Ioncinema

Fools Russia In: Baker’s Bangin’ Screwball Comedy At this point in his career, filmmaker Sean Baker seems to have covered all the major facets of sex work experiences. Surprisingly, and quite delightfully, he’s managed to use his favorite motifs to...

In the Name of the Father: Honore Pays Homage via Identity Crisis “I only exist when I am working on a film,” Marcello Mastroianni once said, who is, of course, resurrected through the prism of his daughter Chiara Mastorianni in...

Making it three features in a row that’ll have premiered on the Croisette, Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi saw his sophomore feature Border play like gangbusters in the Un Certain Regard section (winning the top prize via the Benicio Del Toro-led...

Forever Noor: Palud’s Schneider Moves From Being a Passenger to Saying Non Since the advent of cinema, it’s been standard operating procedure for the film industry to chew up and then discard actress when they become difficult, old or inconvenient....

Death Be Not Shroud: Cronenberg Hits Dead Ends in Sluggish Mystery The burial business serves as the battle ground for a complicated conundrum in David Cronenberg’s latest, The Shrouds, a glum examination marrying death and technology. Once again, Cronenberg’s central...

Noon Gloom: Elkoussy Mounts Shadowy, Allegorical Fantasy An industrial wasteland outside of a specific time or place provides the backdrop for Hala Elkoussy’s ingenious, but somewhat languid sophomore film East of Noon (Sharq 12). The film’s relationship to music and its...

The Sway of the Sword: Reality Bytes in Poggi/Vinel’s Bleak Online/Offline Portrait Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel‘s sophomore feature outing pulses with the heartbeat of survival, where a side passion becomes a lifeline and a main, risky hustle can be...

Wild at Heart: Serebrennikov Oversimplifies Odyssey of Soviet Dissident If one were to dilute a Molotov cocktail enough to make its destructive capabilities null and void, it would be the equivalent of Kirill Serbrennikov’s Limonov: The Ballad, an ersatz biopic...

Kiss Me or Kill Me: Guiraudie Stirs a Sinister Solace in the Backwoods Alain Guiraudie returns to the ruinous climes of rural malcontentedness with his latest, Miséricorde, which means ‘mercy.’ Of course, the meaning of mercy takes on ironic dimensions...

The Devil and Donald Trump: Abbasi Reconstructs the Rise of a Crony Capitalist Among the many wise observations written by nineteenth century Englishman Lord Acton, he noted “Great men are almost always bad men…” But what if they were just...