Jemaine Clement and Regina Hall star in writer/director Jim Strouse’s thoughtful People Places Things. After his relationship ends, Will Henry (Clement), a graphic novelist and professor at the School of Visual Arts, finds himself reeling from a brok …Read more
Like Woody Allen, Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo explores the same material in film after film. Some audiences might find it tiring, but in his hands it’s a mode of artistic refinement akin to the old masters’ approach to painting, where each nuance and …Read more
We Are Alive uses the personal to access the political in a way that feels honest but also sometimes limiting. The film opens with a personal blow to director Carmen Castillo, as she reacts to the death of her friend and political comrade Daniel Bens …Read more
Known for their extreme violence and gore, Eli Roth’s films are highly polarizing. The director’s Hostel franchise helped coin the term “torture porn” a decade ago. But for his latest directorial effort, Roth has stepped away from graphic violence an …Read more
Ariel Kleiman is an Australian filmmaker whose short films have won prizes at both Sundance and Cannes. His feature debut, Partisan, starring Vincent Cassel, is a richly textured, deeply chilling story of a child assassin who dares to question his ci …Read more
Mia Madre attempts to tackle one of the difficult paradoxes of a death in the family: that even while one’s personal life may come crashing down, the rest of the world keeps turning. Nanni Moretti’s film tries to show this by balancing its story betw …Read more
The Walk centers around one act, Phillipe Petit’s 1974 high wire walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which Hollywood mainstay and visual effects pioneer Robert Zemeckis enlists the full range of movie magic to recreate. It’s a sto …Read more
Michel Gondry has seen his critical fortunes vary based on his collaborators, from the modern classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to the regrettable Green Hornet, but no one has ever doubted his prodigious inventiveness. He’s created one of …Read more
Guy Maddin has always been an inveterate film classicist, recreating the textures and styles of silent-era films with the loving care of a fetishist, and while he’s done exactly that with The Forbidden Room, he’s done it in such a way that the result …Read more
Like any documentary based on the past, The Man Who Saved The World has to decide whether to incorporate recreated elements and switch between them and the talking-heads segments, or stick exclusively to the latter. Director Peter Anthony decided to …Read more
