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Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze specializes in the bait and switch. In each of his three features so far, he starts with a recognizable narrative premise only to let it dissolve into patient ...

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With the flesh-hungry cannibal siblings of Raw (2016) and the murderous, androgynous mechanophile of Titane (2021), filmmaker Julia Ducournau injected fresh blood into New French Extremity. The ...

In an interview conducted when he was making Europa ’51, Roberto Rossellini defined Italian neorealism as “a response to the genuine need to see men for what they are, with humility and without ...

Thoughtful, original film criticism delivered straight to your inbox each week.

Americans are the beloved noise-makers, the unschooled and the uncut, appreciated most when at their simplest. Poet Charles Bukowski is the classic case of the American original who found his first ...

Gone with the Wind Two brothel madams (or as close as Hollywood dared get to them), one a lurid gash of pornographic pink throbbing against William Cameron Menzies’ mourning-black backdrop of charred ...

By Maitland McDonagh in the May-June 2020 Issue A l Adamson made wild movies and lots of them; his work ethic was exemplary. They weren’t conventionally good, but they were chockablock with blood, ...

(Yojiro Takita, Japan, 2008) The members of the Academy who gave Departures its Oscar must be feeling their mortality. The movie tells the story of a second-rate cellist who loses his job when an ...

A gifted talent just can’t catch a break in Joel and Ethan Coen’s lovingly rendered and poignant vision of the folk scene in early-Sixties New York ...

By Grady Hendrix in the March-April 2020 Issue P erpetually out of step, Shinya Tsukamoto goes where his gut leads him, handcrafting freaked-out sci-fi nightmares from 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, digital video, ...