Review: Incitement
Talk about a film that is hard to watch! In this political thriller, you're watching the evolution of assassin Yigal Amir (Yehuda Nahari Halevi), a law student who decides that…
Review: Balloon (Ballon)
Seems like all I'm seeing lately are film based on true stories. In this one, two families living in Cold War East Germany in 1979 plan a daring escape to…
Review: Beanpole (Дылда)
War is hell. And life after war is, too. Most war films concentrate on the effects that the carnage has on men, but this Russian melodrama looks at how the women…
Review: Weathering with You
I'm not a big animation watcher, at least not of the big Disney/Pixar variety. But anime is a different story. Films like Spirited Away or Akira feel every bit as…
Review: Synonyms
Based on the real-life experiences of writer-director Nadav Lapid (The Kindergarten Teacher), Synonyms is the strange story of a young Israeli man named Yoav (Tom Mercier) who comes to Paris to escape…
Review: Britt-Marie Was Here
We've seen this one before. An older woman finds out her husband has been having an affair and leaves him. First she struggles with it and then she finds herself.…
Review: This is Not Berlin
In this coming-of-age film set in Mexico City in the 80s, 17-year-olds Carlos and Gera are on the cusp of adulthood. And when they're invited to the coolest club in…
Review: Piranhas
In this adaptation of Roberto Saviano's (Gomorrah) coming of age novel a group of fifteen-year-old boys in Naples transform themselves from one of the city's many adolescent street gangs into…
Review: Tel Aviv on Fire
You might not think that there's much humor to be found in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Palestinian director Sameh Zoabi has crafted a very amiable farce that spans the borders…
Review: Luz
The classic horror film hasn't entirely disappeared from the cinema landscape, but the current trend it to make more of it than just the easy jump out of your seat…
Review: The Farewell
In this bittersweet dramedy based on a real story from the writer/director's own family, Billi (Awkwafina, Crazy Rich Asians) a struggling New York writer discovers that her Grandma (Zhou Shuzhen)…
Review: One Child Nation
Nanfu Wang has made a couple of my favorite documentaries of the past few years. Hooligan Sparrow followed a Chinese women's rights activist's journey and put both the subject and…
Quickie Review: The Third Wife
Set in a remote compound in 19th century Viet Nam, The Third Wife is a beautifully shot story of a young girl's journey from childhood to marriage to motherhood. It…
Quickie Review: Pasolini
Italian poet, philosopher and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini loved nothing more than to push the envelope, to scandalize, to shock the senses. So it's only fitting that Abel Ferrara (Bad…
Review: Non-fiction (aka Doubles vies)
After seeing Non-fiction, I found IMDB's description of it to be kind of bizarre: Set in the Parisian publishing world, an editor and an author find themselves in over their…