Film Reviews
Weathering With You: Climate change and fatalism
By Matthew MacEgan, 23 January 2020
Makoto Shinkai’s latest anime film is the Japanese entry for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit: A child’s-eye view of the Nazis’ crimes
By Stefan Steinberg, 22 January 2020
The film is an adaptation of the book by Judith Kerr, the German-born British writer, published in 1971 and the first part of her Out of the Hitler Time trilogy.
Little Women: The new film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s famed work
By David Walsh, 20 January 2020
Greta Gerwig has directed the latest and a generally conscientious film adaptation of Alcott’s novel about four sisters and their parents during the Civil War era.
Sam Mendes’ 1917: A technological step forward, several ideological and artistic steps back
By Joanne Laurier, 17 January 2020
1917, directed by British filmmaker Sam Mendes, recounts a fictionalized episode set during World War I. Failing to indict those responsible for the carnage or explore its context, the movie does not qualify as an anti-war film.
Left-wing British film and television producer Tony Garnett dead at 83
By our reporter, 16 January 2020
Garnett’s career spanned 50 years, but he is identified above all with one of the most significant and creative periods in the history of television drama in the UK.
The 2020 Academy Award nominations: A generally weak, if unsurprising showing
By David Walsh, 15 January 2020
The nominations as a whole reflect the combination of strong commercial pressure, Hollywood liberal views and limited artistic tastes that generally dominate the Academy Awards.
Bombshell invents a ruling-class hero
By Erik Schreiber, 11 January 2020
To present former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly as a truth-teller and role model, Bombshell minimizes Kelly’s right-wing views and largely ignores her employer’s role in promoting them.
The Kill Team: Are US military atrocities in Afghanistan just the work of a few “bad apples”?
By Joanne Laurier, 10 January 2020
The film is a fictionalized version of the events known as the Maywand District murders, the killing and mutilation of unarmed Afghan civilians carried out by American soldiers in 2010.
At the Golden Globes awards ceremony: Comic Ricky Gervais causes a stir
By David Walsh, 9 January 2020
Gervais ruffled some feathers in Hollywood and the media, most of which deserved to be ruffled, on Sunday night at the Golden Globes awards ceremony.
An interview with film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum: “I’m trying to do something aesthetic through criticism”
By David Walsh, 6 January 2020
The WSWS recently spoke to Jonathan Rosenbaum, the longtime film critic for the Chicago Reader and author of numerous books on filmmaking.
Just Mercy: The cruelty of Alabama’s death penalty
By Joanne Laurier, 6 January 2020
The film is based on Bryan Stevenson’s bestselling 2014 memoir, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. It dramatizes Stevenson’s courageous efforts to reverse death penalty sentences in Alabama.
Best films and television of 2019 and the decade
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 31 December 2019
The difficulties and obstacles confronting the sensitive and thoughtful artist in our day should not be underestimated or regarded unsympathetically.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker—All the gimmicks to rake in the revenue
By Matthew MacEgan, 27 December 2019
December 2019 saw the end of the “Skywalker Saga” with the latest entry in the Star Wars franchise of films.
Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life: An Austrian farmer’s lonely defiance of the Nazis
By Fred Mazelis, 24 December 2019
An important subject is treated with the generally mystical-religious outlook for which Terrence Malick has become known.
The Revolution and the Land: Peruvian documentary about agrarian reform in the 1960s and ’70s attracts great interest
By Armando Cruz and Cesar Uco, 23 December 2019
The documentary brings to life the centuries-long exploitation of the indigenous Peruvian peasantry, but fails to provide a coherent political analysis of the rise and fall of Gen. Velasco’s regime.
Marriage Story: Noah Baumbach, self-involvement and the divorce racket
By David Walsh, 21 December 2019
Marriage Story, now streaming on Netflix after a brief theatrical release, is the account of a divorce between a theater director and an actress set in Los Angeles and New York.
The death of Anna Karina at 79—the actress featured in Jean-Luc Godard’s films in the 1960s
By David Walsh, 17 December 2019
Anna Karina, the Danish-born actress indelibly associated above all with the early films of French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard, died Saturday at a Paris hospital from cancer.
Queen & Slim: An African-American couple on the run
By Joanne Laurier, 14 December 2019
In Queen & Slim, a racist white policeman is killed in the act of assaulting two young black people. Relying on certain aspects of reality, the film creates a largely mythological picture to justify a strand of rabid identity politics.
