Underground Kaori Oda’s Underground is a film built around the meanings of its title, but it’s also apparently built up to 83 minutes out…
Mad Bills to Pay “The working man is a sucker” — so reads the opening title card of Joel Alfonso Vargas’ debut feature, Mad…
The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick Filmmaker Pete Ohs’ working methods prioritize flexibility, openness, and spontaneity. As with all of his…
“Everywhere animals disappear,” wrote art critic John Berger in his seminal book Why Look at Animals? Berger proposed an argument from capitalism, where the…
Little Boy In a less-than-apocryphal anecdote repeated throughout the French media, Jean Renoir once said, “I made La Bête humaine because [Jean] Gabin and…
Desert of Namibia At first, Yoko Yamanaka’s Desert of Namibia seems to be just another entry in what this writer is calling Millennium Mambo-core,…
Suspended Time Given the muted critical response and prolonged time period between its festival premiere and eventual (limited) distribution, the new Olivier Assayas film…
Henry Fonda for President Thoughtful film curation asks us to consider films in a new light. Alexander Horwath knows this better than most, having…
In the Mouth In the Mouth, the sophomore feature from Cory Santilli (Saul at Night, 2019) is everything from a film noir to a…
Pavements “The world’s most important and influential band breaks up and it’s not a big deal.” Thus begins Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, establishing from…
Blazing Fists I watched two films from IFFR’s 2025 festival: one was The Last Dance, the smash hit Hong Kong family melodrama set in…
Yasuko, Songs of Days Past Like many Japanese directors his age, Kichitaro Negishi got his start at the legendary Nikkatsu studio making the only…
When I attended the International Film Festival Rotterdam earlier this year, I was struck by the festival’s efforts to cut its slate, having gone…
Rumours Since his out-of-nowhere debut feature Tales from the Gimli Hospital in 1988, Winnipeg-based director Guy Maddin has become synonymous with a very particular…
The Room Next Door Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language films have operated in a particularly confessional mode. Featuring The Room Next Door’s co-star Tilda…
Eephus At first, Eephus holds the potential to make one quite sad. For this writer, the effect did not seem intentional and was more…
Scénarios The last image of Jean-Luc Godard’s last film Scénarios is one of the most heartbreaking in his long, storied, notorious, glorious, defining, essential…
All We Imagine As Light “This city takes time away from you,” says one of the seven disembodied voices introducing us to the wide-awake-at-night…