Each time a classic gets adapted, there’s always the question as to why it should be told again. After all, we’ve already heard it before. The huge-nosed Cyrano loves Roxane, but he gets to express his love through the face and signature of the handsome Christian, who’s happy to use Cyrano’s wit in turn. In […]

Forlorn longing envelops Days of Being Wild, where the act of dreaming is as valuable as its actual fulfillment. “You’ll see me tonight in your dreams,” Yuddy tells Su Li-zhen on their first meeting, and indeed, this line of dialogue sets the film’s main contradiction: would you rather trap yourself in the trance-like beauty of […]

In Ken Loach’s conspiracy thriller, an American human rights activist (Frances McDormand) and a no-nonsense UK police officer (Brian Cox) work tirelessly to uncover the truth behind a suspicious death — but this is no rousing triumph of good over evil, only a bitter pill about corruption and complicity. Human rights lawyer Paul (Brad Dourif) […]

Oh, forbidden love. There are many a film centered around that intense, passionate experience, but that’s because there’s something so beautiful about love thriving despite anything that could come between the two lovers. It’s gorgeously captured in A Moment of Romance. While the melodramatic plot would be familiar, the remarkable images are not, styled with […]

That one of 1990’s scariest movies is a kids’ movie makes sense when you know it’s an adaptation of a Roald Dahl story (and directed by horror legend Nicolas Roeg, no less). The Witches dispenses with most of the trappings of kids’ films, swapping bright bubbliness and cute animal CGI for macabre thrills and uncanny […]

Before assassin protege Mathilda in Léon the Professional, humanoid Leeloo in The Fifth Element, and superpowered drug mule Lucy in her titular film, Luc Besson first discovered his love for the badass female assassin in La Femme Nikita. Scored by European synth and shot with cinematography that still looks fresh today, the action thriller delivers […]