Dusty Wright's Culture Catch - Smart Pop Culture, Video & Audio podcasts, Written Reviews in the Arts & Entertainment

“Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain” But My Sister?

Brandon Judell — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 02:37:29 +0000

“Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain” But My Sister? Brandon Judell November 3, 2025 - 21:37

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“What can I say?” asks Vittoria (Monica Vitti) of her lover in Michelangelo Antonioni L’Eclisse (1962). “There are times when holding a needle and thread, or a book, or a man, it’s all the same to me.”

After DVD-ing five of the maestro’s offerings in a rather brief period, I can confidently note that no one can surpass Antonioni when it comes to celebrating romantic and social dislocation in world that might just end when you turn the corner. As for loving, supportive families, gondola elsewhere,

But if the latter is your need, try out writer/director Oscar Ruiz Navia’s unexpectedly comforting 15-minute docu-short, “Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain”(“Va Se Ven Los Tigres En La Luvia”) that was showcased at this year’s New York Film Festival. Dealing with different sorts of dislocations . . . those of space. . . of time . . . of possibilities, the film bears up to numberless viewings, on each occasion rewarding you with new interpretations, often those intended by the director and others sired by your psyche. Consider “Tigers” a visual poem of sorts. Or a cinematic Rorschach test.

The short is comprised of discovered home movies shot over decades in Columbia, scenes now intercut with current Montreal locales where Navia relocated to write and study film. There are also voiceovers including one supplied by a Canadian spirit guide and there’s some piano tinkling by children letting loose on the ivories.

Please note that “Tigers” is a memorial to the director’s sister, Ana Maria Ruiz Navia, who died in 2023 at the age of 37.

“Ana Maria Ruiz Navia (whose nickname was Anita) used to be not only my sister but my producer,” Oscar emailed me. “We were partners at Contravía Films, our company, even as she got cancer and struggled with this illness. At the end, after she unfortunately passed away, I decided to make a movie about my loss and my new arrival in Montreal, where I moved to start a new chapter of my life. I had collected many WhatsApp voice messages in the last two years. This is how I started to create this film.”

“Tigers” opens with various static shots of barren railroad tracks in Montreal, although we hear the rumble of ghost trains going by. (Are those the disembodied sounds of past journeys?) Then appear various ill-kempt streets also devoid of the living.

“I shot all the places surrounding my current apartment, literally places in my neighborhood,” Oscar recalls “The juxtaposition [with the footage of my family and the audio] is because I moved to Montreal when Anita passed. So I had to deal with deep grief when I just arrived in a new country. I wanted to show my present throughout with image . . . and my past-memory throughout with sound.”

Cinematographer Charles Duquet, who along with Pablo Álvarez-Mesa, shot Tigers, added in a separate email: “The concept behind the location choices was simple. Since the beginning of his stay in Montreal, Oscar paid attention to the places he'd walk by every day. Since the passing of his sister, these public places also became spaces of mourning. Our initial goal was to portray these places with delicate and fixed images, gathering material that would allow him the freedom to find further meaning with his sound recordings and archives. During the shoot, Oscar and I would walk the city together and get to know each other through discussions about family, filmmaking and Montreal seasons. It was somewhat close to what we call in French a déambulation, a walk without a precise goal, or in this case a fixed shot list. Oscar had places he wanted to film, but the way we would film them was decided in the moment, depending on the weather, the time of day or whether there would be people (or not).”

Over one such shot taken when the grounded autumn leaves already had lost their colors, we hear Anita for the first time: “Well, my pretties. I’m gonna sleep now. I’m here with my mum. She is already asleep. I love you all very much and have a good rest.”

We afterward find ourselves at the Le Jardin de Sculptures Crépuscule (the Twilight Sculpture Garden). Rusted artwork atop a dozen or so concrete bases are easily mistakable at first glance to be tombstones for the creatively dead.

Back to the past: the 14-year-old Anita is playing joyfully with a movie camera. She shoots herself in the mirror and swerves past the toilet into another room with family photos and paintings. Next it’s into her father’s office where Oscar is sitting at the desk.

She’s asked to shoot a closeup. “What’s a closeup?” Anita quickly learns and begins filming Oscar’s shoes and the mole on his arm and a dog with ticks. Great careers have often begun with home movies. Ask Spielberg.

Minutes later or earlier, the linear is forsaken here, the adult Anita’s leaves a tear-filled chat on Oscar’s phone, calling him by his nickname: “Hey, Papeto, today I got my medical results. The disease is progressing negatively . . . However, the good thing is that I have full faith and I will do my best to recover. Let’s go for it.”

Skip to an amusement park, where all the siblings are together chatting about roller coasters. Older sister Carmen is at that moment behind the camera when she asks her sister who is then decades away from cancer: “Anita, what do you want to say for posterity?”

Oscar chimes in: “Everything is for posterity.”

Finally, Marie-France, the aforementioned medium, arrives in voice only at the end of “Tigers.”. “This is a real recording of when I visited her when I just arrived in Montreal,” Oscar wrote. “We spoke in English because at the time my French was not the best. Marie-France unfortunately also passed away two months ago. She connected me with Anita when reading the tarot.”

Anita had not deserted Oscar, Marie-France discovered: “Anita says, ‘I will come during your sleep and will help your heart to be more happy. . . Why did Anita leave so early? Thirty is not a very old age. Actually, she has another reincarnation ready so she had to leave early to rest. She will rest most probably thirty to forty years which is nothing there.”

