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A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, 2021) In August 1947, when India achieved independence from British rule, the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote “Dawn of Freedom,” a lament: “This light, stained and smeared, this night‐bitten dawn/Surely this isn’t the dawn we had waited for so eagerly.” Freedom had come at a great price; the nation had been torn apart into India and Pakistan, and the Partition had triggered a near-genocidal wave of communal violence, exposing the illusions of democracy no sooner than it was declared....

Crazy Stone In another interview, the director responsible for some of the most gonzo black comedies ever made about the failures of human nature responded to Oliver Stone’s recent comments that Chinese filmmakers need to make movies about sensitive subjects by saying: “He is being belligerent . . . Some questions or areas are sensitive. Chinese films need to get back the right of free speech little by little.” It is very hard for anyone possessing even the slightest shred of cynicism in their soul to read these carefully calibrated comments without wincing....

Mostly advertising. Commercial cinema has predictably chosen not to bite the hand that feeds it, so it’s simultaneously inspiring and also kind of embarrassing to see a movie like Seijun Suzuki’s Story of Sorrow and Sadness. Rarely has a mainstream commercial release been as rabid in its attack, and as thoughtful in its critique, of our dystopian mediascape. And it should embarrass current commercial filmmakers that one of the few movies to have something intelligent to say about today’s mediascape was made almost 40 years ago....

Named after and set in this enigmatic technopole, the 41-year-old Vernier’s new feature concerns a handful of loosely connected characters left searching for emotional and spiritual renewal in this most indifferent of settings. Structured in a roundabout fashion, the film follows three primary characters—a Vietnamese woman who joins up with a local cult, a young man who falls in with a right-wing paramilitary outfit, and a young girl whose friend, Sophia, recently burned to death in a warehouse fire—and a handful of peripheral figures through a series of deceptively serene vignettes that build with a subtle cumulative poignancy....

Mulholland Drive Melissa Anderson: It is thrilling to welcome you to this conversation with Mr. Dennis Lim who has written an extraordinary critical biography of Dennis—oh, excuse me, David Lynch. Dennis Lim: It is actually about me. MA: Already the bifurcation and the merging of identities has begun in the introduction. Dennis’s book is a model of extremely elegant elucidation. He was my editor at the Village Voice from 2000 to 2005....

In White God, Mundruczó turns his camera on dogs, that dispossessed species which was once man’s best friend… Betrayed and abused by their human masters, the unwanted beasts of the film rise up and claim the respect that is due to them. Centered upon the struggle of a girl, Lili, to reunite with her beloved mixed-breed Hagen, White God is a symphony of emotion, at once succeeding as drama, revenge, and adventure film, in chronicling Hagen’s journey to rebellion....

Christmas U.S.A. One of the most beautiful American films of the postwar era, Gregory J. Markopoulos’s 1949 Christmas U.S.A., in just 13 silent minutes, expresses more about the condition of the queer American male psyche than any feature-length narrative film of the time could dream or dare. A subjective evocation of a dream world in subliminal tones, Markopoulos’s film functions as a sort of inventory of a socially repressed mind, expressing entrapment and liberation, piety and desire....

Images from End of the Century (Lucio Castro, 2019) Even the most casual follower of movies becomes a student of time. Basic filmic elements like flashbacks or flash-forwards, long takes or quick cuts, achronological storytelling or “real-time” longueurs have all made time just part of the basic language, reminding viewers of its centrality as a property in this very strange art form that only looks like it lives and breathes....

Twenty-first-century Bad Girls come in two basic kinds: the evil beauties of noir who get away with it, and the hags who scorn the niceties of grooming and sex appeal and let themselves go. Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl is an example of the transgressive beauty, easier on the eyes, but not likely to win an Academy Award. Charlize Theron in Monster, Frances McDormand in Olive Kitteridge, and now Jennifer Aniston in Cake are deglamorized harridans who earn kudos for acting, but may forfeit audience sympathy....

There isn’t a director in the world that could have staged that execution. I mean, sometimes fact is fiction, fiction is fact, truth is stranger than fiction.” In recalling the raw, rainy night, complete with a dog’s mournful howl, when Perry Smith and Dick Hickock were hanged for murdering farmer Herb Clutter and three members of his family, the Kansas director of penal institutions suggested how cinematic Truman Capote made such scenes seem in his nonfiction masterwork In Cold Blood....

“It gets better, my ass,” a world-weary fag hag quips upon seeing the eponymous Laurence’s bloodied, beaten face after a barroom brawl. This swipe at gay advice columnist Dan Savage’s highly visible awareness campaign appears amid nearly three hours of melodrama interspersed with soaring music video sequences, but comes off as neither glib nor overwrought. As the 41 percent attempted-suicide rate of trans people makes clear, the prejudices confronting trans, homeless gay youth and non-Caucasian gays are more pervasive and entrenched than those faced by their white, upper-middle-class counterparts who live in (or have the economic freedom to move to) gay-friendly metropolitan areas....

How can a film be at once derivative and singular? Like the grainy texture of its eponymous film format that exudes homey sentimentality and cinematic first steps for filmmakers of a certain age, Super 8 is distilled nostalgia. But unlike most trips down collective memory lane, it neither argues that those “simpler times” are preferable to the present nor points out their shortcomings. Rather, it’s an unabashed romp that works even for those who didn’t grow up in late-Seventies Everytown, USA....

If The King’s Speech risks being too cute by half in its depiction of how this royal without a voice comes to find one in his nation’s hour of need, Hooper and screenwriter David Seidler neatly avoid that trap by training their sights on a much bigger subject—namely, how the wireless waves of radio affected seismic changes to the nature of politics and society at large, turning public figures into performers, and narrowing the distance between classes....