“Leave the light on. It’s easier for me to dream.” The opening shot of Việt and Nam, writer-director Trương Minh Quý’s sophomore film, is a feat of cinematic restraint. Nearly imperceivable white specs of dust begin to appear, few and far between, drifting from the top of a pitch-black screen to the bottom, where the […]
The post NYFF Review: Việt and Nam is a Swooning, Stirring Slow Cinema Romance first appeared on The Film Stage.
Amir has a dark secret that he’s keeping from everyone close to him. He wants to get rid of one of his legs. The left one specifically. Amir has body dysmorphic disorder, a disorder that leaves him convinced that one of his legs is rotting away and he’ll be much happier if he were to cut it off, Above The Knee as the title suggests. So Amir sets a date and begins to plan how he’ll remove the decaying appendage. The Norwegian thriller from writer and director Viljar Bøe, with one of his leads Freddy Singh joining him as co-writer, is at its core a domestic thriller. The difference here is that the pair use body image dysphoria (clinically called Body Dysmorphic Disorder) as…
The huge party at the film’s center is among the great parties of recent American cinema.
The post ‘Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point’ Review: An Ecstatically Maximalist Celebration of Ritual appeared first on Slant Magazine.
After screening his latest film Caught by the Tides at the Busan International Film Festival, director Jia Zhang-ke met with the press, accompanied by his wife Zhao Tao. A frequent visitor to the BIFF, Jia started by saying he is recovering from eye surgery. Caught by the Tides repurposes footage Jia shot over a 23-year […]
The post Jia Zhang-ke Reveals He’s Working on an AI Short Film first appeared on The Film Stage.
Seven years ago, Dutch filmmaker Thijs Meuwese co-directed the science fiction film Molly a film overflowing with ingenuity, a no-budget post-apocalyptic superhero epic. You can read my review here… That film had an incredibly impressive finale, and it marked its directors and lead actress Julia Batelaan as people to keep track of. And there is good news on that front: Thijs and Julia reunited and made a thriller with a strong science-fiction slant called Psychonaut. Even better news: it has secured itself a World Première at the Brooklyn Horror festival this month. Senior programmer Joseph Hernandez describes the film as follows: A futuristic healing machine capable of piercing into one’s memories is Maxime’s only hope to save her dying girlfriend. Along with the help of…
Four years after her layered character study A Leave, director Lee Ran-hee returns to the Busan International Film Festival with her sophomore film The Final Semester, a film that also examines the professional struggles of the trade-bound working class. While her first film followed a middle-aged carpenter, here she looks at the lives of several vocational students as they embark on the tricky transitioning from school to factory life. Chang-woo and Woo-jae are guided by their teacher, who helps them to secure placement in a company and suggests what kind of paths are open to them during these sensitive early steps of adulthood. Certain jobs may offer them an opportunity to be exempt from military service, others could help them obtain a subsidised spot at…
Following his intriguing debut The Girl on a Bulldozer, which screened at the Busan International Film Festival in 2021, directed Park Ki-woong returns to the festival with the New Currents competition title The Land of Morning Calm. Set far away from the big city, the film examines social prejudice and small-mindedness in a tiny and hardy coastal town where it is impossible for anyone to get away from prying eyes and wagging tongues. Opening at the break of dawn looking at an ominously quiet sea and lighthouse under a darkening sky, with only a few seagulls showing signs of life, the film soon shows how deeply ironic its title is. The protagonist, played with crusty authenticity by Yoon Joo-sang, is the ageing captain of a…
