuous relationship between Celine and Margueritte is at the core of Love Letters, while Félix Dufour-Laperrière delivers Death Does Not Exist.“ The films in the main competition section of Cannes Film Festival are the ones that get all the limelight and media coverage. Cannes however […]
Ben Model, Keeping Silent Movies Alive and Well
By Jeremy Carr. I realized that anything I had ever done related to silent film had just sort of handed itself to me, and I leaned into that….” —Ben Model Ben Model loves silent movies. In case it isn’t obvious by his live performances, online videos and podcasts, and the […]
Touching the Past Generation: A Photographic Memory
By Will Comerford. The blurring of perspectives in this personal documentary reinforces how much mother and daughter are truly occupying similar psychological spaces, despite living in different decades and contexts.” Why do we document? Why paint a hunt on a cave wall, or write down what Jesus or Confucius said? […]
Escaping Stereotypes: Ernesto Dìaz Espinoza’s Diablo
By Ken Hall. A well-made low-budget film with characters that escape one-dimensional stereotyping….” An entertaining vehicle for Scott Adkins, Diablo casts him as Kris Chaney, an ex-convict who comes to Bogotá to rescue young Elisa (Alanna De La Rossa) from cartel boss Vicente (Lucho Velasco). Besides graphic and well-choreographed martial arts […]
The Return (2024): Penelope’s Looming Odyssey and Odysseus’s Trauma Narrative
By David Ryan. Aspires to explore important themes about perception and insight from a trauma-focused narrative but is often undone by its own scrimping of dramatic focus and coherence.” Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (2024) is a mature but disappointing adaptation of the last few books of Homer’s The Odyssey, centering […]
Images and Conditions: Mohammad Rasoulof on The Seed of the Sacred Fig
By Yun-hua Chen. All the value of images—particularly those from social networks—is deeply tied to the circumstances in which the films are created. A film like this would have been entirely different had it emerged under different conditions.” —Mohammad Rasoulof A gripping and intensely charged drama, The Seed of the […]
A Self-Defeating Genre Mashup: On Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Coogler’s strong character work in the film’s first half undercuts his efforts to embrace pure horror in its second.” Spoiler Alert Ryan Coogler’s knack for bringing a humanist touch to a variety of genres—starting with social realism (Fruitvale Station), transitioning to crowd-pleasing sports sagas (Creed), and […]
You Can’t Stop a Wave: Lorcan Finnegan’s The Surfer
By Jonathan Monovich. For its Australian setting and premise of a man’s descent into insanity, The Surfer unsurprisingly has similarities to the late Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright (1971), but the charm of The Surfer comes from its overt love for Frank Perry’s The Swimmer (1968)….” Though marketed as a […]
The Grotesque and the Sublime: Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight
By William Blick. Hysterical, soul-stirring, and bewildering…undefinable in the best sense of the word.” Occasionally, I will see a film wherein I do not know where it will lead me. It is at this time that there is often a leap of faith in putting my trust in the hands […]
Seventeen Now Isn’t What It Was: Durga Chew-Bose on Bonjour Tristesse (2024)
By Jonathan Monovich. I think going into anything with a deep respect for what came before is the best you can do.” –Durga Chew-Bose “Whatever happened to the teenage dream?” It’s a question attributed to a Marc Bolan song, though its sentiment remains eternal. Time fleets, as does youth, and […]