This is the year in which the Jason Segel dramedy really finds its voice, confidently balancing its comedic and emotional currents in a way that’s entertaining and moving.
On the work of Val Lewton, on the heels of a Criterion double feature of his work.
In a double Virginie Efira casting news type of day, we learn that after dropping in Rebecca Zlotowski’s Vie Privée, the actress will move into the arms (or away) of Arieh Worthalter (from career game-changing The Goldman Case) in Thomas Kruithof’s third feature film. The cineuropa folks report that production on Les Braises has started — so this means Efira has a meatier role here. The French filmmaker has a pair of films under his belt with 2016’s The Eavesdropper (La Mécanique de l’Ombre) and Les Promesses – the 2021 film with Isabelle Huppert and premiered in Venice.… Read the rest
The film builds an all-consuming sense of dread and panic that almost sneaks up on you.
The post ‘MadS’ Review: A One-Take Descent into Madness appeared first on Slant Magazine.
Last week, we got the confirmation that Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil were toplining Rebecca Zlotowski’s Vie Privée and now we have a more complete picture with further casting announcements and a proper logline. Along with new team members in Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste and Luana Bajrami (who directed her feature debut in the Cannes preemed The Hill Where Lionesses Roar in 2021 – read our review), Zlotowski is re-teaming with her Other People’s Children star Virginie Efira. Production began in late September and will run all the way into late November in Paris and Normandy. We’re putting this down as a Venice Film Festival possibility.… Read the rest
Like many Canadians (and others who live in a colder climate), I often dream – at least fleetingly – about hibernating for the winter, like our bear brethren. Sleeping away those colder months, and reawakening with the earth as it begins its spring cycle. What would human culture and society be like? How would our stories and daily lives change? Filmmaker and artist Anna Cornudella Castro imagines just such a world in The Human Hibernation. An experiment that became an art installation that became a film, it’s part slow cinema, part faux documentary, following a small group of these humans and understanding what would change in the rhythms of life. In this world where humans sleep in the three months of winter, a boy awakes…
Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujică’s TWST / Things We Said Today exists in the world of Beatlemania. It uses archival footage from the lead-up to the Beatles concert at Shea Stadium in August of 1965, following animated cut-outs of young men and women from around New York as they experience the excitement taking over the city. […]
The post NYFF Review: TWST / Things We Said Today Captures Beatlemania in Unexpected Ways first appeared on The Film Stage.
Jane Schoenbrun didn’t invent movies exploring teenage malaise and identity through the lens of pop culture, but in the opening moments of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s Eat the Night, echoes of their two acclaimed features immediately rise to the surface. Much like the protagonist of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, 17-year-old Apolline […]
The post BFI London Review: Eat the Night Mixes Compelling Teenage Malaise With Conventional Crime Drama first appeared on The Film Stage.
I saw Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s (Pulse, Cure) latest film, Cloud, at the 44th annual Hawaii International Film Festival, and man, am I perplexed. I love Pulse (Kairo) and I wanted to love Cloud, but I can’t even figure out what the title alludes to; an Internet kind of cloud? The clouds in the sunset at the end of the film? No idea, friend. Bear with me as I attempt to unravel my thoughts on this film, as it’s not an easy one to parse, and it feels like a few disparate genres and pieces. The logline: Yoshii, a young man who resells goods online, finds himself at the center of a series of mysterious events that put his life at risk. When the film begins, Ryosuke…
After the death of her fiancé, Natalie moved to America for a fresh start. When we catch up with her she is 8 months pregnant at her job as a real estate agent. She has take on a challenging listing, a palatial estate with its own troubled past that has barely caught the eyes of any potential buyers. In the final moments of the open house The Client shows up but appears to show not enough interest in the property and seemingly leaves. Except they haven’t and break back into the home afterwards and proceed to hunt Natalie throughout the estate. The terror of the moment causes Natalie to go into premature labor, starting a physiological ticking clock as she must find a way to…