Twin Flower, about the refugee crisis, from Italy—and Midnight Family, about poverty and health care, from Mexico
By Joanne Laurier, 12 December 2019
Two adolescents—one an African refugee—find themselves in painful straits in Twin Flower. Midnight Family focuses on a family in Mexico eking out a meager existence by driving its own private ambulance.
Dark Waters: American capitalism poisons its population
By Joanne Laurier, 9 December 2019
Todd Haynes’ Dark Waters is a retelling of the nearly 20-year legal battle against the massive toxic chemical contamination of Parkersburg, West Virginia by the DuPont chemical company.
Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables: French youth in revolt
By David Walsh, 4 December 2019
Ly’s work, with its strengths and weaknesses, is an honest effort to confront the wretched reality prevailing in the working-class suburbs (banlieues) surrounding Paris.
Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman: A gangster’s life and claims
By Kevin Martinez and David Walsh, 3 December 2019
Scorsese’s new film The Irishman sets out to dramatize the life of Frank Sheeran, a member of a Pennsylvania crime family and a Teamsters union official. On his deathbed, Sheeran “confessed” to having killed Jimmy Hoffa.
Scott Z. Burns’ The Report exposes CIA torture, then absolves the Democrats
By Joanne Laurier, 29 November 2019
The Report is a film dramatization of the events surrounding the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into and writing of a report on pervasive CIA torture under the Bush administration.
Ford v Ferrari: Life at high speed
By Joanne Laurier, 27 November 2019
Ford v Ferrari recounts Ford Motor Company’s bid to unseat Ferrari as the reigning champion of Le Mans in the 1960s. The Professor and the Madman tells the fascinating story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary .
Atlantics: The cruel fate of African youth
By Joanne Laurier, 22 November 2019
An eerie, haunting film, Mati Diop’s Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story deals fantastically with Senegalese youth lost at sea as they undertake lengthy, dangerous trips to Europe for economic reasons—and those they leave behind.
J’accuse (An Officer and a Spy): Roman Polanski’s masterpiece on the Dreyfus Affair
By Alex Lantier, 19 November 2019
Director Roman Polanski’s J’accuse recounts the 12-year struggle to clear Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish officer unjustly convicted of spying for Germany in 1894.
Michael Winterbottom’s Greed: A searing indictment of the super-rich
By Thomas Scripps, 18 November 2019
Greed offers a sharp and often funny critique of the impact on society of rule by a criminal financial oligarchy and deserves a wide audience.
Parasite: An unusual director with his antenna attuned to social class
The Lighthouse: A gothic horror film
By Joanne Laurier, 16 November 2019
Parasite is a dark comedy from South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho that concerns itself with income inequality and its implications. The Lighthouse is a pointless horror film set in the late 1800s in New England.
Harbor (Jeter l’ancre un seul jour): A young refugee in need finds allies
By David Walsh, 15 November 2019
In 23-year-old Paul Marques Duarte’s short film, a teacher helps “smuggle” an undocumented immigrant from France to England on board a ferry.
Filmmaker Errol Morris provides the extreme-right’s Stephen Bannon a platform in American Dharma
By David Walsh, 11 November 2019
All in all, Morris treats Bannon with kid gloves.
Jojo Rabbit: A misguided comedy about Nazis
Edward Norton’s neo-film noir, Motherless Brooklyn
By Joanne Laurier, 8 November 2019
Jojo Rabbit is a would-be satirical comedy about Nazi Germany. Set in 1957, Motherless Brooklyn follows a gumshoe protagonist with Tourette syndrome on the trail of crimes that lead directly to New York’s City Hall.
Pain and Glory from Spain’s Pedro Almodóvar
By David Walsh, 6 November 2019
The new film treats the crisis of a famous Spanish filmmaker, Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), who has ceased being able to create. Salvador suffers from a variety of physical and psychic maladies.
Judy: Singer-actress Judy Garland’s sad fate brought to the screen
And Harriet: A film biography of abolitionist Harriet Tubman
By Joanne Laurier, 4 November 2019
Judy Garland was one of the most beloved entertainers in the US and internationally in the 20th century. Abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s remarkable life deserves a more profound treatment.
The Current War: Director’s Cut—About Thomas Edison, electricity and the 1880s
By Joanne Laurier, 28 October 2019
The film, originally screened in 2017, fell victim to the scandal surrounding its producer, Harvey Weinstein.
