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There must be a science to making a quietly disappointing sequel. All the hard work and good intentions remain (especially if you’ve spent years manipulating little clay figurines), but everything feels more labored and less effective. Elements that change feel blatant, things that stay the same feel tired, and
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The trailer for A24's The Zone of Interest finally arrived months after the film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and took home the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize. The World War II Holocaust film opened to rapturous reviews in France last spring, with reviews calling it
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With All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh (Weekend, Looking) has made a film that’s about a few things. Foremostly, it’s about ghosts – literal ghosts, but also figurative ones, phantoms created by emotions we don’t know what to do with or feel like forgetting. All of Us Strangers
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When Emerald Fennell accepted her BAFTA for writing Promising Young Woman in 2021 (virtually, as the country was in lockdown at the time), she was sitting in a glamorous hotel room, complete with a grand piano just over her shoulder. The sudden display of glamour (Fennell clarified she was in
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The British film industry has been producing striking debut films at an unfathomable rate over the last few years, and now that Hoard has premiered at the Venice Film Festival, we certainly can’t accuse them of all feeling the same. The London-set drama centers on Maria, who, as a
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October is typically considered the height of autumn, and as such, it goes by many names: Pumpkin Spice season, Decorative Gourd season, Spooky season, etc. However, in the entertainment business, it's the heart of film festival season, as major indie films and awards contenders head from high-profile event
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For the past decade, we’ve slowly watched every rising and established artist take up streaming on their offer of crazy money to make whatever they want before realizing that an algorithmically driven platform doesn’t care for their hard work and unique style. Netflix won’t curate or even
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You know something’s severely wrong with a film if you find yourself fixating on the casting – not just mulling over who’s in the ensemble, but how they all got assembled together. If you’re stuck on the mechanics of how brilliant actors ended up alongside each other, there’
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So much about Finally Dawn (Finalmente L’alba) feels perplexing. It gives the perspective of a regular Italian adolescent through a world of questionable showbiz glamor, but we rarely get insight into her interiority. It’s set against the backdrop of Hollywood productions that set up shop in Rome in
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Despite the fact that we know relatively little about it, Saltburn is already one of the buzziest films of the year. And in truth, how could it now be? It's a perfect storm of intrigue --- a vague plot described in tempting buzzwords (“beautifully wicked tale of privilege
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Performance lies at the heart of Femme – not just with the number performed by drag queen Aphrodite Banks in the film’s opening. The piercing feature debut from Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping is filled with subversive, confronting observations about performance of identity, how queer people choose or
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We’ve been lucky to experience a wealth of striking debut films by British female directors over the past few years. Some trade in devastating arthouse aesthetics, like Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean, or Cannes prizewinner How to Have Sex by Molly Manning Walker. Some lean into