Gành Đá Dĩa in Phú Hòa, Vietnam

Film journalism spaces this year have been living in the past. That’s not a bad thing — just a fact. Few new releases and the malaise of coronavirus lockdown have inspired or outright forced many critics to revisit old favorites or to seek out films they hadn’t yet seen. Many smaller publications — including this…

The first film to premiere almost simultaneously at the Toronto, Venice, New York, and Telluride Film Festivals, Nomadland is a tale centered around Fern (Frances McDormand), a jobless, working-class woman who turns to life as a modern-day nomad who traverses the American Midwest. Written, directed, and edited by the incomparable Chloe Zhao, the much buzzed…

Ho, ho, hand grenade. Fatman – longtime passion project from indie family filmmakers the Nelms Brothers – is not your traditional holiday movie. Sure, a lot of the same pieces are there: a puffy man with a long white beard, his warehouse, and his army of efficient elves. But few Christmas movies have had the…

Superhero films, in general, showcase the extraordinary faculties of a superhuman, who is naturally in need of a worthy adversary. Although, as seen in Chronicle and Brightburn, sometimes one’s most dangerous adversary is oneself. Chronicle and Brightburn have unveiled a bleaker side to the comic-book formula, wherein the powerful protagonist is their own worst enemy….

In an interview with Deadline, director Andrei Konchalovsky spoke about how his main actress in Dear Comrades!, Julia Vysotskaya, was born in Novocherkassk a decade after the movie’s central massacre took place, giving her an indirectly personal relationship to the material. Konchalovsky prides himself on authentic historical representation and this was but one example of his…

Early each morning, keys turn in locks on the ground floor shops along Pugliano street in the Italian town of Ercolano. Doors open to reveal shiny sequin dresses, furs in a range of browns, and jeans from the 1970s—plus a slew of military uniforms, displayed on hangers, dangling from boxes, or draped on white sheets….