Like most of Nagisa Oshima’s movies, this is based on fact. In 1936 a young woman named Sada Abe was found wandering in the streets of Tokyo, apparently in a state of bliss, clutching a severed penis.

It’s a sign of how quickly things change in the movie business, but there was no such thing conceptually as a “reboot.” That idea didn’t exist when I came to look at Batman. That’s new terminology.

Outer LimitsMysterious and soulful, Virgil Vernier’s debut fiction feature has its eyes on the night skies and its feet firmly planted on concrete. Somewhere in a Paris banlieue backcountry of ...

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1. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia Sam Peckinpah, 19742. Claire’s Knee Eric Rohmer, 19703. Faces John Cassavetes, 19684. Eyes Without a Face ...

Dry Leaf, Rose of Nevada, and Levers present us with surfaces so textured and tactile that they have the physicality of a ...

“I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert,” remarks Sandy (Laura Derm) to Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) at a crucial juncture in the harrowing new David Lynch picture, Blue Velvet. We never are ...

(Darren Aronofsky, U.S., 2010)Early in Black Swan, artistic director Thomas Leroy concludes his personal synopsis of Swan Lake with the declaration that only in death does its troubled heroine find ...

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One of the few working Hollywood directors who might qualify for a degree in American Studies, Anderson has made some ...

Class canceled: are the binders empty in Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt because the professors are full of shit, or is it ...

This article appeared in the September 19, 2025 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here. Penitentiary ...