Much was made after the premiere of James Sweeney’s second feature, Twinless, of a steamy sex scene between his and Dylan O’Brien’s characters. Fans of…
Bing Liu ascribed a refreshingly unsentimental energy to the coming-of-age genre in his Oscar-nominated documentary, Minding the Gap. For his debut narrative feature, Preparation for…
Creative partners since the early 1940s, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly hadn’t actually made a film together for three years when It’s Always Fair Weather…
Alex Russell’s debut feature, Lurker, is a mask-off exploration of rabid stan culture taken to extremes. When ascendant pop star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) walks into…
Seeking to reduce a filmmaker’s chief thematic preoccupation is usually a waste of time, for any one worth their stuff works in a storm of…
If the end of the world left the children in charge, what kind of future might they build? This question simmers underneath a surface of…
Sophy Romvari has used cinema to mine the fractured, seemingly incomplete nature of her family history since her first short film, Nine Behind. In that…
You might not assume it, but the handsome, boyish, 19-year-old Leonardo (Manfredi Marini) at the center of Giovanni Tortorici’s refreshingly pulse-tapping debut, Diciannove, doesn’t feel…
Alexandra Simpson’s debut feature, No Sleep Till, is hardly a typical disaster movie. There’s no panicked fleeing, no looting, no screaming and crying. Her approach…
The world of Drifting Laurent, the sophomore feature by directors Anton Balekdjian, Léo Couture, and Mattéo Eustachon, is not too dissimilar from that of Alain…
A father dies, the family prepares the deceased for the next life. The simplicity of the premise of Tenzin Phuntsog’s narrative feature debut, Next Life,…
30 minutes into Jem Cohen’s new film Little, Big, and Far, the viewer watches a mostly vacant mall parking lot slowly descend into darkness. For…
For a film set on the Iberian Peninsula, it’s no surprise that the title Hot Milk raises some questions. Adapted from Deborah Levy’s novel of…
Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré have amassed a remarkable body of work, and “body” is certainly an apt descriptor. Their intimate and playful films are…
“You sound cool talking out your ass,” Bruce (Anthony Oberbeck) quips to his best friend and roommate, Simon (newcomer Tristan Turner), a struggling filmmaker. In…
Grieving widow Kate Garrett (Julianne Moore) hides her struggles. She’s hard up financially, and relies on the dwindling generosity of her ex-husband, Richard (Kyle MacLachlan),…
John Maclean’s first feature, the grimy, spare Western Slow West, established him as a clever manipulator of genre tropes, and capable of stretching a trim…
Critiquing the directorial efforts of well-known actors is trickier than it seems. For example, it’s impossible to ignore, especially at a festival as prestigious and…
On the most basic level, Graham Swon’s second feature, An Evening Song (for three voices), could be called a pre-war domestic melodrama, a gothic mystery,…
Coming-of-age films are rarely as frank about the relationship between sex and politics as André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds. The film traces the lives of students…