Gandhari Review: A Rich Mythology Trapped Inside a Familiar Thriller
A film can carry mythology in its title and still struggle to make myth matter. Gandhari surrounds its central story...
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Knowing that Luca Varani is going to die changes almost everything about watching him live. A minor argument feels heavier than it should. An unfinished diploma carries an odd sadness. Looking for an apartment with his girlfriend starts to resemble a glimpse of a future the film knows he will never reach. Edoardo Gabbriellini understands that this knowledge can be stronger than suspense, and The City of the Living spends much of its time asking us to stay with Luca before tragedy turns him into a name attached to a murder. That choice gives the film its deepest emotional charge....

Confinement practically writes the criticism for a psychiatric ward: locked doors, confiscated phones, teenagers staring through windows, adults asking questions with clipboards nearby. Cédric Kahn seems aware of that temptation in 15/18 A Place to Heal, which is why the film becomes interesting precisely when the metaphor stops behaving. The ward restricts these teenagers, certainly. It may also be the safest place some of them have. That distinction matters. Seventeen-year-old Lucia arrives already knowing the routines, protesting as her phone and lighters are confiscated while trading familiar remarks with the staff. Her return has the strange social energy of someone...

Paul Schrader gives John Jorrisen a job built around asking difficult questions, then makes his private life depend on one he cannot answer cleanly. John teaches an introductory philosophy course, writes about Spinoza, and spends his days explaining ideas about morality and change to students who mostly seem to want an easy credit. The setup is almost aggressively plain. Questions appear on classroom boards, philosophical arguments enter conversation directly, and John’s intellectual life keeps echoing whatever crisis the story has placed in front of him. I usually resist films that underline their themes this heavily, but here the obviousness has...

Werner Herzog takes the story of Freda and Greta Chaplin, identical English twins who became tabloid curiosities in the 1980s, and relocates its basic strangeness to an Ireland that never feels entirely contemporary, historical, or even real. That displacement is one of the keys to Bucking Fastard. Jeanie and Joanie Holbrooke live among smartphones and train-ticket machines, yet they dress in matching clothes that seem borrowed from another decade, communicate by post, and move through Dublin as if modernity has happened somewhere beyond their field of vision. Herzog has not built an authentic portrait of Irish life. He has built...

The walk from Anton Blackwood’s apartment to his basement says almost everything this game wants to accomplish. Upstairs, he has bills, clothes, a cat, and a day job selling DVDs. Downstairs, gun racks line the walls, ammunition waits to be packed, weapons can be modified at a workbench, and a computer offers contract killings. The distance between those spaces is tiny. Emotionally, BLACKWOOD wants it to feel enormous. That is the attraction. Plenty of games can make shooting people stylish. BLACKWOOD wants the shooting to matter because Anton has a mundane life waiting for him afterward. Set in New York...

Ryan wants to make a movie about fatherhood, and for a while Robert Greene lets him believe that is exactly what is happening. He has the charisma for it. A carpenter, former fighter, father of six and enthusiastic dispenser of motivational slogans, Ryan approaches the camera with the confidence of someone who has already decided what his story means. The smarter move in Too Much Sugar is that Greene gradually stops treating that confidence as narrative authority. Greene met Ryan through their sons’ basketball games in Moberly, Missouri, where Ryan’s habit of loudly coaching from the bleachers initially made him...
A film can carry mythology in its title and still struggle to make myth matter. Gandhari surrounds its central story...
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Read moreKnowing that Luca Varani is going to die changes almost everything about watching him live. A minor argument feels heavier than it should. An unfinished diploma carries an odd sadness....
Confinement practically writes the criticism for a psychiatric ward: locked doors, confiscated phones, teenagers staring through windows, adults asking questions with clipboards nearby. Cédric Kahn seems aware of that temptation...
Paul Schrader gives John Jorrisen a job built around asking difficult questions, then makes his private life depend on one he cannot answer cleanly. John teaches an introductory philosophy course,...
Werner Herzog takes the story of Freda and Greta Chaplin, identical English twins who became tabloid curiosities in the 1980s, and relocates its basic strangeness to an Ireland that never...
The walk from Anton Blackwood’s apartment to his basement says almost everything this game wants to accomplish. Upstairs, he has bills, clothes, a cat, and a day job selling DVDs....
Ryan wants to make a movie about fatherhood, and for a while Robert Greene lets him believe that is exactly what is happening. He has the charisma for it. A...
An empty house can become a kind of accusation. Josette Tientcheu lives among photographs of six children who now reside in Europe, and every room seems to hold the shape...
A film can carry mythology in its title and still struggle to make myth matter. Gandhari surrounds its central story with an unusually rich set of Indian references: the blindfolded...
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The walk from Anton Blackwood’s apartment to his basement says almost everything this game wants to accomplish. Upstairs, he has...
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