Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood—a gorgeous evocation of 1969 Los Angeles and bittersweet elegy for falling Hollywood stars and the passing of a definitive American era—is the work of an artist at the peak of his powers, which, if you believe him,…
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Midsommar, Ari Aster’s magnum opus follow-up to his deeply unsettling Hereditary, is a sophomore picture of command and precision, well-directed and frequently diverting in its tale of unsuspecting American collegiates venturing into a once-a-century celebration of pagan depravity. Yet as movie freak outs go,…
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The Last Black Man in San Francisco, an elegy for the idea of home and a lament for a vanishing culture in San Francisco, took this year’s Sundance directing prize for first-time filmmaker Joe Talbot and is a richly profound film and very nearly…
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It is, to put it charitably, a formula. There’s this Small-Town Kid from a working-class background who, despite a lack of know-how or means has Very Big Dreams, and while no one Believes In Her, just maybe, with the help of a Unlikely Mentor,…
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“I have all these feelings wrapped up inside of me. I just don’t have anyone I can trust my feelings with.” The mysteries of female adolescence are explored with concentrated poignancy in the short How Does It Start, as a curious twelve-year-old girl comes…
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