A bright and charismatic sociopath making his way in mid-1950s NYC through menial work and petty scams, Tom Ripley is hired through a case of mistaken identity by a shipping magnate to bring back his loafing son, Dickie (Jude Law), from a too-long extended Italian vacation with his girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). Tom soon finds… Read more »
Three lovers spin in a vortex of pent-up desire and resentment in director Ira Sachs’ honest and acerbically funny take on messy, modern relationships. Just like its dynamic leads, Franz Rogowski (New York Film Critics Circle winner for Best Actor), Adèle Exarchopoulos, and Ben Whishaw, Passages is a refreshingly fluid relationship drama that oozes sex… Read more »
Gentle and timid, Haider (Ali Junejo) lives with his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq), his father, and his elder brother’s family in Lahore, Pakistan. Following a long spell of unemployment, Haider finally lands a job at a Bollywood-style burlesque, telling his family he is a theater manager when, in actuality, he is a backup dancer. The… Read more »
Still from Todd Haynes’s May December Fresh off of his time at the Chicago International Film Festival, Chris Forrester shares his thoughts on the films he saw, including buzzy upcoming releases like Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall and the latest from such filmmakers as Todd Haynes, Hayao Miyazaki, and more. The 59th edition… Read more »
“So, Von Sternberg’s movies had to have plots even though they already had them inherent in the images. What he did was make movies naturally — he lived in a visual world. The explanation plots he made up out of some logic having nothing to do with the visuals of his films. His expression was… Read more »
Guest post by Chris Forrester. In The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996), a lesbian video store clerk seeks out the history of a Black film star from the ’30s as she tries to make a movie of her own. Swoon (Tom Kalin, 1992) retells and relitigates the Leopold and Loeb murder case with a more… Read more »