Then Anita will come back and wouldn’t it be something if she in her new persona gets to view hers former self in “Tigers.” Oscar should have chimed in, “Everything is for posterity, especially the gift of film.”

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Makers Mark

Millree Hughes — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 01:51:41 +0000

Makers Mark Millree Hughes October 31, 2025 - 21:51

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Stretch, Hold, Release
Picture Theory at 548 West 28th Street, NYC

The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition." - Walter Benjamin

AI is not regarded as a tool by artists the way the tools of the past were: burnt willow sticks, polished lenses, and Photoshop, because it’s seen as a threat to the artist’s existence.

Walter Benjamin's "Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is in full flow. Music, images, and books are being created to order by producers. Soon, just as Spotify is making its milquetoast music, Netflix wants to generate ambient, half-digested TV using AI and other means. It will be created according to the digitally tracked needs of the public in the service of the corporation. Mechanical Reproduction intends to obliterate the ‘who’ of art making.

Craft-based art returns the focus to the object—how it was made, where it was made, and by whom it was made.

At Picture Theory, the gallerist Rebekah Kim has curated a show of craft-based art called "Stretch, Hold, Release."

The relationship of the artist to where they are from is significant here. Unhitching art from its tethering post of origin has been useful for corporate-made content. It wants to make a global product from a global culture. The specifics of the place make it harder to control.

Luis Emilio Romero paints Guatemalan fabrics, going as far as to imitate the raised stitch in paint. They remind me of Scottish Tartan, '60s hard-edge abstraction, and city plans. However, here, all the shapes and colors that comprise a traditional woven piece can refer to animal, plant, or cosmological patterns. It’s a metaphor for the Mayan worldview.

Lior Moran is an Israeli artist, raised in a country partly populated by people who came there because they had to hide their religion, now caught in a terrible darkness where the objectives on both sides are hidden. He takes found objects or makes sculptures that he hides under a velvet canvas. He shaves off the protruding planes, creating an inverse shadow. He uses twilight colors in his work. They are then bound along the side with a flesh coloured belt that sometimes has a buckle, like a bundle wrapped for a hurried exit.

The multiple handles and thick knotted rope, the little pinafores that she makes for her examinations of Peruvian pottery, draw attention to the utilitarian character of Terumi Sato’s own Japanese ceramic traditions.

Elisa Lutteral is an Argentinian artist born in New York. She is represented here by hanging lengths of woolen fabric with a glove at each end. In the video, the glove-wearing performers are positioned in a specific location from the camera's perspective. The resulting braid is achieved by their movements around each other. It’s an improvised group performance of one of the first crafts that we learn as children.

JaLeel Porcha’s contribution is the least didactic in the group. It’s a deep-pile hanging rug. It appears to represent a clearing in the woods, featuring two black children and a pond, perhaps. He’s influenced by the illustrators of classic American children’s books. The nostalgic quality is enhanced by being a knitted piece, which adds an ironic element to its shadowy mood.

An object that has only been created by hands and shows ´where’ and ‘when’ it is made and ‘what’ it is made from is crucial to understanding ‘what’ it is. Without these interrogatives being answered, it probably isn’t Art at all.

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That Face And Its Consequences

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 17:25:01 +0000

That Face And Its Consequences Chet Kozlowski October 27, 2025 - 13:25

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drama

Before we see Hedda’s face, we see her in her surroundings. Under the shadows of night, she emerges from a dark lake, shedding rocks from her pockets. From a distance, we watch her run into a magnificent mansion. Inside, dwarfed by the size of the rooms, she darts up the stairs to her boudoir, dresses for a ball, then stalks through the various rooms. Preparations are underway for a grand party, and she’s making sure everything is right. We see her in a long shot, then through frosted glass. Finally, she settles down, and we see her face in a mirror. And what a face it is.

Hedda is played by Tessa Thompson, an actress best known as Valkyrie in the Thor movies and Avengers: Endgame. And that’s quite a face she has: big eyes, eyebrows like knives, high cheekbones—the beautiful face of sheer malevolence.

Let’s pause here to praise Ms. Thompson for having the cajónes to play Hedda. Hedda is based on Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play Hedda Gabler. Ibsen is known as the Father of Realism, portraying the cruelties of striving and privilege in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. He wrote complex female figures (see also Nora in A Doll’s House), which presaged a new social order. Hedda Gabler is one of the most coveted roles in theater. The part requires range, and Ms. Thompson has that. She makes Hedda headstrong, conniving, with a finger in every pot.

The plot in a nutshell: Hedda (Tessa Thompson) has married George (Tom Bateman), whom she doesn’t love, for his social status. To maintain that status, George must get a professorship at a prestigious university; otherwise lose everything. Hedda throws a lavish party to lure Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch) to hire her husband. George’s chief competition is his former colleague Eilert, who, newly sober, has written a book that will tip the scales. He has a muse and savior in Mousey Thea (Imogen Poots), who is also in attendance. Turns out Eilert, besides being George’s former colleague, is also Hedda’s former lover. And so, busy Hedda contrives to a) relieve Elbert of his sobriety and b) steal the prized manuscript and destroy it.

While we’re talking cajónes, let’s praise Nia Costa, the director, also of the MCU (The Marvels). She approaches this material with ferocity and mixes us a primal stew of psychological conflict.

Ms. Costa dutifully credits Ibsen as the primary writer, herself as the second, and has made some radical revisions to the story. First, Hedda is a woman of color, her exoticism scandalous yet arousing to her guests. She conducts a not-so-secret affair with Judge Brack (Nicolas Pinnock), the only person of African descent in attendance, under her husband’s nose.

