Film Inquiry

5 days ago | filminquiry.com | Clement Tyler Obropta

Something happened to Wes Anderson. Twenty years ago, he was the new auteur on the block. With indie hits like Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums, he established a distinctive style, one of charming, well-written, complex characters; whimsical and dogmatically stylized compositions; unique color palettes; and witty scripts crackling with dry humor. He has beyond a doubt the most recognizable aesthetic style in contemporary cinema. But lately, his work has fallen off — at least for me.

1 week ago | filminquiry.com | Wilson Kwong

While The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo sees Diego Céspedes returning to Cannes with his first feature (having previously screened his short films at the festvial), Case 137 is another entry from Dominik Moll, who has competed for the Palme d’Or twice before. Both filmmakers return to La Croisette with fictionalized stories about real life issues.

1 week ago | filminquiry.com | Wilson Kwong

As films that criticize a country’s sociopolitical system, Two Prosecutors and Eddington approach this task in markedly different ways. Sergejs Loznica’s Two Prosecutors is quiet and reserved, whereas Eddington, despite not being a prototypical Ari Aster experience, is still an Ari Aster experience nonetheless.

1 week ago | filminquiry.com | Lee Jutton

The earliest complete surviving feature film directed by an Iranian woman, The Sealed Soil examines the clash between long-standing traditions and encroaching modernity in one small village, where a young woman stubbornly resists the pressure to be married off. Written and directed by Marva Nabili, the film was made without the official sanction of the pre-revolutionary Iranian government and has never been screened in its native land despite achieving critical acclaim elsewhere.

1 week ago | filminquiry.com | Wilson Kwong

The following two films playing at Cannes both explore the collective, and often generation-spanning traumas experienced by women. With A Pale View of Hills, Kei Ishikawa adapts Kazuo Ishiguro’s award winning novel, which recounts the emotional and physical traumas following the Nagasaki nuclear bomb attack. Mascha Schilinski‘s Sound of Falling, on the other hand, is entirely fictional, but explores the lingering impact of death and abuse across a few generations of women.