The Film Gang from KSQD

  Imagine finding a sexual partner so adept at providing mind-blowing pleasure, you keep going back for more, despite the potential for personal harm. Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante has taken that dysfunctional relationship dynamic to fantastical extremes with his 2017 release, The Untamed, a compelling drama that explores the self-destructive side of our hedonistic tendencies. […]

  Mentioning Florian Zeller might not ring many bells in the U.S., but in his home country of France he’s a household name. Zeller published his first novel when he was only twenty-two years old. Now, at age forty-one, he’s an accomplished novelist, a highly acclaimed playwright, and, as of this year, an Oscar-winning filmmaker. […]

  The people of Denmark love to imbibe. It’s not surprising, then, that Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg originally conceived his Oscar-winning film, Another Round, as a celebration of alcohol and its place in history. Vinterberg’s nineteen-year-old daughter was originally cast in a small supporting role, but when she died tragically in a non-alcohol related accident, […]

  Over the years, many movies have been made about curmudgeonly loners who achieve some measure of redemption by virtue of being saddled with the responsibility of taking care of a child. In the 2019 comedy, Family, first-time filmmaker Laura Steinel takes that trite and well-worn concept into some new and clever directions. Typically, the […]

  The 2019 film, Gloria Bell, written and directed by Sebastián Lelio, is an English-language remake of his highly acclaimed 2013 Chilean film, Gloria. Even if you’ve already seen and enjoyed the original, the remake is still very much worth your time. As Lelio himself has put it, it’s the same melody performed by a […]

  A woman displaced by the Great Recession is the central character of Chloé Zhao highly acclaimed 2020 drama, Nomadland, starring Francis McDormand. McDormand plays Fern, a widow rendered jobless after the closing of a Gypsum plant in Empire, Nevada. A title card at the start of the film informs us that the plant had […]

  “What you are experiencing is just a metaphor. The emotions you are having are not your own. They are someone else’s.” Those words could be used to describe the act of watching virtually any narrative film. In this case, it’s a meta-moment belonging to the first mysterious scene of Madeline’s Madeline, the 2018 indie […]

  In 2014, Swedish director Ruben Östlund released his breakout film, Force Majeure. It explored the uncomfortable but humorous consequences of one man’s ignominious act of self-preservation after he turned tail and ran during an avalanche, leaving his wife and two children behind – alive but rattled. With his 2017 follow-up, The Square, Östlund once […]

  I Care a Lot is an enthralling comedy-tinged thriller that skillfully maintains our interest in the lives of horrible people. The lead character is alpha-female Marla Grayson, played by Rosamund Pike. At the start of the film, Marla declares in voiceover that there are two kinds of people: lions and lambs. She sees herself […]

  In a crowded nightclub that caters to young professionals, a group of guys are complaining about a female coworker when they spot a provocatively dressed, totally plastered woman sitting alone. They casually toss a few self-serving judgments back and forth, like “That is just asking for it,” and, “You’d think you’d learn by that […]

  Rewatching a film you haven’t seen in a long time can be an enlightening experience. As Joe Dante is fond of saying, “Movies don’t change. You do.” As does, of course, the world. Terry Gilliam, probably best known as the resident animator and only American in the British comedy troupe, Monty Python, released his […]

  The beginning of the New Year marks the time for resolutions, reflection, and… “Best of 2020” movie lists! One title that’s popping up a lot, even on Barak Obama’s annual roundup of personal favorites, is the Brazilian film, Bacurau. Bacurau is a unique and multifaceted work that starts off as a drama, slowly morphs […]

  The term “ammonite” refers to a group of extinct mollusks that were often protected by an outer spiral shell. Ammonite is also the title of the new film starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. Since this is the first time these two amazing actresses have shared the silver screen, it’s only natural to wonder […]

  Citizen Kane is justifiably regarded as one of the great American films. But who was the real genius behind the 1941 classic? According to David Fincher’s new film, Mank, it was not Orson Welles, but screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. Fincher, working from a script penned by his late father and peppered with liberal doses […]

  Are we fully in control of our actions? That’s the question at the allegorical heart of Possessor, the new film from writer/director Brandon Cronenberg. Possessor is Brandon’s second film since his 2012 directorial debut, Antiviral. Despite the eight-year hiatus, his unique voice feels just as assured as his father’s, the famed Canadian horror master, […]

  Not many films are made in Serbia. Fewer still get past its border. Fortunately for fans of world cinema, one of them, entitled The Load, gained international recognition at the 2018 Cannes film festival, and went on to win multiple nominations and awards around the globe. And now, it’s available on multiple streaming platforms. […]

  Despite a career that has spanned half a century, U.K. director Ken Loach is an auteur that casual filmgoers on this side of the Atlantic might not be very familiar with. That’s a shame, because even though Loach’s films are uniquely British, his themes of social inequality are more relevant than ever. The title […]

  Memorable big-screen personas are a trademark of Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmography. Mark Wahlberg as porn star Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights, Daniel Day-Lewis as the sociopathic oilman Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, and Joaquin Phoenix as the pot-smoking gumshoe “Doc” Sportello in Inherent Vice are just a few of P.T. Anderson’s creations […]

  Ethan Hawke described the 2014 film Boyhood, in which he co-starred, as “human time-lapse photography.” He was being reductive, if not entirely inaccurate. As most everyone probably knows by now, Boyhood was shot over a twelve-year period using the same cast. At the heart of this impressive achievement is Ellar Coltrane, who plays the […]

  Charlie Kaufman is one of the most original scriptwriters to emerge in the last thirty years. He’s probably best known for 1999’s Being John Malkovich, 2002’s Adaptation, and 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, earning screenplay Oscar nominations for the first two and an Oscar win for the third. He transitioned from writer […]

  When one thinks of Francis Ford Coppola, three of his masterpieces typically spring to mind: The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, and Apocalypse Now. Less mentioned, but more relevant to our post-9/11 privacy-challenged world, is 1974’s The Conversation. The Conversation earned Coppola two Oscar nominations: Best Screenplay and, because he was also the producer, […]

  When the classic film Viridiana was first released in 1961, it was promptly denounced by the Vatican and banned in Spain. Today it’s widely regarded as a surrealistic masterpiece made by one of the great artists of the 20th century, Luis Buñuel. Renowned Mexican actress Silvia Pinal stars as the titular character, a nun […]

  A young woman named Ada is in love with a man named Souleiman, even though she’s facing an arranged marriage to someone else. Unlike Ada’s betrothed, Souleiman is poor and struggling with money problems. That’s the deceptively simple premise of Atlantics, a fascinating film from 2019 with a genre-bending story that’s equal parts romance, […]

  In 2003, the New York Times reported that 40 military officers and civilian experts were invited to the Pentagon for a private screening of the 1966 Italian classic, The Battle of Algiers. In the wake of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, its purpose was to learn about the inherent moral and strategic problems associated […]

  It’s difficult to convey with mere words why the Swedish film, You, the Living, is so amusing, especially since so much of its humor is visual. A funhouse mirror’s reflection of humanity, You, the Living has no real plot per se, just a series of vignettes featuring various eccentrics coping with the absurdities of […]