A WRINKLE IN FILM
Both Black Panther and A Wrinkle in Time are portal fantasiesâ-specifically, dealing in the fantasy that there is another world, a more just world, just beyond our reality. In Black…
Political Animal
COLUMN/COLUMNA
A City Frozen in Time
To understand what has been revealed about Hollywood over the last few months--no, the last few years, going back to the leaked Sony emails that presaged the endemic discrimination that…
Where Are You?
Waru (2017) means eight in MÄori: itâs a film made up of eight chapters, made by eight directors (all MÄori women, ranging from the incredibly experienced Briar Grace-Smith to debut…
Leaving the Party
Hillary Rodham Clintonâs presidential campaign memoir is currently the 5th bestselling title on Amazon US. Its title, What Happened?, could also be given to Sally Potterâs thrilling new film The…
Towards Faces
In her new film Visages, Villages (2017), co-directed with artist JR, AgnĂšs Varda speaks on the voice-over of going âvers de visages,â towards faces. The documentary travels with Varda and…
Light, Writing
Itâs a clichĂ© to say that cinematography means âwriting with lightâ â and equally a clichĂ© to say that one of the things cinema struggles with most is showing writers…
Deaths, Men and⊠Sales
Spoiler alert: Details from the plot of the Oscar-winning film The Salesman by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi are revealed below. Itâs been twenty years since Buffy the Vampire Slayer first…
Back to their Roots
Anocha Suwichakornpongâs By the Time It Gets Dark (Dao Khanong) is not an easy film to describe â but then, itâs not an easy film to watch, starting as it…
Donât Hardly Know Them
Itâs been a year and Iâm still ear-wormed by Joan Jett and the Blackheartsâ 1981 cover of Crimson and Clover that plays "over and over" in Jennifer Reederâs dreamy and…
No Sister Flower
Twenty-five years ago, my school friends and I became obsessed with a poem: âLoveâs Philosophy,â by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Or rather with its second stanza, as sent to the young…
At Sea
Black rhinos are critically endangered; middle-class straight white men are not â and yet, here they are on a yacht, in Athina Rachel Tsangariâs third film Chevalier, acting like theyâre…
Spending the Night With Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Last month I spent the night with filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It wasnât just me: more than a hundred people gathered on the brand-new plush purple seats of Tate Modernâs Starr…
