It is a cultural quirk of Indian cinema that they will show the most gruesome torture and murders in glorious close-up while simultaneously subtitling the language used during these scenes as “Dang!” and “You idiot!” If we are in a hard-R/18 environment, capable of being shown a man suspended off …
The Brazilian director Daniel Nolasco has been creating a trademark for himself as a filmmaker. Drawing inspiration from his personal interests and his academic path, his films approach the stories of the LGBTQIA community in a conservative state. In his debut feature, Vento Seco (Dry Wind), he approaches the monotonous …
Adam grew up listening to his grandfather’s stories of a magical place in Scotland called Craigmar. Now that his grandfather has passed on, Adam is looking for a way to feel connected to him again, so he goes in search of the place that has grown to epic proportions in …
Whenever I see the names of Matt Damon (The Martian) and Ben Affleck (Argo) together on a poster, my attention is captured by a nostalgia that goes back to their earliest successes. The dynamic between the two is one of the most solid pillars of contemporary cinema, and the prospect …
I still feel the disconcerting echo of the ending of the previous film in this saga. I confess that my approach to this new chapter was cautiously nervous, the result of that highly dissonant conclusion of 28 Years Later that left me, at the time, not quite knowing what to …
Few authors from the 20th Century are more influential than Franz Kafka. The Czech writer did not receive the recognition he deserved throughout his life, as detailed in the introductions to his books. Each new edition of his masterpieces, such as Metamorphosis, gets a deep explanation of how Kafka’s success …
Even in a recent attempt to rewatch the original film, Greenland, hoping to find something I might’ve missed, most of my issues remained unchanged. The exhaustive repetition and manufactured melodrama continued to prevent me from truly connecting with that story. However, cinema has these curious quirks: for some inexplicable reason, …
The introductory section of Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister (La petite dernière) is slightly alienating, as it swiftly moves from one scene to the next, without an anchor point for the audience to latch onto, despite being adapted from Fatima Daas’ 2020 autofiction novel of the same name. However, our …
It was Stephen Sondheim who wrote a song about the two things people can leave behind: children and art. What the Shakers, a small religious movement which began in the mid-1700s, left behind was their art. Some of this is their highly influential style of furniture, made plainly to emphasise …
Who would’ve thought that the first studio production of the year would be a genuine heater, especially given that the January slate doesn’t usually promise a good time at the movies? Who would’ve also thought that a major Hollywood studio would greenlight what is essentially an exploitation film, promising a …
Industry has never been a show to shy away from the grotesque side of humanity. Set in the world of investment banking, the series has evolved from a story about a group of newbies at an investment firm, into something more sinister. Season 4 feels like the show has grown …
Imagine a world defined by stories. Stories that repeat over and over again, giving power and life to the land that they play out on. That is exactly how it works in the world of Tasha Suri’s The Isle in the Silver Sea. The characters of tales are reincarnated over …
A mishmash of moods held together by preposterous musical numbers is part of the appeal of most Indian cinema, but Telugu-language The RajaSaab holds together worse than most. There are three movies inside The RajaSaab struggling to get out: a haunted-house horror thriller, a paean to the grandmothers who raised …
It may come as a surprise but SpongeBob SquarePants is one of the most successful cartoons of all-time in terms of popularity and longevity. While it doesn’t boast the same quality as cartoons like fellow Nickelodeon juggernaut Avatar: The Last Airbender, its frivolous humour and eccentric-to-a-fault characters are hard not …
We often do not comprehend our parents’ occupations when we are children. Aside from professions like lawyer and doctor, the titles promptly explain their duties; there are a plethora of other careers that carry enigmatic titles and corporations that are tough to understand their business. This childish ignorance may clash …
Romanian writer-director Andrei Epure already tested the premise of his feature debut Don’t Let Me Die, which premiered in the Filmmakers of the Present section of the 2025 Locarno Film Festival, in his 2021 short film Intercom 15, an entry in Cannes’ Critics’ Week. In fact, exactly seven minutes into …
During the peak of the internet’s spread in the early century, the media and the world were still coming to terms with the reach of this new medium. One of the questions and a new understanding related to information access: shifting from the concentration of it in selected vehicles and …
The immediate reaction to this excellent movie – which on its surface is about an arrogant young American table-tennis player’s attempts to attend two world championships, one in London and the other in Tokyo, in the early 1950s – seems to be that no one wants to watch a movie …
I was 40 before I got my first tattoo. Since then, I have added to my collection, but I have avoided many pop culture references because I have seen too many of my favorites fall over the years. But the one that I have is of the Vince Gilligan show, Breaking …
When discussing the sociopolitical problems of the United States, health care and housing are the primary issues in American society. The elevated prices of houses are due to the real estate industry, which raises the costs of residences to gain higher profit margins, benefiting from a basic human necessity: a …