The second change: Elert, George’s rival, is now Eileen, a lesbian and former lover of Hedda’s, played expertly by Nina Hoss, memorable as Cate Blanchett’s lesbian lover in the film Tår. Eileen is stately and reserved. She wavers between domesticity and the wild mind under which she wrote the book (the scene in which she crashes an all-boys meeting in the library is amazing). Thea (Imogen Poots), her confidante and keeper, has left her husband for this woman, this artist. She becomes aware of and resolves to foil Hedda’s plan of destruction. Thea calls her out, and Hedda cattily counters: “Do you resent fun, you miserable creature?”

My notes call Hedda a “hip-hop Downton Abbey,” even though no hip-hop is heard (more about the soundtrack in a minute). The film has hip-hop’s energy: the camera swoops and careens amongst the guests at the party. Composer Hildur Guonadóttir punctuates the action and Hedda’s scheming with an insistent drum tattoo. The kinetic choreography of Steadicam and actor blocking really should be seen on the big screen to appreciate. That’s by cinematographer Sean Bobbit and editor Jacob Schulsinger under Ms. Costa’s direction. A dance sequence, with Hedda initiating couplings, comes close to the one in Sinners, a riveting tableau of figures in motion.

Hedda’s psychology goes deep. The theme of identity runs under everything. She proclaims when cornered, “Sometimes I can’t help myself. I just do things.” Who is this Hedda? Who is Eileen, and what do they mean to each other? What happens to Hedda once she seeks to fuck things up? “Before you were domesticated, you were like fire.” Mirrors are everywhere, and much is made of dressing and disrobing, constant costume changes, switching selves (Costume designer Lindsay Pugh keeps things ornate but not ostentatious).

But that face. So much of it is about that face. It’s not a spoiler to tell you we end with a stunning closeup of Hedda’s amazing face. And then... the screen goes black. And up over the closing credits comes the disco beat of Roxy Music’s Love is the Drug. Say what? Ending with such an overused song is easy irony. It’s the one discordant note in a whirlwind of a movie. Why does Ms. Costa give us an intelligent and absorbing film, then wink at us, telling us not to take it seriously?

Hedda. Directed by Nia Costa. 2025. From Amazon MGM Studios. Runtime 107 minutes. In theaters and on Prime Video.

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Kid in the Digital World

Robert Cochrane — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 01:34:53 +0000

Kid in the Digital World Robert Cochrane October 20, 2025 - 21:34

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Music Review

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singer songwriter

JOHN HOWARD: Kid In A Big World Prof Stoned Remaster (Bandcamp)

John Howard's auspicious debut, Kid In A Big World, has been around for fifty years and, as such, deserves some aspect of acknowledgement. A belated celebration cum reassessment in the form of an impeccable remastering via the diligent hands and vigilant ears of the redoubtable Prof Stoned, a man who can gild the most fragile and perfect of artifacts. Like a freshly repolished and reset gem, the album now glints and glitters in the fresh light of recent days.

It is salient to mention that for nigh on thirty years the LP was a dump-bin resident, rescued by the discerning on account of the stylish sleeve image of an immaculately attired young dude in a suitably sharp suit with its title and artist's name proclaimed by elegant typography. All that changed two decades ago when it was reissued to the kind of acclaim a forgotten artist might only ever dream longingly of, as a lost baroque late-glam masterpiece.

First time around, it had sold a respectable 15,000 units, but CBS rejected the follow-up, and its successor was recorded with the legendary Biddu as not being sufficiently commercial. A brace of eminently catchy singles, "Goodbye Suzie" and "Family Man," failed to find favour on the BBC playlists; the first was deemed too depressing for having suicide as a theme, whilst the second was considered anti-women. Both reasons are transparently and ridiculously spurious. Homophobia was rather trendy and acceptable in the seventies, and despite John Howard not creating the sort of antagonistic lavender wave his direct contemporary Jobriath had, and paid dearly for doing so, his mere appearance and style were easily read by the disapproving. With no hit single, his bigger splash dissipated, and despite staggering on for a few more years with several singles that went nowhere, Howard developed a successful career in A&R. His dreams of stardom were consigned to the attic of memory. Those trials and tribulations are readably and humorously annotated in three delightful volumes of autobiography.

But what of his fifty-year-old debut? It was and remains a perfect mission statement, a stylish and accomplished affair that promised much in the shape of itself and of things to come. Considered but never contrived. Poised but never precious, it has aged like a wine of exceptional vintage and betrays little of time having passed. What Prof Stoned has achieved is a form of digital Botox. A freshening up that gives greater clarity to the artistry within. There have always been the inevitable lazy comparisons to Elton John on account of his use of piano, but Howard never resorts to a faux American whine, his style being eloquently English with a nod and sly wink to the theatrical, just as Jobriath harnessed aspects of Old Hollywood and vaudeville. A cross between Laura Nyro in cahoots with Noel Coward, with an Aladdin Sane lightning bolt across his face, imbued with shades and tones of Hunk Dory, sets the sonic tone. As do the equally English delicacies of Philip Goodhand-Tait, or the American sentiments of Randy Newman.

Breathe in the exquisite and languid air of "Goodbye Suzie," indulge in the discreet decadence of 'Guess Who's Coming To Dinner' or the divine flights of ecstasy within "Missing Key," and you have entered a perfectly realised world curated and created by a supremely talented kid in his early twenties. From Palm Court effeteness to discreet Glam affections, this is a beautiful work from then that remains supremely relevant to now. A tremendous shame persists that it has yet to earn its rightful place in the pantheon of treasured musical accomplishments of the seventies and beyond.

