In Review Online - There Were No Gods Left (Page 2)

There Were No Gods Left

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In Review Online

A collection of 47 posts

The Roundup: Punishment — Heo Myeong-haeng

The Roundup: Punishment — Heo Myeong-haeng

The copaganda finally outruns the action choreography.

The Three Musketeers: Part II – Milady — Martin Bourboulon

The Three Musketeers: Part II – Milady — Martin Bourboulon

A specter is haunting cinema — that of commercial modernity.

Sweet Dreams — Ena Sendijarevic

Sweet Dreams — Ena Sendijarevic

A pregnant woman nearing delivery self-pleasures by rubbing her privates against a bedpost.

Housekeeping for Beginners — Goran Stolevski

Housekeeping for Beginners — Goran Stolevski

Although Goran Stolevski’s third film only features one gay sex scene and next to no same-sex romantic intimacy, Housekeeping for Beginners has a claim as one of the queerest films of the 2020s so far. That his first two films, You Won’t Be Alone and Of An Age,

Gwetto — Michaël Andrianaly [First Look ’24 Review]

Gwetto — Michaël Andrianaly [First Look ’24 Review]

“400,000 FMG isn’t a wage,” one Malagasy car wash customer admits to documentarian Michaël Andrianaly’s camera in regard to the workers at the wash. At least, not a living wage. The exchange rate is approximately 1 FMG to 0.0002995 USD, and that makes 400,000 FMG

The Animal Kingdom — Thomas Cailley

The Animal Kingdom — Thomas Cailley

Both the film’s premise and actress Adèle Exarchopoulos are underutilized.

Chronicle of a Disappearance — Elia Suleiman

Chronicle of a Disappearance — Elia Suleiman

The staff of In Review Online have come to the collective decision to abide by the international call from Strike Germany. We will be withholding coverage of the Berlin International Film Festival on the grounds that its institutional backing from the German government is marred by the latter’s censorship

Style as Political Substance, or The Bosnian Master: The Case for Danis Tanović

Style as Political Substance, or The Bosnian Master: The Case for Danis Tanović

Danis Tanović might be the most personal, visually compelling, and thematically thoughtful political auteur working in European cinema. And regrettably, his name will largely go unrecognized by even the most globetrotting and well-watched of cinephiles. With very few exceptions, Western film lovers have failed to properly appreciate Tanović’s best

Ashes — Erdem Tepegöz

Ashes — Erdem Tepegöz

That hunk in the romance novel you’re reading — what if he was real and ready to mingle? That’s the entertaining and confident premise of Ashes, the newest film from experienced Turkish director Erdem Tepegöz. A pretty, married woman reads a smutty book and scopes out the patisserie where

8 Views of Lake Biwa — Marko Raat [IFFR ’24 Review]

8 Views of Lake Biwa — Marko Raat [IFFR ’24 Review]

This is Raat’s first feature film, and it’s clear he has no interest in the way of the safe commercial film, the route first-time directors so often feel compelled to take. Sometimes, his absurdist debut even approaches outright experimental terrain.

Badland Hunters — Heo Myeong-haeng

Badland Hunters — Heo Myeong-haeng

Ma Dong-seok does it again in Netflix’s Badland Hunters. Like most of his notable roles post-Train to Busan (2016), he plays a haymaking Byronic hero with a pained past, this time around as the star of the very loose sequel to last year’s Concrete Utopia. The post-apocalyptic landscape

Next Time, I’m Going to Make a Film About Rainbows: An Interview with Hugh Welchman

Next Time, I’m Going to Make a Film About Rainbows: An Interview with Hugh Welchman

“They don’t make them like this anymore” is a cliché that doesn’t work with regards toThe Peasants. They never made them like this.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King — Peter Jackson

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King — Peter Jackson

For better and for worse, Jackson’s demonstration of episodic filmmaking’s ability to have its cake and eat it too has proved an artistic decision that continues to reverberate through 21st-century blockbuster filmmaking.

The Last Wife — Victor Vu

The Last Wife — Victor Vu

At its best, The Last Wife calls back to a different era of filmmaking.

White River — Ma Xue

White River — Ma Xue

As we enter the last release wave of true Covid films — those titles both produced during and concerned with the real-world crisis — first-time director Ma Xue introduces a new sort of pandemic film in her debut White River.

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Dark Paradise

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Dark Paradise

One of the most discussed Estonian films of the year, Dark Paradise is a strange beast from one of the country’s most promising and rising young talents, Triin Ruumet. The 35-year-old’s second feature doesn’t tiptoe around such complex and controversial topics like Neo-Nazism, kink, BDSM, and half-sibling

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: The Peasants

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: The Peasants

The Welchmans formal innovations breathe new life into the seventh art, and The Peasants is a magnificent example of what it is the artform can achieve and how it can still surprise.

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Consent

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Consent

Until 2021, France did not have a set legal age of consent. Then Vanessa Springora wrote Le Consentement in 2020, an autobiographical memoir about her experience being groomed and abused by the famed author Gabriel Matzneff for two long years. She was just 14 when the abuse began; he was

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: How to Have Sex

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: How to Have Sex

Vacation in Malia on the Greek island of Crete, a British tourist hub that might as well be hedonism incarnate, doesn’t end well for the three teen girls who travel there on holiday break in Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut How To Have Sex. The title, however, is

A Normal Family and Normality

A Normal Family and Normality

In a movie titled A Normal Family, one thing can be certain: the family is obligated to abnormality. Hur Jin-ho’s newest film, an adaptation of the Dutch novel The Dinner by Herman Koch, attests to this. The source material’s title explains why the film’s early marketing so

Les Indésirables and Covid-19

Les Indésirables and Covid-19

“The real problem [or] the central mystery of politics is not sovereignty, but government; it is not God, but the angel; it is not the king, but ministry; it is not the law, but the police — that is to say, the governmental machine that they form and support.” Those are

Under the Turquoise Sky — Kentaro [Japan Cuts ’23 Review]

Under the Turquoise Sky — Kentaro [Japan Cuts ’23 Review]

No film festival would be complete without a road movie. For the 2023 edition of Japan Cuts, the U.S. premiere of Under the Turquoise Sky checks that box. The country being traveled is Mongolia, and the stated purpose is for Takeshi (Yuya Yagir) to find a woman at his