She Who Is Not: Harari Explores Existential Identity Issues in the Body Swap
“A woman, for me, must remain a woman,” stated Andrey Tarkovsky when once asked what he thought about women, proposing their innate femininity and weakness as their only uniquely defining qualities. Such attitudes have arguably been apparent in the limited characterizations the Russian auteur presented in his filmography, most often as archetypes interpreted as misogynistic and from a blatantly heteronormative worldview. In comparison, there’s something quite intriguing in The Unknown, the third film from writer/director Arthur Harari, which is reminiscent of Tarkovsky’s predilections with displacement while also exploring dimensions which are at odds with the natural world as it concerns a (probably) malevolent entity which displaces one’s essence through a colonization or possession of their body.… Read the rest
For his fourth feature, South Korean director Na Hong-jin goes for breakneck, relentless mayhem in the curiously titled Hope. Always tending to blend genre elements in his previous efforts, Hong-jin has increasingly leaned into logical exaggerations, beginning with his most successfully conceived film to date with his 2008 debut The Chaser (which is also a title befitting this venture). There’s much to wonder about in this propulsive narrative made up quite extensively of formidably choreographed chase sequences wherein two separate groups of humans are plagued by creatures eventually revealed to be extraterrestrials (but who seem to be made of inextinguishable materials, like organic versions of Transformers).… 
Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic account of the French Resistance, Army of Shadows (1969) opens with a quote from the French novelist Georges Courteline – “Bad memories! I welcome you anyway…you are my long lost youth.” With his fourth feature Moulin, so seems to be the sentiment of Hungarian director László Nemes, returning to the inferno of WWII with this homage to Jean Moulin, a leader of the French Resistance who was credited with unifying an array of various networks. He was captured, tortured and murdered in 1943, sent to his grave without betraying cause or country.… 
