Even with these petty battles, the country house is serene, and the two families appear to genuinely care for each other. So when tragedy strikes at the lake, Tomas playfully throws Ernesta’s niece in the lake, only to see her disappear in the water—it pierces through the film’s breezy rhythm. From that moment on, “Drowning … Read more
One of the pleasures of being a critic is getting assigned to review a film you might not otherwise have seen. 2021’s “The Dry” was one of those, a taut moody drama/thriller based on Jane Harper’s best-selling novel (the first in a series). It starred Eric Bana as Melbourne cop Aaron Falk who returned to … Read more
Yes, Samet lies plenty, but doing the opposite, being brutal honesty, is just as hurtful. Enraged about Sevim’s backstabbing, he tells the rowdy class that none of them will amount to much other than growing crops for the wealthy to consume. Statistically that’s likely a harsh reality, but part of his duty as a teacher … Read more
Abel (Adonyi-Walsh Gáspár) is a student in Budapest who is taking his final exams, but he finds himself more distracted by a crush on a classmate named Janka (Lilla Kizlinger), who has her own crush on her married, much older teacher, Jakab (András Rusznák). Whether or not what unfolds in “Explanation for Everything” is a … Read more
Very freely working from Martin Amis’s 2014 novel of the same name, Glazer’s film takes a rigorously withholding and formalized approach to its narrative. “The Zone of Interest” unfolds in shots as austere and hermetic as anything in the films of Roy Andersson. Jews at the death camp are never seen, and while their attempted … Read more