“Exploitation filmmakers like Castellari treat other films like air just waiting to be breathed in. Theft, plagiarism, remix, citation, reference — to these exploiters, they are all the same thing. Everything, these films suggest, belongs to all of us.”
“Rossellini astonishingly blends the good and the bad into an imperfect merging of society in all its multiplicity of guises. Death, desolation and violence are as pervasive in the film as love and empathy.”
“Despite the 68-minute duration, ‘Breathless Animals’ might feel occasionally redundant, especially when the animation creates psychedelic vibes, but its many sketches of a woman’s life make up for any minor flaws.”
“‘The To Do List’ not only made me feel comfortable with my sexuality and my body as a woman, but it also helped me understand that sex is natural and organic.”
“Lorre brought to his strangers the psychological wounds carried by the exile.”
“Fantasy exists to create a place of greater safety, a rejection of the real world in favour of one that allows for an open, unapologetic queerness.”
“A great magician never reveals his tricks, and Soderbergh far too nakedly shows the craft in ‘The Laundromat,’ whereas a narrower focus, with the human consequence of the Panama Papers in clear sight, could have beguiled, incited and entertained in equal measure.”
“‘Ad Astra’ joins the likes of ‘Gravity’ and ‘Interstellar’ as one of Stanley Kubrick’s starchildren.”
“By experiencing Almodóvar’s films as the product of a man whose view of the world is deeply affected by a variety of nagging medical concerns, only a few late period works thoroughly scratch under the surface of his psyche.”
“No matter what one pulls from Kon’s work, there’s no denying his lasting impact and innate ability to immediately render a viewer speechless.”
“Throughout both the foreground and background of ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ Truffaut emphasizes the characters’ self-absorption via a hyper-sexual form of narcissism in a society lacking real love.”
“‘The Box’ elevates the daily minutiae of capitalist cruelty into the science fiction moral framework of a ‘Twilight Zone’ yarn.”
“‘Parasite’ takes a left turn that’s so hard yet so appropriate that it’s like watching a spectacularly executed high wire act.”
“Shaping the narrative around the complexities of female friendship and the pressures wrought by the financial crisis of 2008, Scafaria convincingly paints a psychologically resonant portrait that allows the viewer a seat on the inside looking out…”
Diana Cheng Interviews Director Wayne Wang
“For a filmmaker usually so concerned with the social causes of injustice, ‘The Offence’ is remarkably focused on the troubled psychology of its central character.”
“Nothing about ‘Ford v Ferrari’ reeks of studio interference, perhaps owing to the fact that the script hews so closely to screenwriting conventions that worked well for decades.”
“A collaboration between a Chinese-American director and a Korean-American writer, ‘Coming Home Again’ is an exemplar of minimal styling that shows that what is essentially human surpasses the boundary of what is ethnic and cultural.”
“‘Advice for Taxidermists and Amateur Beekeepers’ succeeds not only as a realist narrative about family, loss, sex and death, but also as a quietly reflexive genre piece.”
“Johnson loves whodunits so much that he racked his brain to think 10 steps ahead of the audience so that he could hoodwink them to serve the goal of establishing the genre’s viability in the present day, all while staying true to its classic roots.”