Film Journal 2026
The Chronology of Water
The audacious visual style is effective especially during the much too long first segment, but it wears thin and becomes an obstacle thru much of the film where it is unmotivated and the screenplay is dull.
Hadewijch
The non-professional actors are the perfect vehicle for Dumont's understated humanism. Dumont is at his most Bressonian here (although perhaps an antithesis of Mouchette).
Is This Thing On?
A separation is the inciting incident to the protagonist's becoming a stand-up comic, which itself becomes a way to start a new plot about the marriage-- feeling ultimately like a slice of life drama due to lack of narrative thrust. Even so, Will Arnett conjures an engaging performance.
Father Mother Sister Brother
There is a striking edit in the first segment: a cut to a medium shot of Jeff very briefly then cutting away as Emily starts to speak. It seems to imply he was about to say something-- typical of Jarmusch, this is unanswered but motivates several themes in the film.
Good Boy
Showing the dog's perspective is unusual, but the decision to shoot almost all of the speaking off-screen (or from a distance or backlit or obscured by a convenient tombstone) feels like it was motivated by shooting without a script more than to show the dog's point of view.
The Empire
This is closer to a parody of a Bruno Dumont film than it is to a parody of a science fiction film.