“Instead of manufacturing sympathetic markers to anoint and glorify her protagonist, Denis insists on portraying the self-doubt and insecurities that vex Isabelle. To that end, the presence of Binoche is a bit of brilliance that taunts and challenges the viewer…”
“Red as warning, as love, as danger, as violence, as prophecy, as passion, as occult mystery: all of these and more are conveyed in the director’s use of the color throughout this story of loss, grief and obsession.”
“In its own histrionic way, the ‘Maniac’ cycle presages a wave of reaction that would draw its power from the patriarchal fear of dispossession.”
“Confronted, challenged and upended throughout the course of Michael Cimino’s ‘The Deer Hunter,’ conventional notions of masculinity are routinely conditional to the film’s dominant shifts in setting and tone.”
“To use a gaming term, it’s got replay value, but it might leave those looking for a cohesive, more-traditional narrative choosing a different path.”
“In ‘Vox Lux,’ pop music is an emblem of pop culture and the distractions we use to soften the growing trauma of the nation. It also plays into the main question that Corbet raises: just how long can we cling onto pop culture before society gets so bad that nothing will help?”
“This truly does feel like a religious fable farmed out via an automated word generator, one funded by corporate studio execs and programmed by Madison Avenue hacks and Instagram influencers.”
Andy Witchger Interviews Minnesota Musician David Huckfelt
“Liminality is the coin of Martel’s realm in ‘Zama,’ and she manages to make the excruciating uncertainty of the long pause an engrossing experience for the audience…”
“‘For Some Inexplicable Reason’ strains for authenticity but only registers as a compendium of conventions familiar to the tired subgenre of the post-collegiate dramedy.”
