Movie Reviews

REVIEW: Vortex

Image Credit: Wild Bunch (spoiler free) Like any Gaspar Noé film, Vortex opens with its end credits. At the tail end of it, a text appears on the screen and says:  “À tous ceux dont le cerveau se décomposera avant le coeur.” Translating to “To all those whose brains will decompose before their hearts.” There’s…

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Movie Reviews

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) Review

A FANTASTIC TALE OF LOVE, DISOBEDIENCE, AND THE MEANING OF LIFE   Throughout the many years in the filmmaking industry, Hollywood studios has had a long history of competition, which can sometimes mean producing a movie to outdo and outshine a rival studio. Because of this, some studios have on occasion create similar movies to…

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Documentary

“Navalny” Is A Must See

Remember when Putin’s nemesis Alexei Navalny was recovering in Germany following his August 2020 poisoning? Director Daniel Roher was with Navalny and his core circle during that period and he made a documentary about it that you’ve got to see to believe. It’s fascinating, terrifying, and heartening all at the same time. Have you ever…

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Drama

Kelebeğin Rüyası (The Butterfly’s Dream)

By Divina Sethi Kelebeğin Rüyası (The Butterfly’s Dream) is a 2013 Turkish romantic drama. It is based on the tragic true story of  struggling poets Muzaffer Tayyip Uslu and Rüştü Onurx, played by (the gorgeous) Kivanc Tatlitug (Kuzey Guney, Ask i memnu, Kurt Seyit ve Sura) and Mert Firat (The Water Diviner, Baska Dilde Ask) […]

Kelebeğin Rüyası (The Butterfly’s Dream)

Festivals&Academy

Foreign Film Fridays: “Close” (Belgium, 2022)

Close (2022) is a Belgian drama film from writer-director Lukas Dhont. It stars Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele as two best friends who begin to drift apart when their classmates begin to question how intimate they’ve become with one another. It debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it tied for the Grand […]

Foreign Film Fridays: “Close” (Belgium, 2022)

Documentary

Navalny: An Ongoing Thriller

By C.J. Hirschfield (January 17, 2023) Two years ago, an extraordinary documentary on Russian opposition party leader Alexei Navalny was recorded. The film has just been released; he has not. Having been charged with everything from fraud to having created an extremist group “with the purpose of inciting hatred toward officials and oligarchs,” he currently […]

Navalny: An Ongoing Thriller

Drama

The Whale

It’s a movie that you’ll be happy to get up and walk away from, simply for the astounding freedom of being able to get up and walk. Darren Aronofsky’s film, The Whale, takes morbid obesity to its most realistic, destructive level. It’s cringy, it’s sad, it’s unyielding, but more than anything it’s honest. With a […]

The Whale

Dark Comedy

Ship of fools: ‘Triangle of Sadness’

Listening to a Russian oligarch and an American luxury yacht captain drunkenly exchange clichés about socialism versus capitalism over the ship’s PA system strikes me as farce without tragedy — and the joke is that it’s Woody Harrelson as the captain whose aggressive about socialism and the Russian who sounds like an OAN reporter. Good […]

Ship of fools: ‘Triangle of Sadness’

Dark Comedy

Triangle of Sadness

Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness is a hilariously tragic social commentary like I’ve never seen before. In three acts, it centers on a young couple of British models, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean). The opening scene shows us male models in a documentary setting, being interviewed and asked among many questions, how they […]

Triangle of Sadness