Perverse and provocative yet bland and uneven, Ostlund’s low-fi debut feature is at best a curiosity, a Roy Andersson-meets-Ulrich Seidl series of docu-fictive vignettes.
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Perverse and provocative yet bland and uneven, Ostlund’s low-fi debut feature is at best a curiosity, a Roy Andersson-meets-Ulrich Seidl series of docu-fictive vignettes.
This haunting debut feature about a group of schoolgirls shielded from the modern world is best described as ‘Dogtooth’ meets ‘Petite Maman’, marked by an unsettling sound design and an acute sense of false normalcy.
Miyazaki’s somewhat convoluted anti-war and pro-elderly piece doesn’t quite reach the heights of some of his greatest works, but as a fantasy about love, magic and curses, it can be spellbinding at times.
An antecedent to the likes of ‘Tenet‘, this low-budget cult sci-fi sensation about two engineers who discover that they can manipulate time feels so raw and indecipherable that it could just be paralyzingly real.
A cab driver and an assassin cross paths in Mann’s nocturnal crime escapade—it may stray into incredulity in its final act, but it accrues just enough stylistic points and storytelling rhythm to power all the way through.
Wong’s expanded version of his short for the ‘Eros’ anthology is more erotic and fatalistic than usual, and also an aesthetic and thematic extension of the world he created with ‘In the Mood for Love’.
This may be minor Spielberg, but its wholeheartedness makes it worth the trip to the JFK airport in New York where an Eastern European man is stuck without citizenship, played with earnest charm by Tom Hanks.
Farhadi’s second feature is, in hindsight, a companion piece to A Hero—while it lacks the nuance of his later works, one can already witness his penchant for telling intricately-plotted dramas about morality.
Told in five chapters in reverse chronological order, Ozon charts the disintegration of a marriage in this well-acted bittersweet film.
Bewildering yet contemplative in true Apichatpong Weerasethakul style, this is a challenging work of art.