Through Animation, Tehran Taboo Dares to Depict the Politics of Sex in Iran
Soozandeh wastes no time establishing both the hypocrisy of the devout in Iran (or America, or Gilead) and his Short Cuts-ian tapestry of characters
Soozandeh wastes no time establishing both the hypocrisy of the devout in Iran (or America, or Gilead) and his Short Cuts-ian tapestry of characters
… This first English-language feature from Italian director Paolo Virzi (Human Capital, Like Crazy) is at times moving in its sincerity, thanks to stellar casting and the director’s clear-eyed perspective on aging and dementia …
An episodic ensemble drama organized around the logic of theme rather than of traditional narrative, the film concerns above all else accumulation and dispersal, in the American vein
The director seems to be in pursuit of a broader tapestry: The Russia he presents is a wasteland of survival, where a woman’s only hope is pairing off with a moneyed man
Potter isn’t what you’d call subtle, but she also knows not to overstay her welcome, and this pithy comedy is a masterclass in all that a filmmaker can squeeze from the most basic theatrical concept …
The film gives only the most paltry consideration to geopolitics, to relations between the U.S. and Russia or America’s own corrupt operations
It’s often inspired in its cutting and composition, and Garland (Ex Machina) has crafted sequences of strange splendor, including a too-short cosmic light show
The chemistry between Bateman and McAdams explodes in every scene and only grows stronger when, over the course of one very long and dangerous night, their characters get caught up in conspiracy
Tiptoeing toward the hot tub of camp without quite diving in, Double Lover starts to fracture Chloe’s point of view, resulting in at least one fabulous Cronenbergian dream scene …
The narrative is needlessly complicated, and it all seems crafted just to build to a single joke voiced in the third act
Here’s the Marvel movie even non-Marvel fans are prepared to root for, the rare black superhero film, one boasting not only an almost-all black cast but helmed by a black director as well
In the tense but hearty Chilean drama A Fantastic Woman, actress Daniela Vega plays a transwoman, Marina, who must navigate life after the death of her lover
The Insult is a little pushy, sometimes even tough to swallow, but no more than actual geopolitics
In Between is a movie not so much about suffering as it is about the grinding reality of just being
Great News has a screwball charm and a flair for rapid-fire jokes, built on a premise that amusingly literalizes the classic sitcom concept of coworkers as family
The latest film, the long-delayed The Death Cure, opens with a train heist that suggests, at once, the Mad Max films, the Fast & Furious franchise, and The Wild Bunch by way of Young Guns by way of a Gap ad
That’s the real thrill: Those mind-blown moments when your perception of what is possible on this Earth expands like a blowfish puffing up its stomach with water
… The film has three sections, and each part seems to assume a different set of genre conventions, a different set of emotional cues
Where the movie occasionally locates some surprise and resonance is in the tiny exchanges, when Wolf allows her characters to breathe, free of the demands of a schematic narrative
The film drags when Haneke pulls focus to the other, duller characters, perhaps inevitably, as it seems his intention for those people to lack interiority or thoughtfulness
When these performers get the chance to exchange dialogue, to react to each other rather than declaim the movie’s themes, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool rouses to life
Versace is a puzzle the viewer puts together as it goes on, and with this approach the story seems to ripen with every episode as we move deeper and more intimately into Cunanan’s past