Brendan Hodges

50 years since A Touch of Zen’s first proper release dazzled viewers, Brendan Hodges reflects on King Hu’s revolutionary wuxia that’s both a swashbuckling adventure and a cosmic meditation on reality—and our place inside it.
Within a bamboo forest so thick it hides every horizon, a woman flies through the air; to keep the whereabouts of her betrayed clan hidden, she hunts her quarry. Soon, armed figures appear. She’s surrounded.
What follows is one of the most celebrated set pieces in all of wu...

Sixty-five feet beneath the streets of Paris, you’ll find their catacombs, where the bodies of six million are buried. Endless walls of skulls, femurs, radius and ulna reveal a labyrinthian network of tunnels, ornamented with charnel crosses and bone tombstones. These paths of the dead act as a kind of ghostly time travel, forcing you to imagine who they were, what choices they made, and how, soon enough, we’ll join them. Above one entombed doorway reads “Arrête! C’est ici l’empire de la Mort...

Although not the official tagline, full-time acrobat and part-time spy Ethan Hunt looking at the camera and asking us to “Trust me, one last time” became a popular refrain online, as if the future of movies depended on it. As it turns out, it wasn’t just a clever fourth wall-breaking hook for the (maybe) last “Mission: Impossible,” but the central plot of Tom Cruise’s victory lap as our favorite death-defying entertainer. Ethan spends most of the first half of “The Final Reckoning,” a nearly ...

Over the past several decades, Jia Zhangke has become the foremost filmmaker to capture not only the rapid development of China through the 21st century but also how that explosive expansion has shaped the lives within it. In that way, Zhangke is equally one of China’s greatest working artists and most accomplished inside ethnographers, studying his native country’s cultural shifts in the most expressive terms. His first fiction film in six years, “Caught by the Tides,” is the purest distilla...

“Andor” Season 2 is one of the most brilliant and best television shows of 2025. Closing out what began in Season One and adding a whole new layer of appreciation for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” while providing the best characters and story the franchise has ever seen, the new season has already garnered significant critical acclaim. One praised element of the first season was the score by Academy Award-nominee Nicholas Britell. For season 2, showrunner Tony Gilroy brought on Emmy Award-wi...

THE STORY – In an era filled with danger, deception, and intrigue, Cassian Andor embarks on a path that is destined to turn him into a Rebel hero.
THE CAST – Diego Luna, Kyle Soller, Adria Arjona, Stellan Skarsgård, Fiona Shaw, Genevieve O’Reilly, Denise Gough, Faye Marsay, Varada Sethu & Elizabeth Dulaua
THE TEAM – Tony Gilroy (Creator/Writer), Ariel Kleiman, Janus Metz, Alonso Ruizpalacios (Directors), Beau Willimon, Dan Gilroy & Tom Bissell (Writers)
Jyn Erso might have preached, “Rebellio...

With “Mickey 17” hitting theaters this weekend, it’s the perfect time to look back on (and rank!) Bong Joon Ho’s incredible filmography. I was first introduced to Bong’s movies through “The Host,” his 2006 monster hit that brilliantly showcases his talent for sliding past the normal boundaries of genre and style. IE, It’s a kaiju monster movie, a melodramatic family drama, a zany slapstick satire, and a propulsive action thriller. At 15, I hadn’t seen anything like it. Unlike the familiar poi...

Although Robert Eggers is still relatively early in his career, having just finished his fourth film (“Nosferatu,” released December 25th), he’s quickly emerged as a director whose style is instantly identifiably them. First and foremost, whether he’s making an A24 horror movie about a forest witch or a Lovecraftian horror-comedy, Eggers has become famous for his obsessive focus on historical authenticity, felt top-down on all levels of his productions, but especially the ornate use of langua...

“The Penguin” just concluded its first season last night with an explosive finale that has audiences talking and eagerly looking forward to what might be next for Colin Farrel’s Oswald “Oz” Cob. We were lucky to speak with the show’s production designer, Kalina Ivanov, as she was able to dive into all things Gotham City, how it expands upon what was set up in Matt Reeves’s “The Batman,” and more. Please listen to the interview below and be sure to check out the show, which is now available to...

Even the harshest critics of Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance“ acknowledge the scene where Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle falls into a self-conscious frenzy before a date is eerily relatable. Watching herself in the mirror, she goes through an anxious fashion show of trying different looks and outfits before she has to leave, her increasingly panicked spiral leaving her exhausted and dejected before she finally smears makeup off her face in defeat. It’s a scene that leaves most viewers with t...

"Welcome to Peeping Toms, New York's newest and grooviest game!"
- Brian De Palma, "Sisters"
"You know your dick was hard the entire time," Quentin Tarantino once accused of Stanley Kubrick. It was in response to how Kubrick maintained that "A Clockwork Orange" was a powerful statement of anti-violence and took no pleasure in its graphic acts of mayhem and assault. For Tarantino–among the most rabid Brian De Palma superfans–that is pure hypocrisy. To him, films are exercises in fetish and kin...

“The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power“ is the most expensive television show of all time and it shows. It’s a massive production with giant battles, set pieces, tons of characters, and every department working at the top of their game to transport audiences to Middle Earth. One of the key people who helped with that level of immersion is composer Bear McCreary,, who has now composed the music for the show’s first two seasons. During the airing of the second season, McCreary was kind enou...

Features
Mounted horses bifurcate the hazy horizon, armed silhouettes in furious charge dash towards a village beneath them; in seconds, we see above and below, the predators and their prey, a telephoto lens collapsing space to signal their invasion.
Take this village too?
Take it! Take it!
Not so fast!
We just took their rice last fall.
They'll have nothing now.
Very well.
We'll return when that barley's ripe!
It’s only a matter of time. They will come back. They must hire samurai — seven.
S...

Just like how George Lucas famously took inspiration from Akira Kurosawa movies like The Hidden Fortress or Yojimbo for his Star Wars movies, Headland proudly pulls from a long heritage of wuxia storytelling to open up new storytelling opportunities for the franchise. (She even cited King Hu and The Shaw Brothers by name when pitching The Acolyte.)
In many ways, wuxia is a natural fit for Star Wars. The genre typically focuses on wronged families seeking revenge or the fraught relationships b...

Richard Linklater may be the most prestigious filmmaker alive to have a visual style so disarmingly simple. Many of his most acclaimed movies, especially “The Before Trilogy” and “Boyhood,” cultivated an elegant, simplified filmmaking approach that promotes a rare kind of naturalism –– Linklater’s movies can feel improvised despite being rigorously rehearsed, and he usually brings a visual approach as easy-going as his characters in “Dazed and Confused” or “Everybody Wants Some!!,” stretching...