Image Credit: Wild Bunch (spoiler free) Like any Gaspar Noé film, Vortex opens with its end credits. At the tail end of it, a text appears on the screen and says: “À tous ceux dont le cerveau se décomposera avant le coeur.” Translating to “To all those whose brains will decompose before their hearts.” There’s…
Paul Mescal as Calum Paterson Frankie Corio as Sophie Paterson Director: Charlotte Wells Twenty years after their last holiday at a fading vacation resort, Sophie reflects on the rare time spent with her loving and idealistic father Calum. At 11-years-old, as the world of adolescence creeps into Sophie’s view, Calum struggles…
A FANTASTIC TALE OF LOVE, DISOBEDIENCE, AND THE MEANING OF LIFE Throughout the many years in the filmmaking industry, Hollywood studios has had a long history of competition, which can sometimes mean producing a movie to outdo and outshine a rival studio. Because of this, some studios have on occasion create similar movies to…
A GREAT CHARACTER STUDY AT THE IMPASSE OF FRIENDSHIP Friends are an important part of everyday life. The intrinsic and intangible ideas of having a platonic relationship with someone (as a camaraderie companion) is beneficial and healthy building block of life, which can result in a major impact on oneself. Essentially, good friendships are…
Remember when Putin’s nemesis Alexei Navalny was recovering in Germany following his August 2020 poisoning? Director Daniel Roher was with Navalny and his core circle during that period and he made a documentary about it that you’ve got to see to believe. It’s fascinating, terrifying, and heartening all at the same time. Have you ever…
Toronto film festival: the director goes back to his childhood for an endearing, if overlong, film with an Oscar-tipped Michelle Williams as his mother
The Gang is back in season 15 of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” trying to prove themselves woke while demonstrating that they’re still hilariously terrible people.
The Roy family is back for a fourth and final season, and everyone came out swinging. Let the humiliations begin.
What does it take for Kiefer Sutherland, indelibly and eternally intrepid Jack Bauer in the real time series “24,” to tackle something new like “Rabbit Hole”?
By Divina Sethi Kelebeğin Rüyası (The Butterfly’s Dream) is a 2013 Turkish romantic drama. It is based on the tragic true story of struggling poets Muzaffer Tayyip Uslu and Rüştü Onurx, played by (the gorgeous) Kivanc Tatlitug (Kuzey Guney, Ask i memnu, Kurt Seyit ve Sura) and Mert Firat (The Water Diviner, Baska Dilde Ask) […]
Kelebeğin Rüyası (The Butterfly’s Dream)
With yet another year of movies behind us, it’s never too early to start looking ahead to next awards season! The 2022-23 season is already chock-full of big-name directors and actors vying for Academy Awards. What are some films we can expect to see in the conversation next year? Will any of these films be […]
40 Films to Watch for the 2023 Oscars
Close (2022) is a Belgian drama film from writer-director Lukas Dhont. It stars Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele as two best friends who begin to drift apart when their classmates begin to question how intimate they’ve become with one another. It debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it tied for the Grand […]
Foreign Film Fridays: “Close” (Belgium, 2022)
In a remote religious community, the women have finally had enough. Enough of what? The men. And their violence. Their savage beatings. Rape. No one is safe from them, not even their own little children. So a group of women gather in a hay loft to discuss what to do about it. Do they do […]
By C.J. Hirschfield (January 17, 2023) Two years ago, an extraordinary documentary on Russian opposition party leader Alexei Navalny was recorded. The film has just been released; he has not. Having been charged with everything from fraud to having created an extremist group “with the purpose of inciting hatred toward officials and oligarchs,” he currently […]
It’s a movie that you’ll be happy to get up and walk away from, simply for the astounding freedom of being able to get up and walk. Darren Aronofsky’s film, The Whale, takes morbid obesity to its most realistic, destructive level. It’s cringy, it’s sad, it’s unyielding, but more than anything it’s honest. With a […]
Inisherin is a (fictional) island off the coast of Ireland. It is 1923. The civil war (“A bad do, that.”) can be heard but, on the island, there is nothing to do but toddle off down the pub or gossip in the general store, saving up the details for confession. And, in this world, Colm, […]
Film Review: The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Martin McDonagh is one of our greatest living playwrights, with his work being widely produced, from the sacred stages of Broadway to the smallest public theatres in Asia, and everywhere in between, his penchant for darkly comical morality tales being the source of many fascinating discussions under the direction of a range of artists who […]
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
I have the fondest memories of watching Top Gun back in 1986. It was a great year, I was in my second year in Junior College and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was just living in the moment and hanging around with friends every chance I got. My […]
Listening to a Russian oligarch and an American luxury yacht captain drunkenly exchange clichés about socialism versus capitalism over the ship’s PA system strikes me as farce without tragedy — and the joke is that it’s Woody Harrelson as the captain whose aggressive about socialism and the Russian who sounds like an OAN reporter. Good […]
Ship of fools: ‘Triangle of Sadness’
