In 1979, Iran underwent a severe transformation after the Iranian Revolution. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of the country, fell due to the dissatisfaction of the population, which organized itself politically. The figure of that revolution grew to power, Ayatollah Khomeini, a central individual who established the morality police …
American movies like The Weight used to be a dime a dozen, which is meant as a compliment. It used to be that Hollywood loved to take an action-heavy script, people it with a fun combination of big stars and delightful character actors, move like the wind from one entertaining …
Anyone who will discuss Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow will immediately recognize – and laud – that its politics are morally sound and cogent. It might even be an angrier film than you think, even if it mainly focuses on the distant relationship two young brothers, Akinola (Godwin Egbo), …
Throughout the more than a hundred and twenty-five years of filmmaking, the film history organized itself into canons and critical retrospectives that analyzed cinema through various prisms. Similar to all of the arts, this canon is white-centered and Anglo-European, excluding the works of people of color, women, and those located …
The ways in which adults make decisions on behalf of children, and how those decisions are, or aren’t, in the child’s best interests are the stuff of life. This wonderful movie begins with questioning what it takes to be an artist, and ends by questioning what it means to be …
There are some movies, including Queen at Sea, which are so disturbing they can only be watched once. Fortunately Queen at Sea is so well made that its care and consideration makes its brutally tough topic easier to handle. This is why it won the Silver Bear Jury Prize at …
In 1980 Lily Tomlin was faced with a dilemma. She was riding high after winning a Tony with her one-woman play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe and then starring in feminist revenge comedy 9 to 5, but then she had to do her next thing. …
James Benning is one of the most prominent experimental directors in history. Labeled as a researcher of the American landscapes, his work features a formally rigorous study of the United States and its structures. His interest in the composition of the country is evident in his most well-known films: The …
The Brazilian director Gabe Klinger has built his career entirely in the United States. Based in Chicago, he directed the documentary Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater, Porto, and the short film Bergman’s Ghosts, a complementary work to Bergman Island, the Cannes film by Mia Hansen-Løve. For the first …
It’s very normal for documentaries to begin and end with copious lists of the various production companies who have contributed to or enabled its making. As director Valerie Veatch pointed out in her Sundance Film Festival Q&A, Ghost in the Machine has none of these. She had to fund the …
As award season descends upon us, the winners and losers already feel set in stone. 2025 was a strong year for film, and not every performance can make the cut, but just because they didn’t earn a nomination doesn’t mean they aren’t worth checking out. From unknown queer biopics to …
Well, third time’s the charm. It’s no secret that I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about The Strangers Chapter 1 or 2. Trading in the worst of jump scare tactics, while also being remarkably meek, ironic for a franchise defined by its chilling brutality, both films were exhausting exercises in patience as …
There are many subgenres of horror, but one of the most reliable is the “kids eff around and find out”. It’s a reliable setup that doesn’t require much work from filmmakers or the audience to make for a good time at the movies, even if the film we’re talking about …
In 2023, the Brazilian documentary veteran, Eliza Capai, released her Incompatível com a Vida (Incompatible with Life). Despite being a mix of talking head with diary documentary, it is an utterly personal telling of her experience with the traumatic loss of her baby in her womb. The director tells her …
It’s not so much that Jaripeo is therapy – a reductive way to think about documentary, especially when the director is documenting their own experiences – but Jaripeo is maybe the first time some of its participants have ever been asked to think about the things they do. This is, …
Please forgive me for saying the most surprising things about Twinless are twofold: it is unusually funny, with a very clear sense of how people interact in amusing ways with each other, with an equal and equally unusual sense of danger. Most of this centers around the plot twists which …
I think we can blame the English royal family. When TV shows like Succession, The Righteous Gemstones and Yellowstone decide to examine the interpersonal struggle for power within an unbelievable wealthy family, they’ve all worked from the same template: tyrannical father and absent or dead mother with three sons and …
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die takes the worst nightmares of the current moment and turns them into comedy, but the kind of comedy where if you didn’t laugh you’d cry. This is done in the lighthearted comic blockbuster style best described as a mash-up where 1990s French horror-comedy Delicatessen …
This Chilean-Argentinian coproduction is a Chilean story but was filmed in Argentina for reasons its subject matter makes obvious. The military coup in Chile in 1973 that started with the murder of Salvador Allende brought about (speaking with understatement here) such a traumatic time to the nation that the after-effects …
Talk about melodrama! It is not so much that this adaption of Wuthering Heights goes to eleven, but that this version of Wuthering Heights starts at eleven and keeps going and going, and going, without losing its momentum for a moment. This over-the-top depiction of secret and dangerous passion makes …