Kleber Mendonça Filho is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today—and Bacurau is only his third feature. Despite his minimal output thus far, I do believe I’m right in saying so. His debut, Neighboring Sounds, is a remarkably lived-in tapestry of a working-class neighbourhood in the grips of a heatwave, while Aquarius is a decade-spanning rumination on…
Please note that this review includes spoilers about the film’s conclusion. Fairy tales are the spaces in which our childhoods dream. Their worlds are enormous in their specificity, for the greater the specificity, the greater our imaginations roam free. They contain both the mystical and the practical. They use the lives of people far above…
The Coens’ hot streak continues—and rather surprisingly at that—with The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, an anthology of six Western-style shorts that are bridged only by their stunningly-rendered vistas and grim depictions of mortality and isolation. I say “surprisingly” because anthology films are a risky undertaking in general, as the shorts therein can vary wildly in quality.…
Let the Corpses Tan, the latest from Belgian team Cattet & Forzani, is a deliriously degenerate mash-up of spaghetti western, giallo and poliziotteschi that does more than arrest the eye: it positively holds it captive. Never mind the barebones story, about a vicious gang trying to hide their horde of stolen gold in sun-drenched Corsica.…
