‘Love Letters’ Review: A Quietly Powerful Portrait of Queer Motherhood [B] Cannes
Love Letters opens with a broadcast reporting France has legalised same-sex marriage; it’s a national celebration, but for Céline (Ella Rumpf), there is still unfinished... Read More
Cannes Film Festival
‘A Useful Ghost’ Review: Vacuum Cleaner Love Story Doesn’t Suck [C+] Cannes
You won’t find a better elevator pitch at Cannes this year than the premise for the Thai Critics’ Week title A Useful Ghost, a supernatural... Read More
‘Sirāt’ Review: Óliver Laxe Takes Us on a Sisyphean Journey of Sound and Fury Road [A-] Cannes
Perhaps the most mesmerising Competition entry thus far, Óliver Laxe’s Sirāt takes us to a world of desert raves where the promise of salvation still... Read More
‘Sound of Falling’ Review: What It Feels Like For a Girl [A-] Cannes
Early in Mascha Schilinski’s sophomore feature, Sound of Falling, Alma (Hanna Heckt) and her sisters play a prank on one of the maids. They know... Read More
‘Two Prosecutors’ Review: Sergei Loznitsa’s Brooding, Minimalistic Procedural Exposes Soviet Corruption [B+] Cannes
The grim iron gates of a Soviet prison open up as director Sergei Loznitsa begins his exploration of Soviet state repression, told through the lens... Read More
‘To Live, To Die, To Live Again’ Review: Gaël Morel’s AIDS-era Drama Doesn’t Break New Ground but Doesn’t Need to Either | Cannes
Can you believe it’s been about a decade since the last major film that addressed HIV and AIDS? For a long while the theme dominated... Read More
‘To a Land Unknown’ Review: Mahdi Fleifel’s Thriller about Stranded Palestinian Refugees is Powerful and Unpretentious | Cannes
Mahdi Fleifel’s directorial debut in fiction, To a Land Unknown, follows the harrowing journey of Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and Reda (Aram Sabbah), two Palestinian cousins... Read More
‘Bird’ Review: Andrea Arnold’s Fable is Salvation in Pure Cinematic Form | Cannes
British filmmaker Andrea Arnold has always been interested in humans: the way they live, love, and carry their wounds through a world that is not... Read More
‘Baby’ Review: Marcelo Caetano’s Coming of Age Story is a Thoughtful Look at Predatory Power | Cannes
Cannes Critics’ Week selection Baby tells the heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a young man desperately in search of a father figure and systematically failed by... Read More
‘All We Imagine as Light’ Review: Mumbai Comes Alive in Payal Kapadia’s Complex ‘Little Women’-esque Portrait of Sisterhood | Cannes
Mumbai is alive in Payal Kapadia’s stunning second feature All We Imagine as Light. It’s a boundless shape-shifter, always moving its millions of disparate parts,... Read More
Director Watch Podcast Ep. 154 – ‘Insomnia’ (Christopher Nolan, 2002) with Special Guest Christina Jeurling Birro 
‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ Review: I Saw the Twin Peaks Glow [A-] Cannes 
Interview: Richard Gadd Talks ‘Half Man,’ Finding the Humor in Trauma, and That Hospital Scene with Jaime Bell 
‘Nagi Notes’ Review: Kôji Fukada’s Gentle Examination of Intimate, Small Town Relationships Pays Off for Those with Patience [A-] Cannes