Alex Nguyen

Two Phoebe Bridgers songs bookend I Used to Be Funny on a soundtrack that also includes tunes by Adrianne Lenker and MUNA, among others. While listeners of these songs can do their best to relate, they may be left wondering what exactly took place in the artists’ lives to elicit these emotions. Like these musicians, I Used to Be Funny’s protagonist takes her time to self-reflect, sorting out complex and contradictory feelings following an undisclosed harrowing experience.
Filmmaker Ally Panki...

The Dead Don’t Hurt begins with two images atypical of a Western – a knight in shining armor riding on horseback and an extended shot of a sick woman on her deathbed. Both are quiet, lack dialogue and demonstrate a patience rare in an actor-director. But this abstract filmmaking gives way to different timelines, including a romance between Holger Olsen (Viggo Mortenson), a carpenter from Denmark, and Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps), a headstrong French-Canadian who grows and sells flowers an...

On its surface, filmmaker Hong Sang-soo’s work may seem trivial. Characters captured with zoom and two shots chat about mundane topics and casually stroll through the city, often stopping just to drink soju and smoke cigarettes. This may be down to Hong’s off-the-cuff style, where he writes scenes the morning of the shoot and makes alterations throughout the day. The films also have a hint of autobiography, probing the thoughts and motivations of the cast as well as Hong himself and blending ...

What is it about the American teen road film that draws in so many? Whether it’s a classic like Almost Famous or a low-budget indie such as Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, the genre’s structure lends itself to moments of self-discovery, as characters jump from one unexpected event to another. Although the young protagonists of these films spend countless hours idly staring off into the distance of unfamiliar landscapes, singing to their favorite songs, engaging in casual chats and looking for ...

“If I could give it all back just to walk down the street with no hassle, I would,” Amy Winehouse says to her bodyguard, Andrew Morris, late into the 2015 documentary, Amy. Many of us have heard the devastating narrative tabloids and gossip columns put on her – a generational talent who quickly climbed to the pinnacle of stardom only to give it all away to drugs, alcohol and messy relationships. Filmmaker Asif Kapadia, who directed the project, makes this media assault clear with blinding cam...

After last year’s New York Film Festival screening of Evil Does Not Exist, director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi shared that he still wasn’t sure what the film meant to him. While this may be due to its unique conception as a visual piece alongside singer-songwriter Eiko Ishibashi’s live performances, it also could be because of the work’s contradictions surrounding perplexing violence amid quiet contemplation. In certain sequences, Ishibashi’s score and cinematographer Yoshio Kitagawa’s camera are cut ...

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed begins with a typical postcoital scene of a couple laying side by side in bed. Complete with a quirky, long-winded title, the film could be just one of a long list of thirtysomething coming-of-age indies where a writer draws inspiration from their life to tell a story of struggle in figuring out who one is and what one wants. But Ann (director-actor Joanna Arnow) quickly dispels this, climbing on top of her older partner, Allen (Scott C...

In a 2001 interview with The New York Times, Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who was compared to Oskar Schindler after playing a key role in organizing the evacuation of 669 mostly Jewish kids from Czechoslovakia just before the start of World War II, dodged an explanation about his efforts, saying, “Why did I do it? Why do people do different things? Some people revel in taking risks, and some go through life taking no risks at all.” James Hawes’ debut feature film, One Life, is an ex...

Birth opens with a self-proclaimed “man of science” speaking over a black screen, discussing his love for his wife as something that exists beyond logical explanation. What follows is an extended tracking shot of the same man running along a snowy trail in Central Park to Alexandre Desplat’s spellbinding score. The jogger hunches over upon arriving at a tunnel, collapses to his knees and dies of a heart attack, but the film then cuts to a scene of a baby being born, taking in its first experi...

Filmmaker Michael Mann is fascinated by the destructive masculinity within his determined protagonists. Whether they’re a professional safecracker, a police detective or black-hat hacker, he mythologizes them. Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver), the focus of Mann’s latest film, Ferrari, is perhaps the supreme example as a self-made man, one who became an accomplished race car driver in his twenties and later established his own racing team and automobile manufacturing company. People called him “Il C...

The Boy and the Heron’s Japanese title translates to How Do You Live?, a phrase that describes the themes of Hayao Miyazaki’s film more accurately and shares a name with a 1937 novel by Genzaburō Yoshino. While the connection between the two is not obvious – they share little in common in terms of plot – both works center around children learning that change is possible even in the face of losing a parent. The pair’s worldbuilding processes develop a foundation to question each boy’s morals, ...

When Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros was first announced in 2022, it was called A Family Business, a title that perhaps contained a double meaning, alluding to both the Troisgros family’s restaurant, La Maison Troisgros, and the dynamic between the patriarch and his two sons. The documentary takes place in a Michelin three-star restaurant in southern France and focuses on how the chefs create elaborate dishes for their demanding clients. Director Frederick Wiseman follows the entire preparatio...

Todd Haynes is a filmmaker who uses subversion to draw out the most intriguing details of his subject matter. Whether it’s using Barbie dolls as actors in his debut featurette, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story or portraying the life of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan with seven fictional characters in I’m Not There, he has always played with the medium of film to find the unexpected perspective. This quality allows him to explore ideas of identity, sexuality and culture in America with a grea...

Murmrr Theatre, Brooklyn, NY
10/31/23
What makes a good Halloween concert set? Is it the costumes, the crowd, the treats (sonic or otherwise), or just the vibes of the music itself? Tuesday night’s Voidz show revealed that it’s a commingling of all of the above, in which the joy of watching an energized performance comes from both the crowd and the band. The All Hallow’s Eve spirit was also accentuated by the atmosphere of the Murmrr Theatre, a small venue located in a synagogue, complete wit...

Release date: 27 October 2023
6/10
(Albums)
(Poppy)
You could say Zig is a fitting name for this album, the latest example of an artistic vision taking a step forward while simultaneously changing direction.
Ever since her debut, 2017's bubblegum pop-soaked Poppy.Computer, Poppy – real name is Moriah Rose Pereira – has undergone one transformation after another, refusing to be boxed into any single lane. Just a year later, the latter half of her sophomore effort, Am I a Girl?, mixed in nu-met...