Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Titane

By

CINEMA DISORDINAIRE

Reviewed by A.O. Scott

Alexia is a strip-club dancer in the South of France whose hobby — her compulsion, her kink, her vocation — is murder. As the bodies pile up and the law seems to be closing in, she leaves the house where she lives with her parents and takes on the identity of Adrien Legrand, a boy who went missing many years before.

Having seen a computer-generated image of the teenager Adrien might have grown up to be, Alexia fashions herself into a plausible likeness, cutting her hair short, binding her breasts and smashing her nose against a bathroom sink. The disguise works well enough to convince the boy’s dad, Vincent, the ultra-manly commander of a fire-and-rescue squad. But there is a complication: Alexia is pregnant. The father, as far as we can tell, is a Cadillac with hydraulic suspension and a custom paint job. As the pregnancy progresses, Alexia starts to lactate petroleum. [Read more…]

Hereditary Introduces a New Master Of Terror

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Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

We are in a glorious moment for horror. Boldly original and deeply terrifying directorial debuts like Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, Julia Ducournau’s Raw, and Jordan Peele’s Get Out have not only had critics cheering, and audiences screaming, but also announced the arrival of daring new visionaries to the genre. Next to join this esteemed company of masterful horror makers is Ari Aster. This ruthlessly talented writer/director makes his feature film debut with the Sundance-heralded Hereditary, which turns family dysfunction into pure, unfiltered nightmare fuel. [Read more…]

Raw Serves Up A Cannibalized Civilization

By

Reviewed by Alci Rengifo

While most of the republic’s cinema-goers flock to local theaters to indulge in the new incarnation of Stephen King’s It, your local RedBox is harboring a deliciously wicked and original work of cinematic viscera, Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016). This cannibal parable created quite the stir at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where audience members were reported to have fainted due to the movie’s bloody moments. As with most movies of this type, the gore doesn’t do justice to the hype. The film’s power resides in what it has to say as opposed to what it wants to show. Like all good satire, it knows that showing too much ruins the effect. Like American Psycho, Raw gets under your skin by casting a mirror. Ducournau is essentially putting on display a civilization eating itself, like Goya’s painting “Saturno devorando a su hijo (Saturn Devouring His Son).” Raw is art as splatter, capturing in its own special way those moments when youth, sexual awakening and finding one’s place in the social labyrinth all crash together. [Read more…]

Raw

By

CINEMA DISORDINAIRE

Reviewed by Alci Rengifo

While most of the republic’s cinema-goers flock to local theaters to indulge in the new incarnation of Stephen King’s It, your local RedBox is harboring a deliciously wicked and original work of cinematic viscera, Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016). This cannibal parable created quite the stir at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where audience members were reported to have fainted due to the movie’s bloody moments. As with most movies of this type, the gore doesn’t do justice to the hype. The film’s power resides in what it has to say as opposed to what it wants to show. Like all good satire, it knows that showing too much ruins the effect. Like American Psycho, Raw gets under your skin by casting a mirror. Ducournau is essentially putting on display a civilization eating itself, like Goya’s painting “Saturno devorando a su hijo (Saturn Devouring His Son).” Raw is art as splatter, capturing in its own special way those moments when youth, sexual awakening and finding one’s place in the social labyrinth all crash together. [Read more…]