Romantic comedies often suffer from a stifling lack of perspective, asking audiences to identify with the travails of people too beautiful to be single overcome trite obstacles and predictably end up together. It’s a formula Michael Showalter knows w …Read more

Thirty-five years after starring together in Loulou as the young standard-bearers of French cinema, Isabelle Huppert and Gerald Depardieu reunite in Guillame Nicloux’s reflective grief drama Valley of Love. Playing thinly fictionalized versions of th …Read more

With a title vague enough to apply to almost any film it’s unlikely that many people will walk into Misconduct with a clear idea of what’s to come. Walking out of the theater, the picture isn’t much clearer, as first time director Shintaro Shimosawa …Read more

Out of all the filmmakers who arose in the independent film boom of the 1990s, Quentin Tarantino has had arguably the most success, creating an instantly identifiable style and almost never failing at the box office. This success has given him a powe …Read more

Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights is one of the boldest films at the New York Film Festival, from its sheer size, its wide scope of subjects and tones, and its re-imagining of what it means to make a political film.  We sat down with Miguel to talk about …Read more

After a trip to France for his first foreign production and a longer than usual wait between films, celebrated director Hou Hsiao-Hsien has returned to his homeland and one of its native genres, wuxia, or martial arts film, in The Assassin. The fanta …Read more

During awards season, it’s not that unusual to see a film about an intellectual, such as A Beautiful Mind or The Theory of Everything, but unfortunately these films all too often use an academic setting as a reassuring signifier of prestige overlaid …Read more

It’s no secret that the middle has fallen out of cinematic landscape, and while this is usually discussed from a financial perspective, it’s also reflected in the tone of films. Audiences are trapped between self-proclaimed epics that trumpet their s …Read more

In Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, Tom Hanks is drawn as suddenly and randomly into the world of international espionage as a Hitchcock hero, but instead of dealing with physical danger like North By Northwest’s Roger O. Thornhill, Hanks’ attorne …Read more

Maggie’s Plan is a charming film that uses the warm and antic tone of a romantic comedy to tell a story that questions the underpinnings of that genre. It’s familiar and unfamiliar in welcome measures and one of the funniest satires of narcissistic a …Read more