Although only presently available as a download, this impeccable exercise in aural renovation deserves a vinyl release. I would love to see a gatefold affair that utilises the rejected photographs of John in a scarlet fedora, bookended by a beautiful pair of Afghan hounds. Those images caused the respectably suited and booted executives at CBS to clutch their imaginary pearls in outraged horror, banning their use, and then demanding that a more acceptable set of shots be undertaken.

The kid of those days has aged into the Walt Whitman of Glam with a glorious cascade of albums from the past two decades. A perfect maker-upper for the loss of lost time, but this return to the beginning is an absolute treat for the uninitiated and a timely enhancement for those already aware of the kid in the big world. It will prove to be a luxurious punishment of riches.

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An Oversized Gun, a Prick of a Needle

Angel Barber — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:34:17 +0000

An Oversized Gun, a Prick of a Needle Angel Barber October 15, 2025 - 20:34

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Director Zachary Cregger has solidified his place in the canon of affectionately (if not pretentiously) named “elevated horror.” He inverts horror conventions, rejecting linearity by using multiple perspectives, timelines, and tonal registers to craft stories. Barbarian (2022) stages its horrors in one location: a rundown house in Detroit, Michigan. The standard horror of the first act escalates into sequences of grotesque lactation and multi-generational incest. Cregger’s expertise is pacing; he uses shocking moments of violence and humor to make chaos orderly. The cohesion of his debut is owed at least in part to the rigid spine of a central location.

With his follow-up, Cregger’s worldwide hit Weapons (over $266 million at the box office), his ambitions have expanded beyond the four walls of a single house to the psychological architecture of an entire town. The film begins with the disembodied narration of a little girl. She vocalizes the inciting incident: At 2:17 AM, a class of seventeen schoolchildren got out of their beds and ran outside into the darkness, never to be seen again. Cregger focuses on the uniformity of each child's actions, soundtracked to “Beware of Darkness” by George Harrison.

The first thirty minutes of the film evoke Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011), an icy thriller, where the residents of a town forgo the maxim “innocent until proven guilty.” In Weapons, the character at the mercy of these pitchforks is Justine, played by Julia Garner (Ozark). Justine is a flawed character who suffers from a pervasive lack of boundaries. Garner’s charisma and Cregger's ability to write fully dimensional characters prevent Justine from being totally insufferable.

Justine is only one of the deeply flawed characters whose perspectives Cregger gives us access to. We cycle through a neglectful father, a violent cop, a raving vagrant, and a dispassionate principal. The lone child who did not vanish from the classroom hovers at the center, and may know more than he lets on about the disappearance. There is fault to go around in this town; Cregger is much more interested in collective guilt than solving the mystery.

So… why exactly do these children disappear? While Cregger does a good job at linking these disparate stories into a satisfying narrative, if your only concern is solving the central mystery, you will be disappointed in the film. The most vibrant moments come from the characters and how their distinct lives intertwine – completely separate from the supposed A-plot of the story. The dispassioned principal eats an entire row of hotdogs with his husband while wearing matching Disney shirts. Justine makes a beeline for the vodka aisle, only to be violently confronted by an ex's girlfriend she intentionally homewrecked. After being pricked by a heroin needle, the cop asks the raving vagrant, “Do you have AIDS?” It’s moments like these–rife with humor and horror–that define the film, confirmed by the irreverence with which Cregger treats the ending.

For the first 100 minutes, Cregger is a surgeon who treats the balance between absurd comedy and terrifying horror with utmost precision. The balls-to-the-wall ending sequence reads as the punchline in an overlong Adult Swim television skit. It works. Ending Weapons on such an irreverent note may be one of the most inventive choices of Cregger’s career.

Weapons is about the texture of the town. Cregger dedicates time to exploring addiction, infidelity, homelessness, and the overarching idea that at some specific point in time, something went terribly wrong. Weapons is about real and imagined fears of degeneracy.

The largest weapon is seen in a dream sequence. A man follows his child into a house. Above them is an impossibly large gun that reads “2:17 AM.” It is the only gun in the film. This remains central to understanding the film. It is about Weapons. The instruments used to inflict harm on others. The instruments that lead to the decay of a society. The instruments that make the ending feel disturbingly comedic and painfully appropriate.

Cregger has succeeded at balancing lofty ideas, shifting tones, and breakneck pacing into an enjoyable film. It’s the second time he’s climbed this mountain; he’s proven he is not a fluke. - Angel Barber

Mr. Barber is a writer and filmmaker based in New York City interested in the relationship between tone, structure, and collapse in modern cinema.

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Zombies and Ghost Dogs and Sirens, Oh My

Chet Kozlowski — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:13:50 +0000

Zombies and Ghost Dogs and Sirens, Oh My Chet Kozlowski October 15, 2025 - 20:13

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horror

These new thrillers straddle the horror genre and are now available on VOD and other digital platforms.

Forgive Us All

Directed by Jordana Stott

2025. Runtime 93 minutes.

Forgive Us All is being marketed as a post-apocalyptic zombie picture, but it’s a western at heart, substituting the Undead for Injuns.

In the remote New Zealand mountains, self-reliant Rory (Lily Sullivan) and her cantankerous dad Otto (Richard Roxburgh) live in seclusion and work their farm, fully aware that the world outside has gone to shit. Two years earlier, Rory lost her young daughter to a virus that has ravaged the world, turning normies into flesh-eating cannibals. “We’re surviving,” Otto tells Rory. “What are we surviving for?” comes the reply.

