There is a particular tradition of American experimental documentary that treats the cinema screen less as a storytelling surface and more as a space for contemplation, a place where images accumulate meaning through patience rather than argument. Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (2007) sits firmly in that tradition. The
There are films you watch and films you reckon with, and The Seventh Seal has sat firmly in the second category since it arrived in Swedish cinemas in February 1957. Ingmar Bergman wrote and directed it, adapting his own 1955 stage play Trämålning (Wood Painting), and the central conceit, a
Ousmane Sembène spent roughly five decades building a body of work that is, by any reasonable measure, the foundation on which African cinema stands. Born in Senegal in 1923, he came to filmmaking relatively late, having already established himself as a novelist, and he brought to the screen a novelist&
There are films that arrive quietly and somehow end up everywhere, and Past Lives was very much one of those. Released in 2023 through A24 in partnership with Killer Films, 2AM and South Korea's CJ ENM, Celine Song's feature debut landed at the Sundance Film Festival
Blow Out arrived in the summer of 1981, a year that also gave us An American Werewolf in London, and it landed quietly at the box office before finding the audience it deserved on home video and in the years of critical reassessment that followed. Brian De Palma had spent
Australian cinema has a handful of films that feel less like productions and more like events, and Picnic at Hanging Rock is near the top of that list. Released in 1975 and based on Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel of the same name, the film arrived at a moment
Some films leave you turning them over for days, not because they soared but because you can see the far better version hovering just out of reach. Sacred Creatures is one of those. Frieda Luk's debut feature, a Canadian and Italian co-production that premiered in competition at
Entergalactic arrived in September 2022 as something fairly unusual in the animated film landscape: a feature released simultaneously with, and conceived as a companion to, a music album. Kid Cudi, the rapper and actor born Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi, developed the project over several years as a twin creative statement,
Something Pointless was one of the loveliest surprises I have had all year. It runs a mere fourteen minutes, and in that time it takes on illness, mortality and childhood bullying and lands an emotional punch that plenty of two hour dramas spend their whole runtime reaching for and miss.
By the mid-1980s, Jackie Chan had already established himself as the most physically courageous filmmaker in Hong Kong cinema, and with Armour of God he turned that courage toward a conspicuously ambitious target. Released in 1986 and co-produced across Hong Kong, Yugoslavia and Austria through Orange Sky Golden
South Korean cinema in the early 2000s was producing work that would reshape international audiences' expectations of genre filmmaking, and A Tale of Two Sisters arrived in 2003 right in the thick of that wave. The film draws on the Korean folktale "Janghwa Hongryeon jeon", a story
There are periods of British history that feel, in retrospect, almost engineered for drama: the collision of forces, the unlikely alliances, the institutional embarrassment of people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons or vice versa. The mid-1980s miners' strike is one of those periods, and it
Film images and data courtesy of TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
The best new reviews, a buried gem with where to watch it, and where the every-country challenge is up to. Free, no spam.
Subscribe free