Return to Seoul (Davy Chou, 2022)
One of the year’s most acclaimed films, Return to Seoul is also notably absent within the so...
2022-12-28 06:01:28 +0000 UTC View Post
msicism posts
Dos Estaciones (Juan Pablo González, 2022)
Just a quick word about a film that kind of snuck up on me. In its first twenty or so minutes, Dos ...
2022-12-27 23:56:21 +0000 UTC View PostTouki-Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973)
It seems to me that the revelatory thing about Touki-Bouki (and yes, I'm...
2022-12-27 04:15:57 +0000 UTC View PostAll the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras, 2022)
Poitras's brutal documentary about the life and work of Nan Goldin, while not exactly critic-proof, doe...
2022-12-26 07:02:21 +0000 UTC View PostBouquets 31-40 (Rose Lowder, 2014-2022)
For those of you unfamiliar with Rose Lowder's work, I have written about an 2022-12-23 21:14:59 +0000 UTC View Post
Nostalgia Ain't What It Used to Be
In a time of all-encompassing irony, it's hard to know whether sincerity as an antidote or just another pose. Two of America's leading auteurs decided to go back in time with their latest films, of...
2022-12-23 20:20:58 +0000 UTC View PostTriangle of Sadness (Ruben Östlund, 2022)
Look, no one is more surprised than me. As far as I was concerned, Ruben Östlund was a smug, self-righ...
2022-12-22 20:31:07 +0000 UTC View PostThe Best Experimental Films (That I Saw) in 2022
As with all such lists, a grain or two of salt is advisable. There are always more experimental films produced and released within a calendar year than can ever be watched by any given human being,...
2022-12-20 06:28:25 +0000 UTC View PostDecision to Leave (Park Chan-wook, 2022)
I had jotted some notes on this film back when I watched it, but they went missing from my desk. I ment...
2022-12-19 06:31:26 +0000 UTC View PostA Bit of Year-End Cramming
The Whale (Darren Aronofsky, 2022)
Piss poor.
Confession:...
2022-12-19 01:01:52 +0000 UTC View PostThe Maiden (Graham Foy, 2022)
The Maiden is the first feature film from Graham Foy, a Calgary-based director who released a ...
2022-12-14 19:52:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe Most Wonderful, Albeit Stressful, Time of the Year
[CW: groveling apologies]
Well, my final papers are in. 120 beautiful seven-page essay...
2022-12-13 16:28:53 +0000 UTC View PostTwo Auteurs' Shorts
The Potemkinists (Radu Jude, 2022)
Jude's short film is not so much a tribute to...
2022-12-10 23:25:31 +0000 UTC View PostSkinamarink (Kyle Edward Ball, 2022)
Few recent films have initially seemed as original, or as inscrutable, as Skinamarink, the deb...
2022-12-09 00:20:39 +0000 UTC View Post
The Kegelstatt Trio (Rita Azevedo Gomes, 2022)
Artistic experiments don't always pan out, and the important thing is to learn something along the way....
2022-12-07 05:29:10 +0000 UTC View PostThe Inspection (Elegance Bratton, 2022)
The Inspection is an autobiographical debut feature that shows Bratton's onscreen a...
2022-12-06 06:26:43 +0000 UTC View PostA Couple (Frederick Wiseman, 2022)
Only Wiseman's second excursion into fiction filmmaking*, A Couple displays a fairly radical i...
2022-12-05 05:33:57 +0000 UTC View PostThrough the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami, 1994)
It's taken me awhile to get to the final film in Kiarostami's Koker trilogy, and this is one of those i...
2022-12-04 06:18:29 +0000 UTC View PostSight & Sound Poll (Poll)
It's still hectic over here, with the end of the semester grading compounded by end-of-year cramming. A...
2022-12-03 06:48:18 +0000 UTC View PostRewind and Play (Alain Gomis, 2022)
One of the year's best films, Rewind and Play might best be characterized as a forensic docume...
2022-12-03 06:07:16 +0000 UTC View PostGlass Onion (Rian Johnson, 2022)
It wasn't my intention to write about Glass Onion on the day that Sight & Sound...
2022-12-02 02:54:55 +0000 UTC View PostNE Corridor (Joshua Solondz, 2022)
This is the first of several catch-up posts, so I won't be going into as much detail as I probably should. But some of these films I honestly couldn't write about because I programmed them...
2022-11-28 06:23:19 +0000 UTC View PostEO (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2022)
Plenty has already been written about EO, Jerzy Skolimowski's very strange, often exhilarating...
2022-11-27 20:07:23 +0000 UTC View PostBlind Date (Jan Soldat, 2022)
Soldat is a German filmmaker who doesn't have much of a festival profile in North America, w...
2022-11-25 02:03:19 +0000 UTC View PostMutzenbacher (Ruth Beckermann, 2022)
Having now seen three films by Ruth Beckermann, I'm more confused than anything. Does she have a discer...
2022-11-24 06:45:22 +0000 UTC View PostThis AND That!
Befitting such a close result, I am going to attempt a compromise. I will focus on the major titles wit...
2022-11-24 06:35:19 +0000 UTC View PostThe Choice is Yours
As the year-end crunch keeps crunching, I am inevitably falling behind in my reviews. I have thought ab...
2022-11-20 05:36:12 +0000 UTC View PostDevil's Peak (Simon Liu, 2021)
Hong Kong filmmaker Simon Liu has ga...
2022-11-20 05:26:09 +0000 UTC View PostTori and Lokita (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2022)
At their best, the films of the Dardenne brothers embody a critical realism. Part of what has made thei...
2022-11-19 06:42:46 +0000 UTC View Post