Refn discusses his love of fairy tales, falling through the rabbit hole of streaming, and more.
Arnaud Desplechin doesn’t so much direct movies as conduct marathons.
Tony Manero is a magnificently deranged study of overboard pop-culture fandom and authoritarian rule’s destructive effect on its citizenry.
A bodice-ripper invested with the profundity of a Stendhal novel, Lola Montès is also Max Ophüls’s definite commentary on movie-watching.
Matteo Garrone’s gangster-as-capitalist view never softens its focus a la Traffic or turn its executions into exploitative set pieces.
The real subject of Religulous isn’t modern faith but Bill Maher himself.
The tensions inherent in the film’s split personality work in its favor.
According to The Lucky Ones, what injured, battle-scarred Iraq war vets need upon returning to native soil is a wacky cross-country road trip full of crazy misadventures.
Filth and Wisdom presents a sweet, grimy, convincing enough portrait of people struggling to make something of themselves.
Choke makes its source material’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink absurdism broader, less expressive, and cheaply reductive.
Or, rather, Allah Made Me Not Funny.
Fear(s) of the Dark trades in disturbing youthful memories and ghastly tactility.
Maybe you’ve heard this one before.
What makes Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy so haunting is mostly ineffable.
Ricky Gervais’s cutting bon mots and regular bouts of indignant stammering keep the film more dry and sharp than broad and squishy.
Quilombo Country’s main tension emerges between a traditional style of community living and the urban lifestyle threatening it.
Whether comparing it to the output of Pixar and DreamWorks or judging it on its own lesser terms, Igor feels chintzy and imitative.
Claude Chabrol knows this territory and how to run it on film.
As tepid peruke-and-corset periods go, The Duchess goes down with relative ease.
The film is a somber politicized lament for hardscrabble lives struggling to exist on the economic precipice.
Happy-Go-Lucky works because the outlines are banal but the performances are phenomenally lived-in.