Cézanne and I (Cézanne et moi): The relationship of painter Paul Cézanne and novelist Émile Zola
By David Walsh, 24 October 2019
The lives and times of these two extremely complex artists inevitably raise a host of issues.
Sealed Lips: Dramatizing the Stalinist origins of the former East Germany
By Bernd Reinhardt and Verena Nees, 21 October 2019
Director Bernd Böhlich raises the “birth defect” issue of the GDR, i.e., its silence on the Stalinist purges, primarily directed at leading Bolsheviks, particularly Leon Trotsky and many German Communists.
Joker: An unenlightening approach to serious problems
By Carlos Delgado, 9 October 2019
The film attempts to treat a number of critical social issues, but falls short of making much sense of them.
Where’s My Roy Cohn?: A documentary on McCarthy’s right-hand man, mentor to Trump
By Fred Mazelis, 7 October 2019
There are definite reasons why Cohn remained influential almost to the end of his life, and why he remains a potent symbol long after his death.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019: Part 6
Youth in revolt: Les Misérables—and other films: Made in Bangladesh, Mariam, Rocks, Desert One
By David Walsh, 2 October 2019
Les Misérables takes place today in the impoverished Paris suburb that was also a setting in Victor Hugo’s famed novel. Made in Bangladesh proposes that unions are the answer to the exploitation of millions of textile workers.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019
An interview with Ladj Ly, director of Les Misérables: “Victor Hugo described the social misery perfectly”
By David Walsh, 2 October 2019
The WSWS spoke to French-Malian film director Ladj Ly in Toronto during the film festival.
The Peterloo massacre and Shelley
Part 1: The aftermath of the massacre and the responses
By Paul Bond, 30 September 2019
The massacre elicited an immediate and furious response from the working class and sections of middle-class radicals, and an astonishing outpouring of work from the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019: Part 5
Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat—on the Panama Papers—and The Goldfinch—the aftermath of a terror attack
Along with a valuable film adaptation of Jack London’s Martin Eden and The Traitor, a Mafia drama
By David Walsh, 28 September 2019
Soderbergh discards his generally non-committal stance in The Laundromat, offering a fairly withering critique of global corporate tax evasion and the financial elite generally.
Ad Astra: Traveling long distances but not getting very far
By Joanne Laurier, 27 September 2019
Featuring Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones, Ad Astra is a space odyssey in which an astronaut son searches for his long-lost astronaut father.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019: Part 4
The Report exposes CIA torture, then absolves the Democrats
Also Just Mercy, Harriet, Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You…
By Joanne Laurier, 24 September 2019
The Report is a dramatization of the events surrounding the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into and writing of a report on pervasive CIA torture under the Bush administration.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019: Part 3
The personal and social tragedy of “dark periods”: Ibrahim: A Fate to Define, South Terminal, My English Cousin, 1982
By David Walsh, 20 September 2019
Lina Al Abed’s film, Ibrahim: A Fate to Define, grapples with complex issues arising from the history of the Palestinian struggle. South Terminal treats Algeria in the “dark years” of the 1990s.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019: Part 2
Love Child, Hearts and Bones, Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story—Some of the social traumas of our time
By Joanne Laurier, 18 September 2019
In different ways, filmmakers are trying to come to terms with certain harsh realities. Love Child, Hearts and Bones and Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story are sincere efforts.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019
An interview with director Eva Mulvad: “You can…come a bit closer to having a more rounded understanding of the world”
By Joanne Laurier, 18 September 2019
The WSWS spoke in Toronto to Eva Mulvad, Danish filmmaker and director of Love Child, about an Iranian refugee family in Turkey and its problems.
Official Secrets: A whistleblower attempts to prevent the Iraq War
By Tim Avery, 13 September 2019
The intensely relevant film is based on the true story of Katharine Gun, who leaked a memo exposing the criminality of the preparations for war against Iraq and was charged by the British government under the Official Secrets Act.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019: Part 1
Paris Stalingrad: The plight of refugees in the French capital, once “one of the best cities”
By David Walsh, 11 September 2019
It already seems possible to assert that the most interesting and serious films at this year’s event concern immigrants and refugees and conditions in the Middle East and North Africa.
An interview with Hind Meddeb, director of Paris Stalingrad: “It’s not a film about refugees, it’s a film about human beings”
By David Walsh, 11 September 2019
The documentary focuses on the plight of asylum seekers on the streets of the French capital
Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette: A creative “genius” suppresses herself
By David Walsh, 30 August 2019
Bernadette Fox is at odds with her conventional, upper-middle-class environment. She doesn’t care to leave her house much, although the roof leaks badly in various places. She has an antagonistic relationship with a neighbor.
