Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren's 20,000 Species of Bees delivers a raw peek into a summer of shame within a matriarchal family in Spain.
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Cool As Ice (1991) is an American comedy/drama film, directed by David Kellogg, written by David Stenn, and starring rapper Vanilla Ice.
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The dilemma of adaptation is whether it is necessary to adapt fully or loosely and whether the intent is to honor or update the material.
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Kristen Stewart is always interesting to watch, a preternaturally intelligent, intuitive actress, Olivier Assayas understood this earlier than most, and no discussion of Stewart’s gifts as an artist (nor indeed a discussion of how those gifts went from mocked to embraced) can overlook the two films she made with Assayas, Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) and Personal Shopper (2016).
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Ten years ago, David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. After a decade of rewatches, if It Follows is about anything, it’s about people who wanna get laid. Vibe prone, quiet, the basic plot is simple, but the film’s strength is its mournful ambiguity.
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Taking advantage of this period of artistic semi-freedom, director Karen Shakhnazarov made Zerograd in 1988, a Kafkaesque satire of life under authoritarian rule that draws attention to the surreal nature of a government actively attempting to resuscitate what was already on its way out.
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Embracing global cinema has the ability to cross cultural and cinematic barriers: how the filmmaker uses action and visual storytelling as a universal language, how the filmmaker connects their personal story to broader themes, and how the filmmaker embraces the absurdity of the world around us. In Tsui Hark’s Wicked City (1992), we have one of global cinema’s finest and oddest examples.
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Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967) remains a masterpiece of visual comedy reminding viewers of our own contemporary constructions that threaten to engulf us.
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Baby Blood transgressively counters the ever so nauseating idealized, kitsch aesthetic of pregnancy that we are accustomed to. The kitsch aesthetic of pregnancy arises out of societal expectations of what a mother should be, transforming what is a neutral occurrence into a moral imperative. The horror aesthetic in Baby Blood turns these expectations on their head, creating a narrative that encourages the pregnant character to refuse all repressive expectations of motherhood and pregnancy she encounters.
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Predator (1987) is, in its own quiet way, an actor’s movie. And then there’s the late, great Carl Weathers, whose soldier-turned-CIA-creep Dillon is the most complex character in Predator—a role that sees Weathers thread a tricky dramatic needle with skill and panache.
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Since Saltburn’s 2022 release, critics have noted it’s similarities to The Talented Mr. Ripley, often for worse.
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A deep dive into the figure of the American housewife in Todd Haynes’ films.
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One need only look at the Blockbuster hit of the past summer, Barbie, to see that the Bimbo is once again gracing our screens.
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2004 brought two prolific genre directors reanimating the Romero legacy for the 21st century, with wildly different approaches, at almost exactly the same time.
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Let Sofia Coppola make a movie about every woman who’s ever lived.
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Miles Davis’ breathtaking trumpet score elevates Louis Malle’s 1958 Elevators to the Gallows to a mid-century classic, enshrining a moment of musical evolution in film.
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Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (1995) interrogates the idea of self, collective and non-self, marrying Buddhist and Abrahamic philosophies.
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Paul Schrader’s movies follow such a clear formula that you can make a Madlibs from it. In fact, we did just that, roping in a couple of other Hyperreal contributors to imagine their own Schrader movies.
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The African Desperate is indisputably a comedy, but the visceral feelings it elicits span the spectrum. There is an uneasy undercurrent to the whole film that unmoors all of its relationships and hints at all types of violence.
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You have to know the rules to break the rules. Camp is the glowing pink tonic that keeps Death Becomes Her forever fresh all these years later.
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