Anyone in the critical game knows that spoilers — at least for reviews timed to be published with a film’s general release and especially when that film pivots around a killer twist — are to be avoided. Yet in the eternal dance between art and commerce, what might be called the From Dusk Till Dawn effect, can sometimes come into play: a film painstakingly constructed so that it appears to belong to one genre, before it suddenly, violently shifts into another, has its reeling, disorienting pleasures ruined by the film’s marketing campaign long before any critic can spoil the viewer’s fun. Abig ..read more

Growing up amid rugged plains on the outskirts of Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, director Zoljargal Purevdash was a remarkably gifted student. So much so that she won a scholarship to a prestigious school, setting in motion a journey which saw her study filmmaking in Tokyo before returning to Mongolia to make her first feature, inspired by her experience of growing up. Purevdesh’s closeness to this intimate and tender coming-of-age story is palpable, one that depicts the universality of the struggle of living in indigence while maintaining its Mongolian essence. If Only I Could Hibernate i ..read more

Metaphor is a strange thing. Conjoining two realms of meaning in a single phrase holds a promise: through figurative means, one can better understand the world. But what metaphoric expressions often do is obscure the power relations conditioning that very same link, between the public and poetic spheres. CPH:DOX, one of the largest festivals in Europe and the world with specific focus on documentary cinema, chose to inaugurate its 21st edition with a potent metaphor: Body Politics. Documentary prides itself on a more direct relationship to the real world, a proximity which entails demands su ..read more

The exploitation and commercialisation of ancient artefacts is punishable by a fate that may be worse than death in Paul Duane’s nightmarish read on Irish folk tradition. The investigative structure and the central idea of an artwork that holds terrible ramifications for all who encounter it gives this literate, slowburn fiction debut the feel of a modern J-Horror: Hideo Nakata’s Ring and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse come to mind. It sees a pair of amateur musicologists, Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher), going undercover in the Irish folk scene in an attempt to make a fast buck by ..read more

In 1902, England’s King Edward VII was crowned. Two months earlier, Georges Méliès made a film about it in his French studio to be released at the coronation date. Reportedly, the king said, “What a fantastic machine!” and his exclamation gave directors Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck an idea: a decade-long research process of examining the possibilities of the cinematic apparatus and the responsibilities that come with its evolution. Fantastic Machine uses the form of a video essay to track historical and ideological highlights in the evolution of the camera, a man-made machine t ..read more

“Everything is sex / except sex / which is power,” sang renaissance woman Janelle Monáe is her ridiculously catchy 2018 banger ‘Screwed’. It’s a sentiment echoed across the filmography of Italian provocateur Luca Guadagnino, who’s no slouch when it comes to a bit of titillation – ever since Tilda Swinton put on that little red dress in I Am Love, it’s been written in the stars. He is drawn to stories about fucking and fucking up, and Justin Kuritzkes’ script for Challengers offers something to satisfy both those appetites, pitting two tennis players against each other in a match that’s as mu ..read more

The choice to pack up your family and leave your home country for what you hope to be more hospitable climes is never an easy one. Nor does it negate any other traumas or anxieties you’re experiencing in life. Milad Alami’s second feature, Opponent, explores the idea of an Iranian man wrestling with his conscience as well as quite literally wrestling other men in the hope that his participation in a national team sport would help his application for asylum in Sweden. Payman Maadi, an actor many will likely recognise as one of the leads from Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, delivers a towering p ..read more

War never changes – at least according to the prologue of Bethesda’s Fallout video game series, set in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse in an alternate version of the United States. The wildly successful franchise has spawned five console games and – as of this month – a glossy Amazon drama series, exploring a reality where warring factions eke out a fraught existence across the background of almost total annihilation. This approach is what we have come to expect from imagined depictions of Western warfare, and the series’ three-word tagline implies that despite Fallout’s more fantastic ..read more

It’s the most wonderful time of the year… the day where two older people sat behind a little table on a stage and serve up the delectable morsels of world cinema that we’re all set to enjoy in the coming months. Film festivals have so far this year not exactly bathed themselves in glory, with issues of censorship and political suppression present at both Sundance and Berlin. But can Cannes take up the mantle and offer up a truly open and free festival, where filmmakers are able to present their work without fear of violent rebuttal? We already know that George Miller’s new addition to his Mad ..read more

Anton Bitel provides a look at six titles heading to streaming and physical media releases this month that you should add to the top of your viewing list. The Foul King (Banchikwang), dir. Kim Jee-woon, 2000 “Welcome to the real world,” a bank’s assistant manager (Song Young-chang) tells his employee Im Dae-ho (Song Kang-ho), having just held him in, and then released him from, a vicious headlock. “If you’re weak, you die.” Dae-ho is a loser who wants nothing more than to impress his disappointed father (Shin Goo), and to break free of his boss’s humiliating hold over him. One day he spots ..read more