Smoking Causes Coughing (Quentin Dupieux, 2022)
The title Smoking Causes Coughing is a statement of direct causation. Doing this will lead to that. This is ironic, because nothing in Smoki...
2023-04-21 02:58:03 +0000 UTC View Post
msicism posts
Blue Jean (Georgia Oakley, 2022)
Debut films are hard, and it's often easy to overlook some formal or narrative missteps. Everyone has to start somewhere, and besides, the sheer gumption...
2023-04-21 02:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostA Respectable Woman (Bernard Émond, 2023)
Despite a 20-year career, Quebecois director Bernard Émond remains a bit of a mystery even to many of the most hardcore cinephiles. While on some level ...
2023-04-20 03:14:31 +0000 UTC View PostThe Divide [La Fracture] (Catherine Corsini, 2021)
As incongruous as it may seen, I found myself thinking about the recent films of Adam McKay while watching La Fracture, the latest film from Cat...
2023-04-17 01:24:41 +0000 UTC View PostCoconut Head Generation (Alain Kassanda, 2023)
I don't have a lot to say about Coconut Head Generation, an informative but flawed documentary about activism at Nigeria's University of Ibadan....
2023-04-16 02:22:41 +0000 UTC View PostYanagawa (Zhang Lu, 2021)
Back in 2014, when TIFF was still doing its City to City program(me), I covered the entire slate of films that year. The focus was on Seoul, and as often...
2023-04-12 03:33:21 +0000 UTC View PostCruces (Maximilien Luc Proctor, 2023)
BY REQUEST: Florian Weigl
The usual disclaimers apply. Max and I are friends, and have worked together on some writing projects. B...
2023-04-12 00:01:49 +0000 UTC View PostEight Hours Don't Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbiner, 1972)
BY REQUEST: Jacopo Fiorancio
Having now watched all five episodes (and indeed, all eight hours) of Eight Hours, I find it...
2023-04-10 05:19:16 +0000 UTC View PostEnys Men (Mark Jenkin, 2022)
One benefit of going to commercial cinemas to see movies no one else wants to is that, when a few other people do show up, it can create an unex...
2023-04-08 01:56:37 +0000 UTC View PostKnock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan, 2023)
Read the room, Night. This is a terrible time to be making such an incoherent statement about gay parenting, in part because that incoherence can easily ...
2023-04-07 18:57:47 +0000 UTC View PostThe Lottery (Subscriber's Choice)
This weekend I'll finish Eight Hours Are Not a Day, and hopefully post about it by Monday.
But since it sometimes takes folks a minute to ...
2023-04-07 03:33:33 +0000 UTC View PostLeila's Brothers (Saeed Roustaee, 2022)
“Dostoyevsky Iranian style,” reads one positive review of Leila’s Brothers, the third feature film by Saeed Roustaee, and in a way that wr...
2023-04-06 07:06:56 +0000 UTC View PostAlmost Entirely a Slight Disaster (Umut Subaşı, 2023)
Umut Subaşı’s debut feature is a curious beast. In many regards it is quite accomplished, and displays some very decisive stylistic choices. Basicall...
2023-04-05 23:13:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe Face of the Jellyfish (Melisa Liebenthal, 2022)
In 2019, Argentinian filmmaker Melisa Liebenthal released a short film called Aquí y Allá (“Here and There”), in which she used Google Ear...
2023-04-04 19:37:18 +0000 UTC View PostAstrakan (David Depesseville, 2022)
Astrakan, the debut feature from David Depesseville, is a film that is at once deeply humanist and utterly pitiless. Essentially a character stu...
2023-04-02 22:23:39 +0000 UTC View PostA Few Preliminary Words about....
Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972)
At this point I've seen the first two of the series' five episodes, ...
2023-04-02 04:41:36 +0000 UTC View PostTwo Upcoming Reviews
Today I started watching Fassbinder's Eight Hours Are Not a Day, and what do you know? It's about eight hours long. I will report back once I "b...
2023-04-01 03:33:43 +0000 UTC View PostA Flower in the Mouth (Éric Baudelaire, 2022)
The more films I see by Éric Baudelaire, the less I understand what he's up to. They all seem so different, from his look at the breakaway republic of A...
2023-04-01 03:26:14 +0000 UTC View PostUtama (Alejandro Loayza Grisi, 2022)
BY REQUEST: Gavin Petty
Over the years I've discovered a common trait among many, if not most, debut films. The filmmaker has spen...
2023-03-27 01:28:01 +0000 UTC View PostParafango (Charles Atlas, 1984)
Among the major video artists of the 80s and 90s, Charles Atlas doesn't have the reputation he deserves. This is probably because he works in a very narr...
2023-03-24 02:44:22 +0000 UTC View PostThere Once Was a Singing Blackbird (Otar Iosseliani, 1970)
BY REQUEST: Kirk Johnson
Well, it was kind of inspiring to see that even at the start of his career, Iosseliani had most of his pr...
2023-03-22 06:22:25 +0000 UTC View PostBrother and Sister (Arnaud Desplechin, 2022)
There has been a strong surge of anti-Desplechin sentiment brewing over the past few years. The critical response to his last few films, along with the f...
2023-03-18 03:30:43 +0000 UTC View Postin water (Hong Sang-soo, 2023)
Allegedly kept out of the Berlinale competition for being "too weird," in water certainly has the hallmarks of radical new direction, for any fi...
2023-03-17 02:52:29 +0000 UTC View PostLaberint Sequences (Blake Williams, 2023)
The usual disclaimers apply. Blake and I are friends, and while I have been a pretty consistent fan of his work, I've done my best to remain quasi-object...
2023-03-15 05:15:26 +0000 UTC View PostRANDOM SUBSCRIBER SWEEPSTAKES!
You asked for it, you got it! Using a random number generator, the following three subscribers have been selected for this month's TELL ME WHAT TO WATCH ...
2023-03-14 04:18:03 +0000 UTC View PostI'm Thinking....
I have been a bit distracted from watching older movies lately, mostly because of year-end polls. Now I am not sure how to proceed. What do you think? 2023-03-13 05:30:21 +0000 UTC View Post
R.M.N. (Cristian Mungiu, 2022)
The title R.M.N. refers to an M.R.I., whose initials in Romanian are R.M.N. But of course, R.M.N. also seems to signify "Romania," and ...
2023-03-12 05:09:30 +0000 UTC View PostNostalgia (Mario Martone, 2022)
A funny thing happened while I was originally composing this review. I got about a paragraph out, which was pretty much my usual stuff: a bit of backgrou...
2023-03-12 02:58:29 +0000 UTC View PostCairo Conspiracy (Tarik Saleh, 2022)
When Tarik Saleh's Cairo Conspiracy (or Boy From Heaven, as it was called at the time) was announced as a selection for the 2022 Cannes...
2023-03-10 04:48:06 +0000 UTC View PostInfinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg, 2023)
Let's Go Brandon! In terms of evocation of mood, inarticulate menace, and a batshit approach to visuals and sound design, Cronenberg fils has it...
2023-03-07 20:27:39 +0000 UTC View Post