Ikiru: A Warning Against Waste

Takashi Shimura. Photo: Toho Akira Kurosawa had a major international breakthrough with Rashomon in 1950, a historical drama. He then decided to make a film about life in Japan after…

Living

London, 1953; a bureaucrat (Bill Nighy) learns that he will die of cancer and starts thinking of what he might achieve. A remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), made with…

The Big Cigar

In 1974, Hollywood producer Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola) tries to help Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton (André Holland) escape to Cuba, making it look like a movie project.…

Femme

After getting assaulted, a drag performer (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) hangs up his wig and becomes a recluse… then one day, in a gay sauna, he spots the young guy (George MacKay)…

A Part of You

When 17-year-old Agnes (Felicia Maxime) loses her sister (Zara Larsson) in a car crash, she begins to change, slowly emulating the style and extrovert attitude of her sister. After the…

The Whale: Weight of a Lived Life

Brendan Fraser. Photo: A24 In 2006, Brendan Fraser was still at the beginning of his downfall as a movie star, a phase where he couldn’t find many good parts. There…

Silver Haze

Sacha Polak and Vicky Knight’s last film together, Dirty God (2019), was certainly a personal project, but this one may be even more so, as Knight plays a version of…

Umberto D: Life in Ruins in a City of Ruins

Carlo Battisti. Photo: Dear Film As in the case of Bicycle Thieves (1948), Vittorio De Sica would be criticized for Umberto D. by people who hated how he portrayed their…

Franklin

As the colonies are fighting against the United Kingdom for independence, Benjamin Franklin (Michael Douglas) arrives in Paris together with his young grandson (Noah Jupe), hoping to build an alliance…

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Perhaps a certain fatigue was setting in at the time of the premiere, only a few years after another Jesus epic, King of Kings (1961). This one was targeted by…