Review: Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley
Guillermo del Toro’s new neo-noir epic is a faithful adaption of Gresham’s eponymous novel and a modern morality play carried by nuanced acting and brilliant cinematography.
The Problem with ‘Elevated Horror’
The term dismisses the influence of pioneering directors such as Wes Craven, John Carpenter, and William Friedkin and serves more as a trigger warning than a mark of originality.
Review: The Souvenir-Saga
With The Souvenir Part II, Joanna Hogg completes an unusually beautiful triumph of cinematic self-indulgence.
The Ambivalence of Rocky
While the Rocky-saga appears permeated with Reaganite ideology and middle-class morality, it also contains a progressive message of societal reform and proletarian self-improvement. What are we to make of the films?
Hollywood’s Empty Pursuit of Sequel-Glory is A Symptom of our Collective Fatigue
The industry’s relentless hunt for profits has produced a kitschy reboot-loop that fits the historical moment. As the future seems to elude us, nostalgia reigns supreme.
Review: Titane
French director Julia Ducournau has created a neo-surrealist masterpiece that combines ten bizarre stories in the tale of a woman who gets pregnant by a car.
Crisis cinema in the Philippines: a story of a polarized nation
Hit by the pandemic and under siege by the forces of the populist right, in Manila a new kind of cinema has been emerging that draws creative energy from the country’s multiple crises.
The PM’s cut: the creeping Hindutva takeover of Bollywood
As one of the most popular forms of mass entertainment, India’s film industry has become a vehicle of right-wing propaganda. Mahima Kaur on how PM Modi’s BJP conquered Bollywood.
Look at Us
In Don't Look Up fantastic realism meets disaster cinema to show why humanity is destined to perish in a carnival of idiocy and madness