Recent InRO Pieces (Patreon)

Welp. With the official end of Cinema Scope after 25 years, In Review Online is now my main pipeline for getting my work into the wider world. (Granted, I am usually too busy to pitch stories or hit up editors, so if anyone on here has any tips or suggestions, I'd certainly appreciate it.)

Anyhow, here's some stuff I have up.

Light, Noise, Smoke, and Light, Noise, Smoke (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2023) 

[An expanded version of an earlier TIFF Wavelengths capsule]

"Like an analog equivalent to digital pixels, the film provides discrete points of light, which are themselves reinterpreted as audio, resulting in a regular alternation of bass tones. Fireworks, which are typically launched in conjunction with some popular observance, here become a celebration of our ability to see and hear, giving proof through the night that our consciousness is still there."

Explanation for Everything (Gábor Reisz, 2023) 

"One gets the sense that Reisz is attempting to make sure all the human chess pieces are on the board and recognizable before setting off the film’s central problem, and this  accounts for an opening half-hour which is mostly scene-setting. But Explanation does not justify its bloated 150-minute runtime. That’s just as long as Jude’s film, but Jude uses the broad canvas of Do Not Expect Too Much to lay out various levels of social fractiousness in order to braid them into a kind of intersectional analysis. Reisz, by contrast, simplifies events until they come across like a New York Times op-ed demanding that we really, really listen to the MAGA crowd."

Banel & Adama (Ramata-Toulaye Sy, 2023) 

"At the start of Banel & Adama, Sy’s style of blocking, framing, and mise-en-scène is relatively familiar from the history of African cinema. One sees clear echoes of Senegalese master Ousmane Sembène, as well as color patterns and spatial organizations we might associate with Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and Abderrahmane Sissako. Gradually, this organic picture of community  breaks down, and the various characters are seen grappling with the  implications. The unexpected drought, for example, is most likely attributable to climate change, but this interpretive framework is unavailable to the members of the tribe. Instead, it is seen as retribution, either from Allah for abandoning tradition or, in Banel’s  eyes, due to the insufficiency of Adama’s love."