The arrival of mysterious stranger Noah (Lance Giles), pursued by bad guys led by Logan (Callan Mulvey), sets the drama in motion. Who’s been infected, who’s righteous, who lays claim to the last bastion of civilization becomes the issue, all aware that on the fringes stalk the insensate scourge of man’s destruction.

Forgive Us All is an actor’s production: the principals wear two hats, in front of the camera and as producers. This is a DIY trend; every movie is an actors’ reel. In some cases, it affords a route for filmmakers, now that the studios are collapsing.

Forgive Us All’s budget is low, evidenced by how clean everything is, a condition DP Peter McCaffrey tries to muddle with somber digital tints. The mournful mountain music score is provided by Brandon Roberts. The movie adds nothing to the zombie mythos; it plays by the rules established by other movies. The walkers are always on the fringes, but the action is so sloooow you often forget they’re even there.

The pleasure comes from the performances. Lily Sullivan is rugged and sexy as Rory, and Callan Mulvey imbues Logan with a suitable creepiness. It’s especially good to see Richard Roxburgh, memorable from the TV series Rake, apply his calm, emotive presence. He’s perfect as the coot. He even knows the proper way to take off a cowboy hat, by the brim and not the crown.

The Drowned

Directed by Samuel Clemens

2025. Runtime 90 minutes.

Three men arrive at a remote seaside house to retrieve a priceless painting they’ve heisted. We, the viewers, arrive in medias res, after the robbery, and after a cohort of theirs has delivered the painting, rolled in a canister, and possibly suffered a terrible fate. The house is empty, there’s a bucket of blood in the closet, and the beach is strewn with body parts, which may or may not belong to their accomplice.

The three can’t agree on how to proceed, and tensions boil when three beautiful women inexplicably wash up on the shore. One must be CPR’d after drowning, and they are all brought into the house. Mind games ensue, the women circling and seducing the criminals. The thieves speak in code and non sequiturs—a language only they know, because they’re the only ones who know what they’re doing there.

The Drowned sports good acting all around, the thieves played by Alan Calton, Michelangelo Fortuzzi, and Dominic Vulliamy, and the sirens played by Lily Catalifo, Lara Lemon, and Sandrine Salyéres.

Fun fact: the director, Samuel Clemens, is the son of Brian Clemens—who wrote and produced the 1960s TV series The Avengers—and is the great-great-great-nephew of Mark Twain.

The Drowned has literary ambitions, woven with references to Greek mythology, most notably The Odyssey. The allusions are subtle but, cumulatively, make for an interesting, trance-like drama. Put logic aside and just let it wash over you, and The Drowned is an offbeat, hallucinatory entertainment.

Last Stop Rocafort St.

Directed by Luis Prieto

2024. Runtime 89 minutes.

Rocafort Station is a stop on the Barcelona subway, notorious as a suicide site. Young Laura (Natalia Azahara) has been assigned to manage it and immediately encounters a ghost who launches her on a quest to solve its riddle. She enlists an alcoholic ex-cop (Javier Gutiérrez) who has written about his experience with the Yellow Line Killer, a case that he worked twenty years earlier, had tragic consequences, and which sent him around the bend. Now he reluctantly looks back at it with Laura’s urging, uncovering shades of occultism, and a warning that if or when you encounter the specter of The Ghost Dog, you join the ranks of the damned.

Last Stop Rocafort St. is a suspenseful procedural, making the most of that creepy underworld that exists between stations in any subway system. Ms. Azahara and Mr. Gutiérrez make an unlikely yet compelling team, piling up clues that lead to a dramatic climax. They are joined in the cast by Valéria Sorolla as Laura’s incidental lesbian lover, Cris.

Luis Prieto is becoming an impresario of horror-based thrillers. Trained in the USA, Mr. Prieto returned to Spain and has since racked up an impressive resumé of feature films there and in the States, including a remake of Refn’s Pusher (2012), Kidnap (2017) with Halle Berry, White Lines (2020), plus TV series and Netflix originals. Last Stop Rocafort St. is his latest.

Confident storytelling by Mr. Prieto, clever staging, engrossing characters, and thoughtful scares distinguish Last Stop Rocafort St. as an entertainment. In Spanish with English subtitles.

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The New York Art World Rebooted

Mary Hrbacek — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 01:54:55 +0000

The New York Art World Rebooted Mary Hrbacek October 9, 2025 - 21:54

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Art Review

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painter

Nathaniel Mary Quinn Study for Grange Copeland, 2025 Oil paint and gouache on linen canvas stretched over wood panel 18 x 15 inc

Gagosian Gallery: Nathaniel Mary Quinn - Echoes from Copeland (9/10–10/25/2025)

Hauser and Wirth: Ambera Wellmann - Darkling (9/5 – 10/25/2025)

Company: Ambera Wellmann - One thousand Emotions (9/5 – 10/25/2025)

Marianne Boesky Gallery: Celeste Rapone - Some Weather (9/4 – 10/18/2025)

Nathaniel Mary Quinn explores personal, family, and historic narratives in twelve intense new oil and oil pastel paintings on linen, where he uncompromisingly excavates pictorial planes in his search below surfaces for the underlying, intrinsic, emotionally charged forms that spur and motivate his life and his art. His meticulous, exquisitely composed vision displays a strong formal connection to the methods employed by Francis Bacon, while also delving deeply into the visceral underpinnings of the personalities he constructs and describes. This is the primary focus of the complex, highly empathetic structures that build the psychological force that each image conveys. Quinn’s mastery of the paint medium and its many possibilities provides a level of expertise that has long been scarce in contemporary art. The intimate works are forcefully compelling and meaningful. Their complexity draws viewers into the process of painting, assaulting their senses to make them experience otherwise subconscious or unexpected feelings.

