Steve Aoki is one of the most influential DJs in the history of electronica, being one of the first artists to combine hardcore punk with dance music to create a genre unlike anything heard in the U.S. before. After a decade of grinding his way through underground gigs and festivals he has become one of the biggest acts on the planet. Playing over 300 shows a year, he has been touted as one of the most recorded people in history.

The comedy HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE which played at Tribeca on Thursday has made me want to go back and explore the filmography of director Taika Waititi. Because if HUNT is any indication, Waititi is likely destined to become New Zealand’s answer to America’s Wes Anderson and England’s Edgar Wright—a highly-idiosyncratic and stylized comedic filmmaker. But whereas the bulk of Anderson and

I remember those nights of iodine streetlights and black-suited riot […]

Ever notice that it’s almost always a bad sign when an R-rated animated movie brags about being an R-rated animated movie? The one exception might be SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT (1999), but other than that the pickings are slim. I had this realization watching Chris Prynoski’s NERDLAND, a very graphic animated comedy filled to the brim with boobs, boners, and buttholes. The first feature film by animation house Titmouse

I think it was the moment when Gilbert Gottfried showed […]

There were walkouts at my screening of Ben Wheatley’s HIGH […]

Andrew Rossi’s new documentary THE FIRST MONDAY IN MAY is gorgeous, sumptuous. It’s also undercooked. The film follows the inception, creation, and opening gala for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2015 fashion exhibition “China: Through the Looking Glass.” The exhibit itself was a massive celebration and rumination on the tenuous relationship between Western fashion and Chinese culture curated by the renowned

My name is Nathanael Hood and I’m autistic. And in my twenty-six years on this earth I have never seen a film that treated autism with the same level of respect and dignity as Matt Fuller’s AUTISM IN LOVE. It examines four subjects: Lenny, a twenty-something living with his parents who agonizes over his inability to get a girlfriend; Dave and Lindsey, two Autistics who have managed to overcome their disabilities to sustain an eight-year relationship; Stephen, a middle-aged

Adrián García Bogliano’s SCHERZO DIABOLICO can best be described as a near-perfect engine of human cruelty. Any other attempt to qualify it within the terms of established genre traditions are futile. Is it an abduction procedural? A psychological character study of a criminal à la John McNaughton’s HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986)? A female revenge thriller? SCHERZO DIABOLICO is all three and

On August 24, 1992 the German city of Rostock was slammed by a wave of xenophobic riots which culminated in the burning of a residential building housing over 120 Vietnamese immigrants. Known as “The Night of Fire,” it was a defining moment in post-reunification German history. 23 years later, Burhan Qurbani reconstructs the events of that terrible night with his film We Are Young. We Are Strong. As an American who had never heard of this event before, I