By Gary M. Kramer. Director Jonás Trueba’s enchanting, leisurely drama, The August Virgin, follows Eva (Itsaso Arana, who co-wrote the screenplay with Trueba) as she wanders around Madrid during the first two weeks of August. Everything and nothing happens to Eva as the hot, languid days go by. (Trueba charts […]
Aliens and Raging Hormones Meet in Egor Abramenko’s Sputnik
By Elias Savada. Be warned – Sputnik‘s creature most likely did not come in peace.” When I was a child, I was fascinated by those first artificial satellites launched into orbit around our planet. For those caught up on world history, the Russians were the trailblazers, in October 1957, with […]
Saving Man’s (and Woman’s) Best Friends: Jesse Alk’s Pariah Dog
By Elias Savada. Pariah Dog highlights Alk’s ability as an extremely gifted, poetic, and even counter-culture filmmaker who has fashioned a labor of love for his debut feature.” A hazy dusk is arriving in Kolkata in West Bengal, India (the most far eastern part of the country, on the border […]
A Comfortable Troublemaker – Michael Haneke: Interviews, edited by Roy Grundmann, Fatima Naqvi, and Colin Root
Code Unknown (2000) I try to rouse the viewer from his status as a victim in order to give him a more flexible position in relation to the film.” By Jeremy Carr. There’s a penetrating coldness that commonly characterizes the films of Michael Haneke. Rightly or wrongly, similar notions of […]
The Silencing: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Kills Them Softly
By Rod Lott. A crime thriller that goes through the genre’s motions without providing much of a snap of tension.” I have a theory: The Silencing was engineered in the scripting stage in hopes of landing Viggo Mortensen. Not only does its actual star, the cost-effective Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, look similar […]
“We Like it When the Characters Fail”: Claes Bang on Bay of Silence
As an actor, you like when a character has both sides – when you actually are terrified but try to keep your calm.” By Gary M. Kramer. Claes Bang excels at playing suave, amoral men. His breakout performance in The Square, pivoted on his smug museum curator getting his comeuppance. […]
Satire with Training Wheels: Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Spree
A satire which settles for hitting the same easy target (social media = bad) over and over again – a horror exercise without scares” By Thomas Puhr. The horrific lengths to which some will go for even a fleeting glimpse of internet “fame” inspires public disgust and fascination alike. Netflix’s […]
These Kids Are Alright: Boys State
By Elias Savada. Politics these days are more decisive than ever. A day doesn’t go by without “someone” threatening to bring down the system of government another notch into a seemingly bottomless abyss. Maybe our future leaders will have a better understanding in the years ahead, although I often wonder […]
Uninhabitable Women: On Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s Swallow
It comes as no surprise that Hunter develops pica. The compulsion mirrors her entrapment: like the lifestyle being forced down her throat, the first object, a pretty red marble, goes down smooth….” By Zoe Kurland. What is it with thrillers and mid-century modern homes? There has long been a love […]
Few Wounds Examined: Ramona S. Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts
A Thousand Cuts doesn’t grapple with such global issues as much as it name checks them.” By Thomas Puhr. A sobering reminder that 21st-century demagoguery is not limited to the West, Ramona S. Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts (2020) focuses on two diametrically-opposed figures: Rodrigo Duterte, current President of the Philippines, […]