Quinn’s ability to submerge the main subjects in a revealing context accentuates their truth on a number of levels in their attempts to escape racism, in their efforts to flee poverty in rural and urban America, and in their desire to put the slave heritage that haunts their quest for freedom and equality behind them. His search for self-realization involves a closer look at the circumstances of his dysfunctional family members. The hope and possibility of redemption is inspired by the novel “The Third Life of Grange Copeland,” by Alice Walters.

Quinn’s dynamic blue, red, and yellow hues activate the central themes of his plots to a level of power that sensually engulfs the viewer. The combination of black and white within the maze of the facial forms and features sets the stage for deep introspection and personal tandem feelings one may relate to in one’s own family history and experience. Quinn explores the emotional pain frequently released through the painting process by creating fierce shapes and expressive forms that may function as a healing measure. One can only appreciate the artist’s special ability to transform disturbing-looking structures into unusual embodiments of beauty that grow from facing harsh realities. His distinctive “paint-drawing” technique enlivens the authority of each vignette, where scenes and backdrops express a graphic sensibility that is counterbalanced by his painterly interpretation of the facial features and specific body parts. The show is unique and powerful.

Ambera Wellmann, Mother, 2025 Oil on linen 45 x 49 in 114.3 x 124.5 cm (AW152) Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

Ambera Wellman’s two current shows in New York overlap in their visual narratives with the “One Thousand Emotions” coming in as an edgy depiction of the destructive forces in former times aimed against women who are discerned to defy societal conventions. In “Darkling,” her seven oil on linen paintings feature masked congregations who have gathered, as in James Ensor’s masked assemblies, to commiserate, to support, or to experience a sense of communal dread that foreshadows the impending apocalypse. Her painting style is semi-representational, not realistic, which provides a successful vehicle for her phantom-like reveries. Wellmann’s visions of the naked and departed, in a feast that hints at an interim stage of the afterlife, seem to refer to a frightening existence devoid of the order to be found in everyday life. These specters and hallucinations relate to the hellish visions of Hieronymus Bosch projected forward into the contemporary mind.

Wellman is one of the present-day artists to visualize and express the unsettling implications of the current world turmoil. The artist’s beautifully rendered works express emotions of terror and foreboding. She intimates in the painting entitled “Siren,” that our original human genesis as sea creatures will become our endgame. Wellmann delves into her personal philosophy to explore the path to oneness with the Universe; her meditations hint that through the release of the ego, we will achieve that unity. She explores personal, societal, historical, and philosophical ideas in forceful, intricate visions set in fraught outdoor settings and in ethereal evocations of mystical, sensual inner worlds.

Wellmann’s show, “One Thousand Emotions,” displays six oil on linen paintings that are connected by photographic and drawn wall imagery in installation formats. Her emotionally charged images are steeped in nudity, sexuality, and flirtation with the spiritual dark side. Wellman evidently intends to conjure the apparitions of disobedient women from dark, unstable ages, who were persecuted as witches and executed as dissenters. Death is depicted as a metaphor for chaos and change. Wellmann has the courage to explore subjects that spark our fears and resistance to the reality that life is transitory, changeable, and fleeting. Her provocative, intriguing work represents a committed intention to bring universal meaning and philosophical content into the contemporary art arena.

Celeste Rapone Poised, 2025, Oil on canvas 32 x 28 inches 81.3 x 71.1 cm

Celeste Rapone’s large-scale oil on canvas paintings, presented in her current show “Some Weather,” provide a clear vision of believable, ultra-personal imagery that describes a quotidian life every viewer can relate to. In an unusual perspective, Rapone infuses her contemporary imagery with art historical spatial interpretations that evoke the work of Cezanne and Modigliani. Her anatomical distortions accentuate an arm around a shoulder or a female figure shuddering as wind blows her hair under an inadequate umbrella. She piles figures on top of each other in what appears to be the morning after an all-night drinking party. Figures in a hot tub swelter red against glowing white bubbling water. Rapone has a very European vision of the figure, where elongated legs or enormous hands call the viewer's attention to the distorted, accentuated anatomical forms. Her colors are muted, sophisticated, moody, and convincing. The facial features seem morose and reserved, not exuberant. A figure wearing a LOVE T-shirt sits with a girl, suggesting the pair is a couple. There is a sense of orderly melancholy in this vision that is quietly believable. The artist paints beautifully; the subtle tones distinguish these paintings. By their extreme introspection, they create a calming effect that allows the viewer to focus on the personalized, elongated distortions. The group formats allude to unsurprising ordinary relationships present in the everyday lives of the majority of people, which provide a sense of community in life. The elegant rendering of the forms puts these works in a category of their own, as a formal achievement well beyond the usual depiction of common objects and normal people. The delicately modeled, unique figures set in distinctive milieus are poetic and mesmerizing.

The three exhibitions reviewed above, as well as the solo shows “Yuan Fang: Spaying” at Skarstedt and Austin Martin White's “Tracing Delusionships” at Petzel, indicate that the windows in Art have been opened to allow fresh air to circulate. The New York Art World seems to be diverging from past constraints, which have long determined the style of art that holds dominance here. There is a refrain from a song from 1963 by British folk-pop duo Chad and Jeremy called “Yesterday’s Gone.” Its sentiment expresses the space and opportunity for the freedom to flourish that is enabling a new trajectory to flow in the Art World. Unrest and chaos in society often spur creativity. I think this is an upbeat time to encourage and foster the daring types of individualized art that are entirely acceptable, very marketable, and above all exciting and engaging.

