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“Reproducing life as it is—I was never interested in that”: An Interview with Alain Guiraudie
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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See It or Skip It – November ’24
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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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…
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NYFF Review: Strange Way of Life (2023)
Comparing every movie about two men in love set vaguely around farms to Brokeback Mountain feels like a cop out, but with Pedro Almodóvar’s latest English-language short Strange Way of Life, it’s impossible not to. The short is a clear reaction to his decision to turn it down almost 20…
