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Sep 23, 2024 | 
4rfv.com | Matthew Eng
Carol Kane, Between the Temples (photo by Presley Ann/Shutterstock for Sundance)By Matthew EngThere's a scene early in Nathan Silver's Between the Temples where Ben (Jason Schwartzman), a grieving cantor unable to sing, describes Carla (Carol Kane), his grade-school music teacher who also happens to be his newest and unlikeliest bat mitzvah student, as a different kind of funny.
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Sep 23, 2024 | 
sundance.org | Bailey Pennick |Matthew Eng
Carol Kane, “Between the Temples” (photo by Presley Ann/Shutterstock for Sundance) By Matthew Eng There’s a scene early in Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples where Ben (Jason Schwartzman), a grieving cantor unable to sing, describes Carla (Carol Kane), his grade-school music teacher who also happens to be his newest and unlikeliest bat mitzvah student, as “a different kind of funny.” It’s an apt way to describe the multifaceted delights of Kane’s performance in this odd-couple comedy, now in...
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Feb 26, 2024 | 
sundance.org | Bailey Pennick |Matthew Eng
Parting Glances. 1986. USA. Written and Directed by Bill Sherwood. Courtesy First Run Features By Matthew EngParting Glances is at once an introduction and a valediction.
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Oct 12, 2023 | 
reverseshot.org | Matthew Eng
Bad Idea, Right? By Matthew Eng NYFF 2023: Last Summer Dir. Catherine Breillat, France/Norway, Sideshow/Janus Films Certain faces immediately invite trust. The actress Léa Drucker possesses such a face, one likely familiar to habitual viewers of French cinema who may have cottoned to her over the last few years in films by Lukas Dhont, Axelle Ropert, and Xavier Legrand, the latter of whom directed her César-winning performance as a menaced divorcée in Custody (2017).
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Oct 5, 2023 | 
reverseshot.org | Matthew Eng
You Make Me Feel Mighty Real By Matthew Eng NYFF 2023: Foe Dir. Garth Davis, U.S./Australia/UK, MGM [The following review contains major plot spoilers.] Looking at Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan should never feel like a chore. In Foe, the Australian writer-director Garth Davis miscasts two of Ireland’s brightest exports as a Midwestern husband and wife struggling to hold down their battered, inherited homestead in the year 2065.
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Sep 6, 2023 | 
hazlitt.net | Mayukh Sen |Matthew Eng |Abhrajyoti Chakraborty |Naomi Skwarna
Welcome to the first in “Brown Hollywood,” a three-part series of essays by Mayukh Sen exploring undertold stories of South Asian performers in Hollywood’s Golden Age. William Henry Pratt wasn’t much like the other boys at school. Growing up in London during the late nineteenth century, he had a lisp, a stammer, and a bow-legged gait that made him a honeypot for bullies. He appeared graven-faced in photographs, always the odd one out.
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Aug 29, 2023 | 
reverseshot.org | Matthew Eng
What the World Needs Now By Matthew Eng Fremont Dir. Babak Jalali, U.S., Music Box Films At the heart of Babak Jalali’s wistful comedy Fremont is a sleepless woman. Donya (Anaita Wali Zada), an Afghan refugee, has resettled in the Bay Area city of the title after working as a translator for U.S. armed forces in her native Kabul.
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Aug 9, 2023 | 
hazlitt.net | Matthew Eng |Abhrajyoti Chakraborty |Lana Hall |Matthew Braga
A middle-aged Black woman sits in the reception area of a Los Angeles ER, weary yet serene. She’s waiting to be admitted, having sliced her hand on a rusty knife after breaking up a battle to the death between her two adult sons and, in so doing, pre-empting her family’s demise. Her heedful eyes meet those of a young Black girl in overalls and braids on the other side of the room.
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Aug 3, 2023 | 
reverseshot.org | Matthew Eng
Hungry Hearts By Matthew Eng Passages Dir. Ira Sachs, France/Germany, MUBI It begins on a dance floor. She is a teacher who has been hanging around a film set, hooking up with the cute clapperboard guy. He is a director more evidently skilled in the art of emotional terrorism. But she doesn’t know that—at least not yet. For now, they are two sweaty, steady bodies cavorting at the shoot’s wrap party.
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Jul 5, 2023 | 
eif.co.uk | Matthew Eng
Skip to main contentA stylish deadpan dramedy about an insomniac Afghan woman unable to dream the American dream. About Programme Booking info Dates and times Dir. Babak Jalali / United States / 2023 / English, Cantonese, Dari with English subtitlesTwenty-something Donya (Anaita Wali Zada) spends her days working at a fortune cookie factory and her nights wide awake battling insomnia.
