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NIGHTSWEAT: 6 movies to make you sweat this summer
I hope I’m not the only person here to have had a rather regrettable and naughty July. I’ve slept till noon on disgustingly hot mornings with all the usual symptoms: shirt grossly clinging to the slick of my back, cotton mouth, phone not actually plugged in etc., etc. All this…
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“We Had to Search for a Truer Self”: Jia Zhangke on the 22-year-long Journey towards Caught by the Tides
Jia Zhangke operates with the kind of precise and spontaneous patience of a fly on the wall of an archeological dig. Zhangke, born amid the reforms of the 1970s, came to prominence as a part of the “Sixth Generation” of directors in China’s post-socialist period; his films, often made without…
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“Reproducing life as it is—I was never interested in that”: An Interview with Alain Guiraudie (STATIC @ NYFF)
Alain Guiraudie’s breakout film Stranger by the Lake was all about murder and sex. His latest Misericordia is all about murder and the absence of sex. But the lack of anything explicit is somehow more titillating, making brawls between men ooze big-time sensuality. “I work on love scenes and fight…
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Film Review: Luis Buñuel’s Él
If women in 2025 needed yet another reason to become misandrists, renowned Mexican filmmaker Luis Buñuel provides a compelling case to do just that. Luis Buñuel’s 1953 film Él is searing takedown of the bourgeois male ego.The film follows entrepreneur turned paranoiac Don Francisco—a man so convinced of his own…
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Film Review: Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
What do jazz drummer Max Roach and Russian head of state Nikita Khrushchev have in common? According to the stunning new documentary Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat, they both had rhythm. Director Johan Grimonprez trains his eye on the “cool war,” focusing on a protest led by Black artists like…
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NYFF Quick Reviews: See It or Skip It – November ’24 (STATIC @ NYFF)
The end of the year is an odd time for film releases. In between all the Christmas schlock and bombastic franchise installments, small indie greats are unceremoniously dumped into theaters for a limited time to make the Academy Awards qualifications. They’re easy to miss, and with the sheer number of…
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Film Review: Teaches of Peaches
Explosive, orgasmic, sleuthing, and sexy—Everything there is to say about the iconoclastic rockstar Peaches has already been said. The 2024 documentary Teaches of Peaches attempts to demystify the mythology of Peaches, exposing audiences to a less extreme Peaches as she celebrates the 20th anniversary of the seminal album of the…
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NYFF Review: On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2024)
Late at night, a woman sporting full Missy Elliott garb is driving alone on an empty street with soft funk music playing through the speakers. Something in the middle of the road prompts her to come to a full stop. She stares at the corpse, not fearful, but indifferent. As…
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Film Review: All Shall Be Well
If your media diet consists solely of TikToks, you might be led to believe that one is a queer elder by the age of 25. Still, for all the lip service people pay to “queer elders,” there is a severe lack of stories about queer people growing into old age.…
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Sean Wang, “DIDI (弟弟)”: Interview
Of all the facets of adolescence in the digital age DIDI 弟弟 captures impeccably, the total blank stare on Chris’ (Isaac Wang) face as he scrolls through MySpace and AoL is quietly the most genius. Even in reaction to risky texts and awful updates, his eyes and face sit motionless, illuminated…
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NYFF Review: The Beast (2023)
Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast is, at its core, a tragedy. It’s fate weaponized; watch as these two people, whose love spans entire lifetimes, end in ruin again and again. Bonello warns the audience from the get-go, but that doesn’t make it any less soul aching. Composed of three vignettes in…
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NYFF Review: La Chimera (2023)
Why does every movie released today have active contempt for their audience? Saltburn by Emerald Fennell treats its viewers as fools incapable of parsing any subtlety, and any number of action movies topping box office charts right now can be considered slop at best. There’s no sense of wonder, no…
