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Katarina Zhu: Interview
Katarina Zhu is a director, actor, and an alum of NYU Tisch that we are very proud to claim. Premiering at Sundance 2025, her debut feature Bunnylovr follows an often-dissociating cam girl (Rebecca, played by Zhu herself) as she struggles to rekindle the relationship with her dying father. At the…
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Chandler Levack (Mile End Kicks): Interview
At the turn of the century, Cameron Crowe’s autobiographical film about a young rock critic in 1970s San Diego, Almost Famous, was released in theatres to little fanfare, despite critical praise. Much like the fabled debut by The Velvet Underground, it feels like everyone who did see the movie turned…
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What’s Old is New: Film Retrospectives in NYC (April)
Look through just about any issue of The Village Voice from the 60s and 70s and you’ll inevitably stumble across pages upon pages of film listings and advertisements, ranging from European auteur classics, avant-garde experimentals, and art-house pornography. It was a clear sign of New York City’s newfound position as…
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The Best Needle Drops of the Decade (So Far…)
If the marriage of music and movie is a science, the perfect placement of a needle drop is just as hard as splitting an atom. A needle drop—most often considered to be the use of a pre-existing song in a movie or show—can either elevate or cheapen a piece of…
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What’s Old is New: Film Retrospectives in NYC (March)
Look through just about any issue of The Village Voice from the 60s and 70s and you’ll inevitably stumble across pages upon pages of film listings and advertisements, ranging from European auteur classics, avant-garde experimentals, and art-house pornography. It was a clear sign of New York City’s newfound position as…
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“There’s No Shame in It”: Dominic Hicks on Opening London’s Sleaziest Cinema
It’s movie night in New York City but all there is to see is your third viewing of Chungking Express at the Metrograph, or, if you’re feeling even crazier, a midnight screening at the IFC Center that, half-stoned, you will fall asleep in. Is there really nowhere in the world…
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Film Review: The Moment
Charli xcx has killed brat. Or, at least, she’s killed it in the alternate universe of The Moment. With longtime collaborator photographer Aidan Zamiri, director of the “360” and “Guess ft. Billie Eilish,” Charli rehashes the tour’s visuals with a Spice World-esque flair. Unfortunately, the situations that Charli faces are…
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Alireza Khatami: Interview
Well before The Things You Kill reaches its first act of violence, something far more unsettling has already begun to take shape. The universe of Alireza Khatami’s new film feels quietly askew. When a university professor returns home after his mother’s sudden death, he steps into a landscape clogged with…
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Film Review: It was Just an Accident
Jafar Panahi has mastered the art of restraint, and to an extent, not by choice. After a 20-year ban on filmmaking imposed on him by the Iranian government, he has had to practice creativity under immense restriction, filming in secret and directing remotely through a laptop. With Panahi’s latest, It…
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Film Review: Blue Film
Sex sells. Director Elliot Tuttle, like his leading man, is more than aware of that. In what walks the line between a morbid drama and an indelicate erotic thriller, Tuttle places a young sex worker and a mysterious older client in direct opposition. Sex doesn’t scratch the surface of what…
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Film Review: After the Hunt (STATIC @ NYFF)
We live in a panopticon police state where Yale philosophy professors who drink wine at college bars and ponder virtue ethics at academic soirées also exist in a world where, as the film’s tagline boasts, not everything is supposed to make you comfortable. Luca Guadagnino’s new film After the Hunt…
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STATIC’s Guide to NYFF 63
New York at the end of September and beginning of October might be the best time of year: there’s a chill in the air, the leaves begin to change colors, and hundreds of thousands of cinephiles descend on Lincoln Square for the New York Film Festival. For three weeks, you…
