Vallée: Demolition (2015)
Jean-Marc Vallee’s follow-up to Wild sees Jake Gyllenhaal as Davis Mitchell, an investment banker whose world – supposedly – falls apart after his wife is suddenly [...]
cinema
Akerman: No Home Movie (2016)
From the opening shot of No Home Movie, it’s clear that Chantal Akerman’s final film will also be one of her greatest. In the foreground of a desert vista – later [...]
Miller: Maggie’s Plan (2015)
Rebecca Miller’s latest film plays out as a brilliant parody of what might be described as the New York comedy of letters, especially as elaborated by such walk-and-talk [...]
Wheatley: High-Rise (2015)
Of all J.G. Ballard’s novels of the 1960s and 1970s – what might be termed his classic era – High- Rise, along with Concrete Island, was the most scrupulous and [...]
Filho: Aquarius (2016)
It’s hard to open a review of Aquarius with any summary or overview of what the film is about, just because so much of what makes Kleber Mendonca Filho’s follow-up to [...]
Daniels: Swiss Army Man (2016)
If the devolution of bromance over the last couple of years has taught us anything, it’s that there’s nothing especially humane about the bro code, just as there’s [...]
Reichardt: Certain Women (2016)
It takes a certain kind of director to film a short story, or a series of short stories, and really pull it off. Although different kinds of short stories have different [...]
Inarritu: The Revenant (2015) & Tarantino: The Hateful Eight (2015)
Over the last decade or so, the Western has been in decline. While there have been no shortage of actual Westerns, these have tended to construe themselves in a [...]
Nemes: Saul Fia (Son of Saul) (2015)
There can be no doubt that Laszlo Nemes’ Son of Saul is in some sense one of the greatest feature films made about the Holocaust, even if its greatness lies in the ways in [...]
Hou: Cìkè Niè Yǐnniáng (The Assassin) (2015)
Based on a classical Chinese short story from the Tang Period – Pei Xing’s “Nie Yinniang” – The Assassin is one of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s most mysterious and mercurial [...]