6.5
Consider the pink flamingo. Curved neck, hooked beak, penetrating yellow eyes and perched on one scrawny leg with the other securely tucked into its plumage, fashioning its signature pose.
For most, this striking bird is a brief object of amusement, possibly even
8.5
Like fellow Winnipeg weirdo before him, Guy Maddin, Matthew Rankin is quickly establishing a unique brand of surrealism for himself in the world of Canadian cinema. In his full-length feature debut, The Twentieth Century, the director applies his penchant for madcap and
3.5
Paul Leyden’s Chick Fight centers on an underground MMA fighting club wherein pressed-upon women who have been “trained by society to cry out their problems” can embrace their inner Amazonian and work it out on another woman’s face in the ring. The
6
Stop me if you have heard this one before: Nine friends from high school meet up in the middle of a dense forest for a reunion camping trip. Significantly grown apart, their drunken revelry is stained by their antagonism for one another,
8
In our fundamentally connected digital epoch, it is a challenge for the ache of missing someone to still resonate the way it used to, when that person is eternally at your fingertips. For the imminently spacebound astronaut Sarah (Eva Green), the pining
8
The Donut King is a fascinating story of the promises (and blunt realities) of the American dream for one Cambodian refugee.
5
Compounded by its unoriginal story beats, the film comes out feeling uninspired, outside of its impressive direction.
4
White Elephant is a story of a teen’s diasporic identity told through paltry means and a lack of focus.
7.5
Beyond the Night offers an engaging, psychosexual tug-of-war that’s torn from the pages of Bergman.
4
Fukushima 50 sees Japanese cinema address the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster in the most direct manner to date. It does not go well.
7
A lo-fi, lackadaisical, existential odyssey through the forest that embraces its weirdness with an absurd edge.
9
Nobuhiko Obayashi rounds out his career of wonderfully inventive filmmaking with an anti-war epic worthy of his legacy.
9
Three guys, making music, just vibing in the summer — On-Gaku: Our Sound is a whole mood of a movie that is quite unforgettable.
8
“The latest from controversial documentarian Tatusya Mori tackles freedom of the Japanese press in a dense, challenging manner.”
Isoko Mochizuki has been on the fast track to becoming akin to a “celebrity journalist” in the past few years. Her 2017 memoir The
6
Taking a frank look at the state of sex work in Japan today, Life: Untitled is a virulent screed against exploitation too bitter for its own good.
8
Like a heist comedy from the 1980s, Special Actors shows director Ueda’s manically meta genre filmmaking still bears fruit.
