Tag: Foreign Films Review
Malina (1991) | Review
You Can’t Handle the Fugue: Schroeter Burns Bright with Infamous Bachmann Adaptation
What is it about Werner Schroeter’s Malina so seemingly repellant it resulted in...
La Llorona | Review
No Woman, No Cry: Bustamante Reconfigures La Llorona as Avenging Equalizer
Though she was recently resurrected as a superficial money grab in this year’s Warner...
Mr. Jones | Review
Truth Be Told: Holland Revisits the Horror of the Holodomor
Polish director Agnieszka Holland returns to a subject matter favored in her most memorable offerings—lost...
Devil Between the Legs | 2019 Toronto Intl. Film Festival Review
If Bleak Street Could Talk: Ripstein’s Not Afraid of Virginia Woolf in Sordid Marital Melodrama
Arturo Ripstein, one of Mexico’s most enduring and influential auteurs,...
Our Struggles | 2019 Panorama Film Festival Review
Strife Sentence: Senez Presents Quietly Effective Domestic Drama
Director Guillaume Senez teams with writer Raphaëlle Desplechin (sister of Arnaud and Cesar winner for Mathieu Amalric’s...
Boyz In The Wood | 2019 SXSW Film Festival Review Ninian Doff
Ninian Doff Goes Brogue While Delinquents Go Scot-Free
Scottish music video-director Ninian Doff offers an uneven but hilarious debut with Boyz in the Wood: a bonkers action-comedy...
The Seven Last Words | 2019 Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam Review
Orchestrating the Suffering: Wordless Omnibus Serves up the Right Image-track for Haydn’s Sonatas
Kaveh Nabatian pours all of his experience as director of shorts, docs...
Dovlatov | Review
Author! Author!: German Jr. Tackles a Week in the Life of a Dissident Writer
While it’s Alexey German Jr.’s (son of the equally idiosyncratic Alexey...
Suspiria | Review
Dance the Dance of Another: Guadagnino Goes Deeper & Weirder in Ambitious Argento Remake.
Luca Guadagnino has always been a supremely divisive filmmaker, capable of...
Under the Tree | Review
I Feel Petty: Sigurdsson Dispels the Myth of Polite Society with Sharp Social Satire
Hell may be other people, but it’s most certainly your...
The Cakemaker | Review
I’ll Never Have That Recipe Again: Graizer Glazes Quiet Drama with Bittersweet Longing
There’s an awful lot of complex intersectionality going on within Israeli director...
Revenge | Review
Follow The Blood Trails: Fargeat Impresses And Disappoints With Feature Debut
Coralie Fargeat’s feature debut makes a bold attempt at redirecting the well-worn rape and...
Mrs. Hyde | Review
Sing the Body Electric: Huppert Glows in Bozon’s Eccentric Take on Robert Louis Stevenson
“Things one can’t do are the one I want to,” utters...
Back to Burgundy | Review
Days of Wine and More Wine: Klapisch Delivers a Weak Vintage with Sibling Saga
French director Cedric Klapisch has enjoyed something of a singular, sanctified...
Beauty and the Dogs | Review
Body Talk: Ben Hania’s Troubled and Troubling Portrait of Sexual Assaul
Perfectly encapsulating, perhaps to the heights of exaggeration and exploitation, why victims of sexual...
The Green Slime (1968) | Blu-ray Review
There are several significant elements lost in translation in the wonderful failed experiment that is The Green Slime, a 1968 B-grade (or lower) sci-fi...
Okja | Review
That’ll Do, Pig: Joon-ho’s Latest Creature Feature Gets Stuck on Itself
Following 2014’s post-apocalyptic microcosm Snowpiercer, South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho returns to familiar territory...
The Journey | Review
Enemies – A Love Story: Hamm Imagines Peace Treaty as Male Bonding Episode in Flaccid Bromance
The reimagining of famed deliberations and clandestine alliances which...
Based on a True Story | 2017 Cannes Film Festival Review
Hider in Her Head: Polanski Mines a Dull Playing Field with Psychological Thriller
The promising conceptualization of Roman Polanski directing a femme centric psychological thriller...
Pasolini | 2014 TIFF Review
The Gospel According to Pier: Ferrara Poetically Captures an Auteur’s Last Day on Earth
It appears that 2014 marks a resounding return for auteur Abel...
High Society | 2014 TIFF Review
Is There More to this Coming-of-Age Parable Than Meets the Eye?
One of the key specificities about the production of Julie Lopes Curval’s latest exploration...
The Vanished Elephant | 2014 TIFF Review
A Puzzle within a Puzzle within a Puzzle
Initially, The Vanished Elephant, Javier Fuentes-León’s follow-up to the well-received ghost story, Undertow, has a surprisingly unpolished...
Red Rose | 2014 TIFF Review
Beware the Beauty of the Single Red Rose
Though she’s lived in France for more than three decades, Sepideh Farsi has carved out a career...
Waste Land | 2014 TIFF Review
Fear in a Handful of Dust: Van Hees Completes Trilogy with Dark Metaphor
Belgian director Pieter Van Hees completes his thematically connected "Anatomy of Love and...
Return to Ithaca | 2014 TIFF Review
Shared Tendencies: McGowan’s Debut an Understated Navigation
Palme d’Or winning director Laurent Cantet continues a tour outside of France with his latest feature, the carefully...
Out of Nature | 2014 TIFF Review
A Hollow World of Obligations
Ole Giæver’s sophomore feature, Out of Nature, very much resembles—in setting, structure and thematic preoccupation—his short film work and prior,...
Cut Snake | 2014 TIFF Review
Out of the Past: Ayres’ Neo-noir is a Pulpy Brood
With a little luck, Australian director Tony Ayres’ latest film, Cut Snake will evolve beyond...
The Great Man | 2014 TIFF Review
A More Accurate Title Might Have Been The “Good” or “Serviceable” Man
Much like Kathryn Bigelow does with many of her works or like Jasmine...
