Writer-director Rungano Nyoni’s second feature is as acerbic as it is unforgiving.
The post ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’ Review: A Playfully Searing Drama About the Perils of Denial appeared first on Slant Magazine.
With a tagline of “Imagination is not always perfect,” Darío Autrán’s Entelequias, if judged by its desaturated, asymmetrical, vertically distorted key art, looks to be playing in the narrow liminal space between Solaris and eXistenZ. This poster eschews a standard credit block, instead placing actor, director and writer in one corner, its tagline blocked in the middle, and varying width bands off to the right, where the characters are repeated, but all seem to be glancing at a burning book, the only source of real colour here. Perhaps a text by Aristotle? The film’s title, Entelequias, was coined by Aristotle back in the day, and can be translated as “having the end in itself,” but in Spanish it has come to colloquially mean, “an unreal thing.” Argentinian designer…
A dispatch on three very different films from the New York Film Festival.
If it’s October, it’s practically Halloween and if it’s Halloween, then it’s time for Shudder’s horror-themed found footage anthology, V/H/S, to make its yearly return to the streaming service. V/H/S Beyond, the fourth entry in as many years, its seventh entry across two decades, and ninth overall (including spin-offs), once again doesn’t disappoint, delivering enough splatter, gore, and grue to fill several entries, let alone a single standalone entry running under two hours. Across six entries, including the obligatory wraparound segment, V/H/S Beyond retains its emphasis on horror but leans more heavily into science fiction than previous entries, bringing extra-terrestrials to Earth for decidedly unfriendly contact in half the segments, technology gone awry in another, a Doctor Moreau-inspired taxidermist with an unhealthy canine fixation in…
In an interview with Les Inrocks folks, Apichatpong Weerasethakul revealed that his upcoming project, the tentatively titled The Fountains of Paradise, is unlikely to begin shooting until 2026. The Thai filmmaker shared that he is currently in the process of writing, scouting locations, and essentially discovering the essence of the film in real time — no logline was offered. So we see this as a potential 2027 release. Tilda Swinton, with whom Weerasethakul expressed a desire to collaborate on many future projects, will star in their second film together, set against the backdrop of Sri Lanka.
Plante discusses whether online culture encourages people to hide themselves in society.
The post Interview: Pascal Plante on Subverting True Crime Tropes with ‘Red Rooms’ appeared first on Slant Magazine.
Independent filmmaking duo Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Friend, their newest in a 30-year collaboration, is a dog movie. Or, more aptly, it’s a film about a dog and Iris (Naomi Watts), a woman who hates dogs. Iris inherits a Great Dane, Apollo, from her late friend, mentor, and lover Walter (Bill Murray). The […]
The post NYFF Review: The Friend Amply Portrays Grief with an Admirable Naomi Watts Performance first appeared on The Film Stage.
Beyond Joker: Folie à Deux (October 4) and Smile 2 (October 18), this month is light on studio power. The indies are surely champing at the bit to fill the gap with a slew of festival darlings getting their limited releases in before Oscar voting. Searchlight, Focus Features, Neon, and A24 are all jockeying for […]
The post Posterized October 2024: Rumours, Woman of the Hour, La Cocina & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here. Babes (Pamela Adlon) Transitioning the naturalistic comic sensibilities that made Better Things a success, Pamela Adlon’s feature debut Babes manages to co-opt the rhythms of a romantic comedy to explore the relationship between […]
The post New to Streaming: Evil Does Not Exist, Powell and Pressburger, Red Rooms, It’s What’s Inside & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
People and places can leave an impression on us. In absence of one thing, we might find ourselves returning to the other for traces. Sano (Hiroki Sano) sits in his minimally adorned hotel room, staring blankly towards the light from the window. He’s come with his friend Miyata to a seaside resort in Izu, where they first met Sano’s late wife, Nagi (Nairu Yamamoto), five years ago. Some things have changed, some things refuse to. What follows is a structurally ingenious, profoundly romantic film, a crisp sea breeze ode to the moments that we share and the sentimental significance that they carry in our lives. Super Happy Forever is a special film, to my mind the most exciting feature out of Japan so far this…