Animation is the best art form we have at depicting messy real life, because it heightens reality through the unreal in a way that never loses its realism. Writer-director Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, who developed his skills as a background artist on movies such as Your Name, now bursts onto the world …
The deliberate stageyness of Trial of Hein takes a little while to make sense. The clothes are modest and homespun, the technology is that of life without electricity, the island setting is not named, and the houses in the village have front walls, doors and windows, but are open to …
In 2022, the debut feature film Tengo Sueños Eléctricos (I Have Electric Dreams) by the Costa Rican filmmaker Valentina Maurel made a potent appearance at that year’s Locarno Film Festival. It won the directing, actor (Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez), and actress (Daniela Marín Navarro) awards in the main competition. Later, the …
A Prayer for the Dying has had the bad luck to arrive a year after Train Dreams, which also has a forest fire at its center, and a few years after Nosferatu, another shocking and stylised horror movie about a place consumed by a plague. But it is also very …
Sometime in 1998, Filipino filmmaker Sari Dalena and co-director Camilla Benolirao Griggers set out to record and revisit little-known genocides committed by colonial U.S. forces in southwestern Philippines during the Philippine-American War of 1899 for their hybrid, avant-garde first feature Memories of a Forgotten War, released in 2001 and screened …
In retrospect, it makes sense that EP Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy were always going to be the ones to bring Fallout to the screen – after all; what was HBO’s one-time flagship series Westworld if but a trail run? What was Person of Interest if not for a show …
For a movie designed around a teenage pregnancy it’s a surprise that We Are All Strangers focuses on the baby’s father. What writer-director Anthony Chen is exploring here is how family responsibilities force young men to grow up. The assumption seems to be that women have achieved maturity already, regardless …
Cinema’s focus on the youth market ignores that there are considerable older audiences who love going to the movies but are generally underserved. From this perspective, most movies are either too violent or aimed at teenagers, none of which makes them travel to the theatre and take their money out …
In one way, the jazz biopic Everybody Digs Bill Evans is a resounding success as it introduces those of us who are not jazz fanatics to the life of the artist behind some huge hits and of the greatest live jazz recordings ever made. In another way, the jazz biopic …
Of course you’ve seen Frozen, the animated juggernaut which drew heavily both on Scandinavian culture and that of the Sámi, the people indigenous to the Arctic circle, for its story of female empowerment and the importance of bonds between siblings. But that was a story for children, made by people …
Music documentaries are very good at providing a sociological picture of the time and place where the band got together. If a band gets famous enough to participate in its own obituary, their lives of success on the road tend to blur into This is Spinal Tap. If there were …
Three boys living in a rural, riverside community in the Philippines are forced to reckon with enduring grief and guilt following a gruesome crime involving their fathers. Shot entirely on iPhone across 35 days without a formal script and with a nonprofessional cast doubling as film crew, I grew an …
Enjoy Your Stay is a strikingly ironic and sinister title for a movie centered on the invisible labor that sustains the pristine and postcard-esque surface of a luxury ski resort in Switzerland. Played with an unassuming yet magnetic force by Mercedes Cabral, Luz is part of a mostly Filipino cleaning …
2004’s Man on Fire, starring Denzel Washington (based on a book of the same name from 1980), existed as a seminal film of its time. Twenty-four years after its release, the film has cemented its place in the action movie pantheon. In my younger film-watching years, it existed as a …
Joe doesn’t know what’s wrong with his parents. Why would they move him to this creepy movie straight out of a horror movie? There are tombstones in the basement, strange noises everywhere, and he knows the doll he found in his room has been the star of a few horror …
Sports dramas are a sub-genre that allows filmmakers to take multiple different approaches. They can narrate the Cinderella story of an underdog team, the individual evolution of its players, or the downside of being an athlete. In her debut feature, Charlotte Glynn takes the latter approach. The Gymnast is a …
The subject matter of We Believe You is unusually grim, but the grimness is offset by the institutional setting: a custody hearing in a Belgian family court, all pale office furniture and glass walls. Inside this bland setting a family and its lawyers have the most serious conversations of their …
Content warning: sexual assault, child-centric trauma Writer-director Beth de Araújo has been open that Josephine is based on a true incident from her childhood. The trouble is that knowing this fact hampers the ability to speak critically about the film. Anything negative might feel like a personal attack against the …
Throughout the history of documentary filmmaking, the observational type captures a story through the absence of direct interference by the director. It is a format that allows the audience to understand the subject more profoundly. An observational film is the one that rejects the talking head interview scheme to create …
Before discussing Hacks season five, I would like to give some context into my relationship with the show. Hacks premiered in 2021 as one of the first highly acclaimed MAX (Known as HBO Max at the time) series. Having started watching the show at the time, it became one of …