While we know that some monsters are decidedly not lovable, the creature in Mexican director Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, like many humans who roam the planet, is more of a lonely outcast seeking connection than a life-threatening presence. Performed by Doug Jones (“The Bye Bye Man”) underneath all the prosthetics, this monster…
With the film Tiger Girl, writer/director Jakob Lass (“Love Steaks”) deals out a sharply cut, strangely mesmerizing, buddy movie. Set in an unnamed German city, we follow a pair of streetwise Frälueins, who boisterously dispatch any and all bystanders that dare get in their way. Awkward good-girl Maggie (Maria-Victoria Dragus, “The White Ribbon”) begins training…
“And if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing. To the flashing water say: I am” — Rilke, “Sonnette an Orpheus” (II, 29) Chiron, in Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning film “Moonlight,” in addition to being gay and black, has to deal with drug abuse, bullying, and the lack of…
A young boy, trailing his Radio Flyer down the sidewalk behind him, goes door to door collecting comics. But he is neither superfan nor traveling salesman. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women opens with a book burning demonstration after the most successful female superhero comic has been maligned by its self-righteous critics for its representation…
Whether or not it is designed as an allegory of modern Russia, no film in recent memory has examined the growing emptiness of human relationships with such expressive force as Andrey Zvyagintsev’s (“Leviathan”) Loveless, a heart wrenching drama about a couple on the brink of divorce whose emotional neglect of their son leads to devastating…
As spectators flock to see Billie Jean King defeat Bobby Riggs in straight sets in “Battle of the Sexes,” there is another tennis match currently playing on the silver screen. This battle of sexuality that airs before the full-length feature Beach Rats is a surprising cartoon short, in which a defending champion is struggling to…
89-year-old filmmaker Agnès Varda (“The Beaches of Agnès”) said, “I have a nice relationship with time, because the past is here, you know? I’ve spent time, if I have something of my past, I’ll just make it, nowadays, I make it now and here.” Varda makes both past and present come alive in Faces Places…
