Irreverent British auteur Peter Greenaway takes on Soviet montage legend Sergei Eisenstein in an expressionist imagining of Eisenstein’s trip to Mexico, but the results are disappointingly bland. Officially, Eisenstein was gathering footage for a Mex …Read more

Few movies tread the often misunderstood, ignored and fetishized frontier of female sexuality with honesty, compassion and depth. Writer-director Alanté Kavaïté’s dreamy and multilayered drama Summer of Sangaile is one that depicts the eponymous hero …Read more

Finnish director Mika Kaurismaki’s The Girl King tells the fascinating, bizarrely true story of Kristina, Queen of Sweden. Born to a doting father and mad mother in 1626, thought to be a boy, Christina was dropped down the stairs as a baby, declared  …Read more

Adam Salky’s I Smile Back upholds the proud tradition of movies that leave you needing a drink. A faithful adaptation of Amy Koppelman’s 2008 novel of the same name, the film is a brutal and devastatingly honest look at the crushing nature of addicti …Read more

Exploring race, class, and sexuality, the seminal documentary Portrait of Jason (1966) still remains the only piece of essential cinema to prominently feature a gay black man. Starring Jason Holliday, a one of a kind, downtown hustler, the film becam …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