Taxi is the third unauthorized (and fascinating) film Jafar Panahi has completed (and smuggled out of Iran) since late 2010, when its government handed down a 20-year ban on him directing any movies, writing screenplays, or giving any media interviews. Like This Is Not a Film (2011) and Closed Curtain (2013), this is not just […]
In The Emperor’s New Clothes, comedian Russell Brand and filmmaker Michael Winterbottom join forces to explore the origins and impact of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the growing disparity in wealth distribution. Polymath Brand is a flamboyant and controversial figure, equally as famous for his short-lived marriage to Katy Perry and overcoming drug addiction […]
Don’t be fooled by the European poster for Paolo Sorrentino’s latest amorphous film. It may be hard to pin down what type of movie this is, but it’s definitely not the spry sex comedy hinted at in the ad campaign, where stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel sit in a swimming pool staring gob-smacked at […]
There’s no intelligible dialogue in this animated odyssey about a nameless boy who leaves his home in the countryside in search of his father, but it still manages to speak to the heart. The father has left for the city to find work, and his lonely son undertakes a dreamlike pursuit. Growing in sinister stature […]
England is famous for a long tradition of eccentrics and a tolerance of their idiosyncrasies. The Lady in the Van celebrates and humanizes the continuation of this quaint pattern through the last quarter of the 20th century, as embodied by the indomitable Dame Maggie Smith. Her Miss Shepherd is based on the real woman who […]
The World of Kanako is not a film that produces a lukewarm reaction. It’s pretty much a love or hate kind of situation. Of course, you can do both. Connections to films can be like relationships, and this is one you can absolutely despise loving. In fact, it’s a response the movie practically demands. There […]
The festival Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema, screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center from December 2-8, is celebrating its 10th edition, and is using this milestone as an occasion to look back on the Romanian New Wave, which, of course by now, is not so new. Besides its usual focus on recent films—which […]
Three Asian films at the DOC NYC festival reveal spaces we rarely see and people we are unlikely to meet, even in a globalized, connected world. These outwardly calm works contain unpredictable emotions, immense risks, and power games sometimes unseen, sometimes thrust into the open. “We had to destroy the village in order to save […]
As I took my seat to watch Brooklyn at the New York Film Festival, the middle-aged man to my left flashed me a dirty look. Clearly the gentleman did not want company next to him, and so he made sure to throw me the kind of pitch-black shade that lets you know you’ve invaded a […]