Red, White and Blue is the third film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, which premiered at this year’s New York Film Festival, but it’s actually the final entry in the series. Though the remaining two entries have yet to be seen, Red, White and Blue is an appropriate and effective conclusion to the project,…
Sofia Coppola’s career has always had a sense of melancholy. Longing stares, rainy days, and imprisonment in an isolated location: these are the trademarks of her filmography. Her peak, Lost in Translation, is the biggest point of comparison for her newest feature On the Rocks (in select theaters October 2nd for those who wish to…
Stories about musicians seeking a seemingly unattainable perfection aren’t in short supply. The most obvious recent example is Whiplash, where Damien Chazelle transformed the arduous struggle between student and teacher—which isn’t easy to make exciting—into an electrifying cat-and-mouse thriller. With The Disciple, director Chaitanya Tamhane takes a more sedate approach, trusting the audience to remain…
I’ve moved around a lot during my life, never staying in one place for more than a few years, and in recent times it has become even more absurd with moves occurring so rapidly I’ve lived at seven different addresses in the last two and a half years. Some of those times I’ve spent months…
Last week, Lovers Rock premiered as the opening night film of this year’s New York Film Festival. It was a perfect opening to the festival, providing a celebratory and communal atmosphere for audiences watching at home on their computer screens, longing for the traditional theatrical experience and festival energy. Though it was the first of…
The Human Voice, Pedro Almodóvar’s English language debut that recently played at NYFF, wasn’t intended to be the first film from a major filmmaker, with a major star, to be entirely filmed and distributed under COVID-19 restrictions, but it’s hard to think of a concept that would fit them better than this. Made from a…
This year’s New York Film Festival opened with Lovers Rock, one part of an upcoming series for BBC (to be released on Amazon in the US) called Small Axe, consisting of five films by director Steve McQueen. The film and two other installments also playing at this year’s NYFF—Mangrove and Red, White and Blue—were set…
Moving to a different country can be both exciting and scary. On one hand, it allows you to experience and discover new things that you can’t get in your own country — from food to culture, people to places. Yet on the other hand, the fear of being alone without any family or friends whom…
Rick and Ilsa, Jack and Rose, Mia and Sebastian, and now Nicole and Charlie. Sometimes the best couples in film just aren’t meant to be together in the end. Unlike these other couples, Adam Driver’s Charlie and Scarlett Johansson’s Nicole did get married and shared their lives with each other for many years with no…
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