What makes IFFR so endearing is an atmosphere that’s joyful and devoid of self-importance.
With Redoubtable, Hazanavicius co-opts Godard’s personal life for cheap prestige-picture sentiment.
Happy End is an empathetic portrait of personal grief as it’s experienced in a desensitized first-world society.
The film feels lived-in despite its glaringly mannered dialogue and charmingly eccentric characterizations.
The flexibility of French director Bruno Dumont’s spiritualism makes the film compelling.
Claire Denis’s Let the Sunshine In is an exquisite romantic comedy whose laughs are sad and whose sadness is funny.
Okja suggests that the sarcastic humor of South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho’s best films doesn’t translate well.
The meticulousness of Haynes’s execution overburdens his work’s conceptually exhilarating sense of wonder.
Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts is a lucid, free-form sprawl of stories nested within stories.
The global lack of knowledge that’s resulted from Turkey’s denial campaign is more amnesia than ignorance.
It’s hard not to read Alain Cavalier’s portraits as conflicting analogies of where France has been and where it’s heading.
According to Brian Shoaf’s Aardvark, a man’s psychosis boils down to an extreme case of sibling rivalry.
The film works as a sobering and, in its own way, inspiring look at Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently.
Throughout Thirst Street, Nathan Silver captures a superbly varied set of performances from his cast.
Flames grows tougher, weirder, and more ambiguous, casting much of its early cuteness in a starker light.
Death hangs over Lana Wilson’s documentary in grandly cosmic fashion.
Katie Green and Carlye Rubin’s film documents the transferrable perversities inherent in familial life.
Dog Years is a collection of old-fogey clichés, with a narrative that mixes a career retrospective with a road trip.
Any film festival dedicated exclusively to the treasures, glories, and the occasional folly of the past is likely to be visited by ghosts.
New Directors/New Films is practically a pu pu platter sampling of some of the more memorable titles you missed at Park City.
A melancholy air blows through every haunted frame of Hong Sang-soo’s On the Beach at Night Alone.