The Photographer of Mauthausen: Documenting Nazi crimes in a wartime concentration camp
By Benjamin Mateus, 28 August 2019
The film is based on the story of Francesc Boix, a left-wing Catalan militant held during World War II at the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp complex in Austria.
Dear White People Volume 3 and the weaponization of identity politics
By Nick Barrickman, 24 August 2019
In the third season of Justin Simien’s series, events culminate in a #MeToo-style attack on a popular professor.
Brian Banks: A false rape accusation and its consequences
Also, Rosie and Angels Are Made of Light
By Joanne Laurier, 21 August 2019
Brian Banks is based on the true story of a black high school football star in Long Beach, California falsely accused of rape at the age of 16. Rosie deals with homelessness in Dublin and Angels Are Made of Light the war in Afghanistan.
German film prize goes to Margarethe von Trotta, director of Rosa Luxemburg (1986) and Rosenstrasse (2003)
By Bernd Reinhardt, 19 August 2019
Margarethe von Trotta (Rosa Luxemburg, Rosenstrasse, Hannah Arendt) is one of the most important German filmmakers of the postwar period.
Ground-breaking documentarian D.A. Pennebaker dies
By Richard Phillips, 10 August 2019
Pennebaker pioneered the use of handheld cameras and editorial comment to achieve an immediacy and closeness not previously achieved in documentary film-making.
Midsommar: Illuminating nothing
By Carlos Delgado, 9 August 2019
Ari Aster’s newest film is a carnival of grotesqueries surrounding a limp relationship drama.
16 Shots: Documenting the Chicago Democratic Party’s cover-up of the police murder of Laquan McDonald
By Michael Walters and Kristina Betinis, 3 August 2019
Through powerful interviews with family members, witnesses, attorneys, city officials and activists, the timeline of the murder and cover-up is reconstructed.
More on the removal of actress Lillian Gish’s name at Bowling Green State University
A conversation with actor Malcolm McDowell: “Once you erode freedoms like this, and artistic thought, where are we as a civilized society?”
By David Walsh, 1 August 2019
The WSWS spoke to veteran actor Malcolm McDowell about the decision by Bowling Green State University to remove actress Lillian Gish’s name from its film theater because of her role in D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915).
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood: Quentin Tarantino’s non-conformist conformism
By Joanne Laurier, 31 July 2019
Tarantino’s latest film reimagines 1969 Los Angeles and the disintegration of the traditional studio system.
Wild Rose and Yesterday: A Scottish singer seeks country music fame and a world without the Beatles
By Joanne Laurier, 22 July 2019
Two recent British-made films delve into the field of popular music. Works about such a subject can be a means of getting at social life from an unusual and unorthodox point of view.
Beanpole (Dylda): Disturbing scenes of postwar Soviet life
By Clara Weiss, 17 July 2019
Russian director Kantemir Balagov’s film treats the damaged lives of two young women who have just returned to Leningrad (today St. Petersburg) from the front after the end of the Second World War.
The Command (Kursk): A dramatization of the 2000 Russian nuclear submarine disaster
By Joanne Laurier, 4 July 2019
The Kursk’s sinking was bound up with both the decay of the Russian military and the catastrophic impact of Russian capitalism.
When They See Us: A powerful dramatization of the case of the Central Park Five
By Kate Randall, 1 July 2019
The Netflix series dramatizes the case of five black and Latino young men who were wrongfully convicted in the 1989 Central Park Jogger rape case.
“The Short Films of Raymundo Gleyzer”: Works by left-wing filmmaker murdered by Argentine military junta
By Kevin Martinez, 26 June 2019
Abducted and murdered by the Argentine junta in 1976, the documentarian made numerous films about the working class that have sadly been forgotten. Their strengths and weaknesses deserve to be considered.
Minding the Gap: Skateboarding to “get away” in decayed Rockford, Illinois
By Frank Anderson and George Marlowe, 20 June 2019
The documentary film about Rockford, Illinois follows the lives of three young working-class men, trapped by harsh social circumstances, who love to skateboard.
Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die: Not awake in his own particular way
By Joanne Laurier, 19 June 2019
The Dead Don't Die is the latest movie by American independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. It’s both a quasi-comic horror film and at the same time clearly a comment on what Jarmusch perceives to be the state of the nation.
