Jessica Hausner’s Club Zero: Starving for Meaning
Club Zero mirrors the reality of consumer culture, where influencers, self-help coaches, and wellness gurus promote ideologies that conveniently align with products they sell.
Out of place, out of time, Emily Louisa Millan Eide’s The Renaissance Prince (2024) is so today
«William Heimdal is larger than life, a strange admixture of arrogance and nagging self-doubt, of maturity beyond his years and an almost childish naivety.»
«I’m no past and all future, see? And I like it that way»: On Gilda (1946), its Past as a Regressive Noir Oddity & Future as a Reclaimed Queer Classic
Gilda is the queerest heterosexual film ever committed to celluloid. Yes, this supreme case study of the male gaze is, in fact, very, very gay.
Psychological Landscapes: The Visual Environment in Joachim Trier’s Cinema and Its Parallels in Agnès Varda’s Films
Joachim Trier’s cinematic technique of connecting character psychology with visual environments has a meaningful lineage that can be traced back to one of the pioneers of the French New Wave: Agnès Varda.
A painkiller for both of us – Dag Johan Haugerud’s Love is a quietly sensational trilogy entry
Venice 2024: Like going back to a place you cherish, a second trip to Dag Johan Haugerud’s Oslo makes for a reinvigorating, heart-tugging cinema experience, while also bringing his ongoing trilogy into sharp focus for the first time.
On the Entitled Pleasures of Misbehaviour: Danny Boyle Digs Deep in Shallow Grave
It paid off to be ambitious: Shallow Grave has a surprising amount of plates spinning despite being a debut, or a mere crime thriller. It’s a pretty good lesson in what one can achieve with little money but a lot of will to punch above one’s weight.
Kill Everyone Now: the Abject Strikes Back in John Waters’ Pink Flamingos (1972)
Pink Flamingos is a curiosity from a truly specific time and place, and it’s not as gratuitous as you might expect.
Forget your stupid Dad: M. Night Shyamalan’s superhuman escapism in Trap
Great entertainment is provided in an audacious film where a virtuoso, multi-layered performance by Josh Hartnett shall seduce us into accepting Trap as an arena of pure playfulness.
Impressions of a lucky strike: Woody Allen’s Coup de chance
Woody Allen’s work is most often praised for witty dialogues and clever plots but this article might surprise you, as it explores an elegant visual stylist, confidently working with meaningful imagery, echoes and motifs.
Daniele Luchetti’s Confidenza let’s slip love’s fearful, darker side
KVIFF 2024: Confidenza has a remarkable capacity to challenge spectators to push their own boundaries and rethink their sense of self and social connection.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin: Seven towards the apocalypse
While waiting for Trap, have a look at the director’s previous film, which powerfully taps into highly topical, online-fuelled phenomena like irreconcilable world views, gaslighting and conspiracy theories.
Lilja Ingolfdottir’s debut feature Elskling is so good, we just have to pull it apart!
KVIFF 2024: On the one hand, Lilja Ingolfdottir’s Elskling («Loveable») provides a remarkably vivid case-study of mixed-up, complex and always flawed humanity. On the other, it shows us convincingly how some of the most destructive and self-destructive tendencies might be reined in.