Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu specializes in hard hitting cultural excoriations that have made him a foremost international voice in both social realism and social critique. His masterful, 2007 Cannes-winning breakout suspenser 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days examined the perils faced by a…
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The first thing to know about Benjamin Millipied’s blazing new Carmen is that it’s a liberal derivation of Bizet’s 1875 masterwork of jealousy, obsession and death. Once Bizet traditionalists depart from expectation, Millipied’s update, which reimagines Bizet’s titular Spanish opera icon though a modern…
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There have been five Evil Dead films in the forty-two years since Sam Raimi’s deliriously unhinged 1983 cabin-in-the-woods demonic possession flick became an instant classic of gore and triumph of tone and craft, a shoestring horror outing made by friends that went on to…
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Kelly Reichardt’s quietly appealing consideration of the life—and life’s work—of an independent artist forms the basis of her new picture, Showing Up, featuring a lovely performance from Michelle Williams as a sculptress navigating the day-to-day while preparing for a gallery opening of her latest…
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Two-time Cannes winning Belgian filmmaking brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are firmly renowned, with legendary predecessor Ken Loach, as international cinema’s foremost chroniclers of social realist hard knocks. Their pictures—frequently about hardscrabble disenfranchisement, ethical quandaries in the face of limited options and social hierarchies…
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As a commercial entertainment, Ben Affleck’s Air, charting Nike’s quest to sign rookie-on-the-rise Michael Jordan as its brand ambassador, is polished, serviceably entertaining and, on occasion, better. Whether its story, about how the former market laggard created the axis-shifting Air Jordan, is as substantial as…
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Art and culture take their time essaying perspectives on the past—if the 70s offered a revival of 50s nostalgia (perhaps because the social unrest of the 60s left some longing for the “innocence” of an earlier era), the 80s were a conservative rebuff to…
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A mother and son forge a life in Harlem amidst an ever-changing city in the gritty, moving Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner A Thousand and One, a movie about strugglers, strivers, hard won family love and the spoils of urban gentrification. It is also…
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As a document of a successful artistic union between director and muse, Zach Braff’s A Good Person is an ode to a luminous movie star who has clearly fascinated the talented writer-director, and one who fascinates us. That star is the estimable Florence Pugh—a hot…
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A burglar specializing in high-end art theft finds himself trapped Inside a Manhattan penthouse in an effective, minimalist meditation on notions of creation and isolation set amidst a brutalist gallery of modern art works. The picture’s opening narration offers a twist on the age-old…
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