There’s no shortage of films that consider the Holocaust or Israel’s founding. But it’s rare to see the two subjects intertwined so purposely as in “June Zero.” The idea to fold it all into an anthology of interconnected short films might be unique. “June Zero” is directed by an American filmmaker, Jake Paltrow (brother of […]
When does rooting for the damned stop being worthwhile or even productive? Viewers’ sympathies are worked over throughout the grim Austrian folk horror drama “The Devil’s Bath,” a dreadful period piece about a pious woman who seems doomed by her circumstances. Agnes (Anja Plaschg), an unhappily married woman who prays to God for mercy, makes
A proudly old-fashioned Gothic fable with grain and grit, the delectable “Vourdalak” is swift to announce in its early moments that we are in the hands of a skillful stylist. It’s pitch black and stormy when the tale begins. There is a knock on some door by a fearful man whose face we don’t see
Music, we are told, makes the people come together. Music, it so happens, makes the bourgeoisie and the rebel…okay, I’ll stop. But what, really, is the, or are the, function or functions or capability or capabilities of music? By simply using the word as the title for her new motion picture, writer/director Angela Schanelec invites
As mundane as its title, with characters whose color-by-numbers personalities and motivations shift randomly to fit a predictable storyline, “A Family Affair” is a low-wattage rom-com. As with last month’s streaming romance “The Idea of You,” this film features a gorgeous Oscar-winning actress as a middle-aged woman falling for a much younger superstar performer, with
Penny Lane has long been one of our most fascinating documentarians in the modern era: her early works teetered between archival (“Our Nixon“) to anthological (“Nuts!”) to anthropological (“The Pain Of Others”). You never see her face or hear her voice; it’s just her ideas and her assemblage of footage into thoughtful, empathetic essays about
The first two-thirds of “A Sacrifice” are a largely leaden affair that offers viewers little that they haven’t seen before. It isn’t even awful so much as it is intensely forgettable the kind of film whose title eludes you even as you watch it. Unfortunately, it then proceeds to get infinitely worse in its final
We film lovers perpetually bang the drum about how cinema enables us to experience life from perspectives outside of our own. The medium reveals the world and those who inhabit it with singular precision as it observes who we are with a magnifying glass. But while plenty of titles accomplish this effect, none have done
Over sixty years ago, directors Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall joined forces to tell the story of America’s push toward the Pacific. “How The West Was Won” was a tremendous undertaking. Produced through the three-strip Cinerama process, it featured a deep ensemble of high-wattage stars James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, John Wayne, Gregory Peck,
After the comparatively “normal” visions of “The Favourite” and “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos is back in provocateur mode. Working more in the vein of his earlier, more surreal flicks like “The Lobster,” “Dogtooth” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” the filmmaker’s latest reunites him with Efthimis Filippou, the co-writer of those movies, to deliver
