“‘Clean, Shaven’ depicts a culture in which there is little empathy for the mentally ill, perhaps because it is a culture influenced by fictional portrayals in which people like Peter are predominately unfeeling mad killers.”
“A haunting study of Grecian prophecies and inherited mental illness, ‘Relic’ makes beasts of the mind.”
“Greyhound’s inability to venture further into the depths of wartime psychology leaves it susceptible to being forgotten just as quickly as it emerged.”
“James’ arresting, emotional and attention-grabbing film understands that what’s most frightening is barely glimpsed and feels disarmingly normal.”
“No director has been able to replicate Nobuhiko Ōbayashi’s iridescent, hallucinatory and infectious passion for film.”
“In cinema, it’s tough to depict sincerity without it coming across as contrived or sickly-sweet, but it’s a feeling that myself and many others yearn for, especially when it comes together as beautifully as it does in ‘But I’m a Cheerleader.'”
“‘The Beach House’ signals an exciting new star in horror.”
“If you listen to Beastie Boys, Jonze’s technique — a familiar blend of rough and smooth, high tech and low tech — comes correct. If you don’t listen to Beastie Boys, the movie serves as a biographical and musical introduction.”
“Aviva and Eden’s dances — together and apart — mobilize Yakin’s film, and function as bodily mirrors and emotional mirages; gain and loss, self and love.”
“Much of Babyteeth’s vitality can be located in the way each of the central characters is so fully realized.”
“While ‘The Black Cat’ does not share many explicit connections with Poe’s 1843 story, both texts use archetypal symbolism to explore painfully intimate experiences (in Poe’s case, addiction and mental disarray, and in Ulmer’s case, psychological trauma).”
“‘The Audition’ considers how we navigate the middle space between power and powerlessness, and Hoss’ performance, whether she’s yearning for affection or responsible for staggering brutality, is the film’s greatest asset.”
“What both Pacino and De Palma vividly convey throughout the film is that there’s absolutely nothing dubious or spurious about Carlito’s conviction in his ability to evolve.”
“HBO has come a long way in representing the intersectionality of race and gender.”
“One of the most effective storytelling strategies in Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’ is the application of the simple and elegant dichotomy.”
“‘Raging Bull’ — a complex character study about methods and codes of conduct — all too often gets reductively tagged as Scorsese’s toxic masculinity sports movie that allowed De Niro to lose (and gain) weight in pursuit of an Oscar.”
“In Caravaggio and Scorsese’s art, the silent actions of male and female characters speak louder than words. We don’t need to hear Holofernes scream to understand what Judith has taken.”
“Under May’s stare in ‘The Heartbreak Kid,’ and through the provocations of scene partners, Grodin creates a character of rare stature: a horrifying, stone-dumb genius.”
“In my hatred for the Bond franchise, I feel I may have done a disservice to its star. I have always had a tendency to discount Sean Connery as an exquisitely sculpted statue, capable of filling out a tuxedo very nicely but little else.”
“One of the great joys in viewing the films amassed under the World Cinema Project banner is discovering the richness of a nation’s cultural and scenic backdrop.”