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The Story So Far…

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 19:30:22 +0000

The Story So Far… Chet Kozlowski October 1, 2025 - 15:30

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Jimmy Skinford is a wisecracking petty thief who has run afoul of the mob. We join his story in medias res, him being forced by gangstas to dig his own grave. He accidentally unearths a woman buried in the ground (!), still alive (such as she is). She’s Zophia, who has been interred for being a witch. She has the power of immortality, which turns out to be handy to get Jimmy out of his fix. This leaves our hapless protagonist and his beautiful companion naked and bravely venturing forward.

That’s how Part One starts.

Jimmy is in the petty thief business because his father, himself a crime kingpin, is dying of cancer and in need of expensive care. This will lead Jimmy on adventures that are proudly in the pulp mold, featuring gangland figures, demonic children, traps, seductions, fancy dancers, and faces blown off and rebuilt. Jimmy will be brutalized, drowned, hung, spun, and left out to dry while Zophia pursues a mission of her own.

The action of Skinford Part 1: Death Sentence is mostly earthbound, concerned not least with a bevy of women kept in cages, tortured, and trafficked.

Part Two, otherwise known as Skinford: The Curse, goes down fresh horror-thriller avenues, pushing immortality — the having and bestowing of it — into supernatural territory. It introduces new characters and stretches the pulp concept into the underground club scene.

Skinford is a walking, talking, blood-spattered comic book (or, pardon me, “graphic novel”) of a movie, and, surprisingly, it isn’t based on one. It’s reminiscent of Frank Miller’s Sin City (and Robert Rodriguez’s film of it) in its lurid edge. Skinford springs cinematically full-blown from the imagination of Nik Kacevski, who proudly lists his creds as director, writer, and visual effects. He has several shorts to his credit; the Skinford saga is his first feature-length vision.

Where do you start with Jimmy Skinford? The Curse (2018) is the sequel to Skinford: Death Sentence (2017), and it too ends on a cliffhanger, suggesting a Chapter 3 which, seven years on, has yet to be made. COVID-19 intervened, judging from the dates, and the distributor says funding glitches followed. But scripts are written, waiting for the green light.

The 2025 re-release is to new markets, including the US, that have not yet experienced Skinford’s crazy grandeur. It’s Australian in origin and features young Aussie actors who keep things interesting. Joshua Brennan plays Jimmy with scruffy charm. Charlotte Best makes a sexy and surprisingly demure Zophia. Ric Herbert is Jimmy’s father, Guy, grizzled and irrepressible, and while ill, still very much in the gangster game. Jess Bush plays Helen, whose friend-or-foe role has yet to be determined.

As ambitious as the series is, however, it often settles into TV blocking and soap opera plotting. Some scenes go on for too long. Sets suffer from underdressing and undercooked effects.

Are the two parts of Skinford worth watching, even as you’re aware that the story is short-sheeted? Sure. The action is high velocity, the people are pretty, and if bloody, occult fantasy is your thing, it more than fills the bill.

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Skinford: The Curse, Chapter Two. Directed by Nik Kacevski. 2018, released in the US in 2025. On Tubi and Amazon Prime. Runtime 86 minutes.

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“09/05/1982”: The Toronto International Film Fest Gets Political

Brandon Judell — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:10:31 +0000

“09/05/1982”: The Toronto International Film Fest Gets Political Brandon Judell September 29, 2025 - 20:10

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Imagine turning on your TV one rainy afternoon and being straightaway confronted with footage of the January 6^thCapitol Attack. Windows are shattered. Police officers are battered and maced while flared-up crowds chant for the assassination of our Vice President.

But you are puzzled because the voiceover accompanying the footage is describing that what you thought was a horrific assault on democracy is in fact a lovely gathering of peaceful souls uniting for an applaudable display of constitutional-governmental love.

“Hey!” you exclaim understandably. There seems to be a total disconnect between the visual and the verbal, not a new phenomenon sadly. Indeed, what we are witnessing daily is inarguably at war with the interpretations being supplied.

Jorge Caballero and Camilo Restrepo, the directors of the short “09/05/1982,” a Spanish/Mexican production, splendidly confront this disconnect by manipulating 11 minutes of imagery generated with AI technologies in order to explore the increasingly blurred boundaries” between the factual and the contorted takes of the economic, political, and religious powers-that-be. Restrepo christens the end result a “synthetic footage film.”

I must admit, having been unaware of this offering’s intentions beforehand, I was convinced by what I saw that there had actually been a major brutal revolt in some South American country where many of the impoverished/progressive protesters were slaughtered. I was certain that the man being interviewed on the soundtrack, whom we never get to see if I recall correctly, was some genuine rightwing lackey or general or president.

But what we are viewing is instead, as Restrepo notes, “an imitation of a celluloid film partially damaged by wear and tear and poor preservation.” Yes, I discovered after much researching that no massive human tragedy transpired on September 5, 1982. Instead, googling brought up the following events occurring on that very day:

The Grateful Dead performed at the U.S. Festival in San Bernardino, California.
12-year-old Johnny Gosch disappeared in West Des Moines, Iowa, becoming one of the first missing children to be featured on milk cartons.
Survivor topped the British charts with “Eye of the Tiger.”
China announced plans to abolish the post of Communist Party chairman, which was created for Mao Zedong.

