My Courses

Nida Manzoor’s “Polite Society” is the kind of film I didn’t know I wanted, in part because no one has made anything quite like it before. Manzoor’s influences have had similar sense and sensibilities—Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino, for starters—but who has mixed Jane Austen courtship with marital arts melees quite like this? Having premiered…

Co-writer/director/actor Sebastian Silva disappears midway through his new film, “Rotting in the Sun.” The prolific Silva hasn’t been as visible in movies for about five years, so it’s particularly funny to see him back on-screen, only to go missing, playing a version of himself who is exhausted with life. Doing ketamine, painting, and making movies:…

After a breakthrough hit with the science fiction ultraviolence of “Scanners,” David Cronenberg’s last Canadian tax shelter film “Videodrome” dropped with a whimper in 1983, under-served by distributors unnerved by its transgressive images and genre-busting approach. Occupying a space between dystopian apocalypse and queasy body horror, it wasn’t then, and isn’t now, a film easy…

“Let It Be Morning” is a quiet film that builds to a powerful ending. A steady accumulation of everyday detail gets it to where it needs to go. You could even say that the entire point of writer/director Erin Kolirin’s new movie is to show that, even during tense political crises where violence could erupt…

One of the most celebrated films of 2022 was Lukas Dhont’s Cannes prize-winner, “Close,” which affirms the Belgian filmmaker’s status as one of the most gifted directors of children since Spielberg. In a performance that is the equal of any nominated for Best Actor this year, newcomer Eden Dambrine plays Léo, a boy whose extremely tight…