“Unfortunately, none of this happened”: Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto (Summer), a take on the pre- perestroika period in the USSR
By Clara Weiss, 14 June 2019
Serebrennikov’s new film treats two of Russia’s most famous rock groups, Kino and Zoopark, in the early 1980s, while managing to avoid all the major questions of the time.
Famed film actress Lillian Gish’s name removed from Bowling Green State University theater: The issues raised
By David Walsh, 12 June 2019
The Ohio university’s cowardly decision is a capitulation to the worst sort of ahistorical moralizing and the current obsession with race and gender politics within the affluent middle class.
Rocketman (Elton John) and Pavarotti, about the operatic tenor: Two lives in music
By Joanne Laurier, 7 June 2019
Rocketman is a generally entertaining, fantastical tribute to the music of Elton John, one of the world’s most popular musical artists. Ron Howard has made a documentary about legendary Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti.
All Is True: Kenneth Branagh’s vision of William Shakespeare’s final days
By David Walsh, 5 June 2019
The treatment, unfortunately, is largely leaden and relies on contemporary upper-middle class preoccupations to make sense of—or fail to make sense of—the life of an early 17th century artist.
XY Chelsea: A deeply flawed portrait of US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning
By Jean Shaoul, 4 June 2019
The film charts Manning’s life following Barack Obama’s unexpected commutation in January 2017 of her vindictive 35-year-term jail sentence.
Amazing Grace: A film about American singer Aretha Franklin’s most popular album
By Matthew Brennan, 3 June 2019
Amazing Grace, a concert film currently showing in select theaters around the US, captures the two-day recording of singer-pianist Aretha Franklin’s 1972 gospel concert album of the same title.
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: Terry Gilliam’s latest tribute to non-conformism
By David Walsh, 31 May 2019
Gilliam has famously been attempting to make a film inspired by Don Quixote, the 17th century novel by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, for decades.
The end of Game of Thrones: Spectacle versus art
By Gabriel Black, 27 May 2019
Game of Thrones’ final season was met with a widespread public backlash critical of its simplistic and misanthropic ending.
Knock Down the House and the Democratic Party politics of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
By Genevieve Leigh, 25 May 2019
Knock Down the House reviews the election campaigns of several Democratic Party primary candidates in the 2018 congressional elections, focused on Ocasio-Cortez in New York City.
The author asks: Is America unredeemable? Rachel Kushner’s novel The Mars Room
By Sandy English, 22 May 2019
Rachel Kushner’s new novel centers on the grim conditions in a women’s prison and draws connections between them and the general state of American society.
Avengers: Endgame: A waste of time, money and talent
By Josh Varlin, 20 May 2019
Endgame is more of a business enterprise than a work of art or cultural artifact.
The Eyes of Orson Welles: A markedly political approach to the American filmmaker …
… and John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky (about John Lennon’s 1971 album Imagine )
By Joanne Laurier, 17 May 2019
A generally left-wing figure shaped by the Great Depression and the impact of the Russian Revolution, filmmaker Orson Welles (1915-1985) was artistically demanding and for the most part found Hollywood nightmarish.
Wild Nights with Emily: American poet Emily Dickinson undone by gender politics
By Joanne Laurier and David Walsh, 10 May 2019
By concentrating almost exclusively on Emily Dickinson’s supposed sexual relationship with her sister-in-law, filmmaker Madeleine Olnek and her collaborators recreate the poet in their own petty, self-absorbed image.
Clergy: An uncompromising film about the hypocrisy and corruption of the Catholic Church in Poland
By Stefan Steinberg, 8 May 2019
Wojciech Smarzowski’s latest offering was released in Poland in the autumn of 2018 and broke several box office records.
Red Joan: A British spy story skirts some issues
By Fred Mazelis, 6 May 2019
The film is loosely based on the case of Melita Norwood, arrested in 1999 and accused of passing classified information to the Soviet Union.
Documentary about the brutal 2014 disappearance of teachers’ college students
The 43: A state massacre and cover-up in Mexico
By Rafael Azul and Don Knowland, 4 May 2019
The documentary on Netflix exposes the role of the military in the 2014 disappearance of 43 rural teaching students and the government’s cover-up of this atrocity.
Some films from the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 2
Kabul, City in the Wind, Midnight Traveler and What We Left Unfinished: The catastrophe of US intervention in Afghanistan
By Joanne Laurier, 2 May 2019
The San Francisco film festival screened a number of movies from the nation ravaged in the longest conflict in US history.