The short begins with an upside-down reflection of a palm tree in a swimming pool, followed by a shot of bananas on a table, and then a stack of white dinner plates. A parrot is contentedly perched while dogs bark over a scratchy soundtrack. “Littering Prohibited” and “May 9^th Massacre” are seen graffitied on street walls in Spanish. The next intercuts include footage of people at work, a drummer, and even the innards of a mirror shop. (Is that to reflect our own roles as either freedom fighters or annihilators?)

Over this imagery of the Normal, our defensive “storyteller” notes: “The events of 9 May 1982 marked a turning point in our nation’s history. The government’s measures were justified, but leftist groups sought to destabilize....Students quickly protested, manipulated by foreign ideologies.” And so forth.

Boys play soccer...and some folks die.

German film-director-nonpareil Wim Wenders once argued: “Every film is political. Most political of all are those that pretend not to be: 'entertainment' movies. They are the most political films there are because they dismiss the possibility of change. In every frame, they tell you everything's fine the way it is. They are a continual advertisement for things as they are.”

“09/05/1982” defiantly sidesteps that categorization.

(“09/05/1982” was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be screened at the New York Film Festival as part of the “Current Program 2: Afterimages” on October 3^rd and 5^th. There will be a Q&A with both directors.) (https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2025/films/program-2-afterimages/).

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A Warning… To Whom?

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 13:18:52 +0000

A Warning… To Whom? Chet Kozlowski September 24, 2025 - 09:18

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We’re Not Safe Here is a hostage video shot by the hostage.

It belongs to that increasingly popular horror subgenre that’s visceral and open to interpretation. I’ve heard it called Elevated Horror. I like to think of it as Deep Dish Horror: dense and multilayered, with a hint of narrative topping. It doesn’t have to make sense if it tastes like something. (Great. Now I’ve made myself hungry.)

The poster for We’re Not Safe Here shows a person of indeterminate gender tied to a chair, head covered with a blood-stained pillowcase. A big ass knife is pointed above their head, poised to skewer. This image, cartel execution iconography, will appear at intervals throughout the film.

The story goes like this: Neeta is a young painter experiencing Artist’s Block. She lives alone and sits in front of a big canvas that remains blank. Her friend Rachel arrives unexpectedly and shares a tale from her childhood, about how she and a friend explored a big old house. “You know how every neighborhood has that one house, and little kids dare each other to step inside?” Rachel is jittery: she acts haunted, always looking over her shoulder. “Did you hear that?” she asks Neeta. Neeta doesn’t.

Rachel really is haunted by the pillow-headed presence described above. This figure whispers and drones, and for all we know, is imaginary. Pillow Head appears in dreams. Neeta comes to understand that Rachel isn’t there just to relate her trauma but to pass it on, bequeath it to her friend, after which she, Rachel, will be free of it.

Story within story, trauma upon trauma. We’re Not Safe Here works up some genuine creepiness, finding menace in long static shots of shadowy hallways. Mundane gestures, even buttoning a sweater, take on unnerving significance. The actors work hard and are extremely watchable: Sharmita Bhattacharya and Hayley McFarland bring empathy to Neeta and Rachel, respectively. Both give good closeup and are familiar from their TV work. Caisey Cole appears briefly as Sarah, Neeta’s friend and confidant. The sound design by Matthew Devore is a symphony of whispers, gender-switching voices, gasping breaths, and disembodied pleas for mercy. A turntable plays ersatz Hank Williams, mournfully punctuating the proceedings.

We’re Not Safe Here has the quality of a lucid dream. We the audience are simply, like Neeta, along for the ride. The film is an allegory about women’s fear of abduction and captivity, and the waves that emanate from uniquely female anxiety.

Thing is: We’re Not Safe Here is made by a man.

It’s the work of first-time writer/director Solomon Gray, who has stated that his only purpose is to explore the “magic of storytelling.”

But think about the dynamics, and it’s a little queasy-making. Is Pillow Head an emissary or a predator? Is it a metaphor for inspiration? Mostly, Pillow Head functions as a shock hallucination, except when Mr. Gray enters its point of view and we in the audience are put in the position of stalking the women. In one jolting scene, the pillowcase is lifted to reveal impressive scare makeup (at least I hope it’s makeup). Are we meant to assume this will be Neeta’s and Rachel’s fate?

Mr. Gray might well say, “Stop overthinking it! It’s all just scary fun!” But for a man to take it upon himself to tell a singularly female story is a revealing choice. Which begs the question: why aren’t those in danger men? In fact, the only significant male role in We’re Not Safe Here is that of the ghostly voice and vague silhouette of the “demon,” played by Arthur Higbee.

We’re Not Safe Here borrows heavily from It Follows in its theme of subjugation by an irresistible force, fate comin’ for ya. But even It Follows had a male component. Other films have used the grim specter of sexual violation as an allegory (the recent French film Animale comes to mind), but none are completely devoid of male ethos.

Mr. Gray goes so far as to quote the Charles Simic poem “Fear” in the press notes:

Fear passes from man to man
Unknowing
As one leaf passes its shudder
To another.

All at once, the whole tree is trembling,
And there is no sign of the wind.

Yeah, except We’re Not Safe Here is not about fear passing from man to man, but rather from woman to woman, of a fear usually propagated by men.

Pillow Head is built for franchise—imagine a whole series of movies with Pillow Head threatening women— but the idea is half-baked and facile. In Mr. Gray’s film, then, women are chess pieces in a game that’s meant to warn, not to be won.

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We’re Not Safe Here. Directed by Solomon Gray. 2025. From Saban Films. Runtime 93 minutes. On VOD and digital platforms.