True/False 2024 Review: “Girls State”

I can’t think of a better first film screening of this year’s True/False Film Festival than Girls State. Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s follow-up to their 2020 documentary Boys State (which also played at True/False) explores the other branch of the American Legion’s program that allows group of politically-motivated high school students from across their […]

True/False 2024 Dispatch: “There Was, There Was Not,” “1489”

Displacement has been a common theme across many of the films I’ve watched at this year’s True/False Film Festival, the annual event in Columbia, Missouri celebrating nonfiction filmmaking, and with the current genocide unfolding in Palestine, each of them feels particularly urgent. Coincidentally, two Armenian films by women documenting the Artsakh War and the way […]

Berlinale Dispatch: “Matt and Mara,” “Janet Planet,” “La Cocina”

For this batch of capsule reviews from the 74th Berlinale, I’m covering two relationship comedies (Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara and Annie Baker’s Janet Planet) and Alonso Ruizpalacios’ epic about the American dream as contained within a busy Manhattan kitchen, La Cocina. Read my reviews of those films below. LA COCINA The American dream is […]

Berlinale Review: “A Traveler’s Needs”

Travel is a funny thing: the sense of displacement rubbing up against the excitement of being in a new place and meeting new people. As a frequent rover, it’s something that I experience a lot: existing in constant limbo, feeling alive while feeling like I can’t have a life at all. Perhaps those thoughts are […]

Berlinale Dispatch: “Dahomey,” “My Stolen Planet,” “Hands in the Fire”

For this dispatch from the 74th Berlinale, I’m looking at three films (coincidentally all directed by women) that merge history and filmmaking. Mati Diop’s magnificent Dahomey and Iranian filmmaker Farahnaz Sharifi’s My Stolen Planet both operate in the nonfiction sphere, while Portuguese director Margarida Gil’s Hands in the Fire is a loose adaptation of Henry […]

Berlinale Dispatch: “My Favourite Cake,” “All the Long Nights,” “Abiding Nowhere”

For this batch of capsule reviews of films that premiered at the 74th Berlinale, I’m looking at three films that, in a sense, deal with loneliness, in addition to possessing an innate sense of space. Otherwise, the variety of themes and tones they offer is vast, stemming from Iran, Japan, and Taiwan. MY FAVOURITE CAKE […]

Berlinale Review: “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger”

If you know movies, you probably know Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger— if not by name, than by the indelible images they created in their films. The infinite staircase connecting earth with the afterlife in A Matter of Life and Death; the vibrant reds in the ballet at the center of The Red Shoes; the […]

Berlinale Review: “Henry Fonda for President”

He’s tall and thin, and speaks in a tone and cadence that I can only describe as regular— neither too booming, nor too quiet. He can employ these traits in a couple of different directions: for comedy, tripping over his lanky frame, awkward and stuttering (especially when around women— think of his brush-ups with a […]

Berlinale Review: “Hors du temps” (“Suspended Time”)

A rush of excitement, followed by a wince— that’s what I experienced when I first heard that French director Olivier Assayas (the illustrious filmmaker behind such contemporary classics as Irma Vep, Clouds of Sils Maria, and Personal Shopper) would be premiering a new film at this year’s Berlinale. And then I learned the plot: a […]

Berlinale Review: “Cuckoo”

It looks like something out of a postcard: the enchanting, almost retro style of a resort lobby, the Bavarian Alps behind it painting the horizon with their snowy majesty. Nothing about this picturesque scene would suggest the insanity and terror that’s to come— nothing, except perhaps for Mr. König (Dan Stevens), the lodge’s proprietor, whose […]