Some films from the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 1
Paper Flags, Tehran: City of Love and Belmonte—Alienation, loneliness and other problems
By David Walsh, 26 April 2019
Paper Flags, Tehran: City of Love and Belmonte—three films from France, Iran and Uruguay, respectively—were screened at the recent San Francisco film festival.
Freep Film Festival 2019 in Detroit—Part 2
Midnight Family from Mexico, The Last Truck and American Factory—about a former GM plant, murderous Detroit police and I Am Richard Pryor: A mixed lot
By Joanne Laurier, 19 April 2019
In some cases, good intentions are mingled with a socially non-committal attitude—in others, an obvious feeling for important issues is marred by middle-class prejudices and conceptions.
Freep Film Festival 2019 in Detroit—Part 1
Glimpses of social life: The Feeling of Being Watched, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool and Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts, among others
By David Walsh and Helen Halyard, 17 April 2019
The Detroit film festival organizers made an obvious effort to program works oriented toward contemporary reality and recent social history, including many of their difficult and painful aspects.
Ash is the Purest White: Finding one’s way in “the new ‘capitalist’ China”
And Working Woman from Israel
By David Walsh, 13 April 2019
Jia Zhangke has demonstrated a concern with the fate of workers and others whose lives have been turned upside down by the full integration of China into the global capitalist economy.
Emilio Estevez’s The Public: The homeless refuse to freeze to death
By Joanne Laurier, 11 April 2019
A group of homeless people in Cincinnati resist being thrown out of a public library onto the streets on an especially frigid night.
Netflix’s Trigger Warning with Killer Mike: Provocation and pessimism from the Atlanta rap artist
By Nick Barrickman, 8 April 2019
With Trigger Warning, rapper Michael “Killer Mike” Render combines occasional flashes of insight and intellectual courage with a tendency to resort to mere shock tactics or juvenile behavior.
Jordan Peele’s horror film, Us: “Us” and them
By Kevin Martinez, 6 April 2019
Director Jordan Peele’s latest horror film tells the story of a vacationing family stalked by their doppelgängers. The results are murky, pretentious and strangely unaffecting.
Gus Van Sant’s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot: The truth hurts
By David Walsh, 3 April 2019
The most recent film by veteran American director Gus Van Sant focuses on quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan (1951-2010), based on the latter’s memoir.
69th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 9
Three Turkish films (A Tale of Three Sisters, Daughters of Two Worlds, Oray)—Hoping for a better life
By Bernd Reinhardt, 25 March 2019
Three films at the Berlinale exude a humanistic spirit of enlightenment and dialogue. They suggest that everyone, regardless of their ethnic, religious or cultural background, has the right to a better life.
69th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 8
Increasing pressures on Chinese filmmakers
By Stefan Steinberg, 21 March 2019
In February, the deputy director of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department declared that the country’s filmmakers “must have a clear ideological bottom line and cannot challenge the political system.”
Captain Marvel: Money, feminism, militarism and previously “independent” filmmakers
By David Walsh, 20 March 2019
The production and release of Captain Marvel, the new science fiction adventure from Marvel and Disney, has a number of remarkable features, but none of them involve the film’s drama, action or characters.
The Widow: Kate Beckinsale’s journey into African danger
By Joanne Laurier, 18 March 2019
Amazon Video and British ITV’s new eight-episode series is a political thriller set primarily in the war-torn and impoverished Democratic Republic of Congo.
69th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 7
German films: Economic and social tensions on the rise
By Bernd Reinhardt, 16 March 2019
The pursuit of naked profit interests and government-imposed austerity dominate an ever broader swath of life. Some of the German films at this year’s Berlinale point to the consequences.
Lady J (Mademoiselle de Joncquières): A scorned woman takes revenge, or attempts to
By David Walsh, 15 March 2019
The film is based on an episode from Jacques the Fatalist and His Master, a novel written by Denis Diderot (1713–1784), the great Enlightenment figure, in the years 1765 to 1780, but not published until after his death.
69th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 6
God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya: A satire from Macedonia “between anger and melancholy”
By Verena Nees, 13 March 2019
This year’s Berlin International Film Festival once again presented a number of documentary and feature films from eastern and southeastern Europe. Some took a new and refreshing approach.
The attacks on Green Book and the racialist infection of the affluent middle class
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 8 March 2019
The decision to bestow the Best Picture award on Green Book (directed by Peter Farrelly) at the Academy Awards on February 24 has triggered a furious and ongoing response in the American media.
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