If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, so too is the way to a movie-lover’s. In Ramen Shop (Ramen Teh) — the beautiful and brothy, Singaporean-Japanese-French film from director Eric Khoo…
Summer 1993 Movie Review: An Affecting Drama That Establishes the Fraught Emotions of Childhood
Childhood is a time of wonderment, hope, of dreams waiting to be fulfilled. But when we really look back on our childhoods we know this is a fantasy and that growing up often involves sadness, pain, a…
Ava Movie Review: An Empowering Entry to the Coming of Age Genre
“Your mind is already polluted,” says Ms. Dehkhoda, the school principal, to a class of young Iranian girls. All they can do is nod while being punished for a crime they didn’t even commit: having sex…
Tehran Taboo Movie Review
Tehran Taboo opens with a man picking up a prostitute, Pari (Elmira Rafizadeh), and her son, Elias, in his car. While Pari is giving her client a blowjob (with Elias in the backseat), he crashes his c…
Ranking the films of master director Guillermo Del Toro
Many words have been tossed around to describe Guillermo Del Toro’s work such as “creepy” or “bizarre”, but we prefer “visionary.” He’s established himself as a master of horror just by doing w…
Movie Review: Pop Aye
“You don’t look like the type who’d be traveling with an elephant,” says a sympathetic stranger in the opening scene of Pop Aye (not to be confused with Robert Altman’s 1980 failed attempt to pay trib…