According to award-winning Israeli director Nadav Lapid (“The Kindergarten Teacher”), “art has the right to be chaotic and wild, to go to extreme and dangerous places.” If you are looking for chaotic and wild, you need look no further than his Synonyms (Milim Nirdafot), a mystifying and often maddening film that will either leave you…
Director James Gray, whose last film, “The Lost City of Z,” garnered serious praise upon release in 2016, has continued his win streak in the exploratory sci-fi film Ad Astra, the Latin phrase for “to the stars.” This Brad Pitt vehicle stands as a powerful character study within a plausible near-future universe, with a hefty…
In the opening minutes of The Kill Team, we see brief glimpses of optimism, national pride, and infantry brotherhood from our titular platoon of soldiers — all of which ends up shattered well before the ten-minute mark as the horrors of wartime and their effect on those involved make themselves abruptly known. Nat Wolff (“Home…
When looking upon the first frame of Paradise Hills, the feature directorial debut of Spanish filmmaker Alice Waddington, your eyes are thrown into a wonderland of bizarre beauty. With a crisp sci-fi world of equal parts whimsy and despair, this feminist fairy tale has all of the looks of something remarkable, but lacks the proper…
You cannot find Bacurau on any map of Brazil. That is because the town is fictional. The problem is that the residents of this small community in the northeast corner of Brazil can no longer find their town on Google Maps, or any GPS system either. Other strange things soon begin happening in Bacurau, winner…
As lazy and obvious a comment as this is, Little Monsters is the Australian answer to “Shaun of the Dead.” From the interweaving of domestic and personal issues with the problems of a zombie outbreak, to the referential rendering of the undead and how they operate, writer-director Abe Forsythe displays a snappy wit, a warmth…
“Well, the doctor interrupted me just about then, Sayin, ‘Hey I’ve been havin’ the same old dreams, But mine was a little different you see. I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me. I didn’t see you around.’” — Bob Dylan, “Talking World War III Blues” Portals begins with a white…
