Review: "Holy Spider" weaves a web of provocations

by Cláudio Alves

"Holy Spider" | © UtopiaThe world's obsession with true crime is as old as crime itself. With every new format and possible presentation, another wave of such media arises, making us think, each time, that the collective obsession is a new phenomenon. Oh, how wrong we are, for as much as things change, they remain the same. One aspect constant with every iteration of the true-crime craze is the glorification of the killer. False equivalencies manifest, equating human monsters to criminal geniuses. Great purposes are projected unto them, ideas of grandeur and abstract magnetism. From popular podcasts to Netflix's Jeffrey Dahmer show, true-crime narratives make celebrities out of murderers and exploit truth into legend.

Ali Abbasi's latest film challenges this state of affairs. Reenacted violence and political commentary are at the center of Holy Spider's controversial reputation, but its demystification of the serial killer figure constitutes the picture's most radical provocation…

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Review: South Korea's Oscar Hopeful "Decision to Leave"

by Cláudio Alves

© MUBI

A woman stands in a room, alone. Wallpapered motifs encircle her in a swirl of blue-green something. Are they waves or mountaintops, those shapes repeated into infinity? Maybe they're both, maybe neither. Maybe they're everything. 

According to a Confucian proverb, the wise man admires water, the kind man admires mountains. Or maybe it's benevolence and virtue, some other translation across languages. Two complementing sides of the same person, perhaps a binary of human natures, these words reveal more than their scholarly meaning – at least, they do in Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave. Ideas of duality percolate throughout the work, as does the attempt to understand the unfathomable reality of another person. We try to find order in chaos, logic in that which has none, pursuing an understanding that will always be out of grasp. Every single one of us is a mystery to others, and to try to transcend the impossibility of knowing someone else is a fool's errand, the most beautiful thing in the world, ecstasy holding hands with despair. It's love…

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Interview: 'Goddamned Asura' director Lou Yi-an on his multi-layered crime drama

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Inspired by a 2014 real-life killing, Goddamned Asura explores the lives of six people involved in a ramdom shooting in a night market, including the perpetrator - a troubled teenager named Jan Wen. The film follows not only the lead-up to the shooting incident, but also the aftermath of the characters as they face the repercussions of the actions of Jan Wen.The result is a somber exploration of class, isolation, and violence that is unfortunately still timely and universal.

Goddamned Asura is Taiwan's official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards. In this interview, co-writer and director Lou Yi-an expounds on the origins and themes of the story as well as explaining some terms with their cultural context compared to their English translation...

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Ranking the International Feature Film Winners

by Juan Carlos Ojano

From De Sica to Hamaguchi, the past two years of hosting the podcast The One-Inch Barrier has allowed me to watch all that films that were selected by the Academy for its International Feature Film category - 74 winners and 337 nominees (all but one title). While this category has had its issues over the years, it has also put an international spotlight on non-English language cinema on Hollywood’s biggest night. While the category has  always been far from a perfect encapsulation of world cinema, it's a great jumping off point as noted in the series finale.  (Cláudio Alves did a beautiful summary of our discussion - video included!). 

Here is my personal not-that-definitive ranking of the winners of the category. Things are very fluid especially in the midsection... 

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How Have International Features Fared in Oscar Screenplay Categories?

By: Christopher James

In a banner year for International cinema, can "The Worst Person in the World" or "Drive My Car" win a Screenplay Oscar?As was discussed in the recent Screenplay Oscar Volley, there is the potential for there to be two international feature winners in Adapted and Original Screenplay this year. Best Picture nominee Drive My Car had an incredibly strong showing on nomination morning, and Adapted Screenplay could be the place where the Oscars chooses to honor writer/director Ryusuke Hamaguchi. If it wins, it will be the first international feature to win Best Adapted Screenplay.

On the Original Screenplay front, Joaquim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World hopes to be a surprise upset. The comedy-drama from Norway may not be in Best Picture, but it has amassed a strong art house following and grown steadily since its opening last month.

Do these movies actually have a shot though? Let’s take a look at the track record for International Feature in the Screenplay categories.

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