"A shocking parable for authoritarian populism. There’s nothing else like Canoa. Although Cazals and cinematographer Álex Phillips Jr. use only static shots, the movie is structurally fleet, shuffling chronology and cycling between faux-documentary, historical re-creation, and purely dramatic modes. I can’t think of anything else that so successfully fuses dyed-in-the-wool radical filmmaking and horror. There’s a wry on-screen narrator who creates this Brechtian distancing effect and manages to sound sinister while providing facts and statistics about life in rural communities, and by the end we’re in something like the Jonestown machete massacre. Ostensibly less outré yet harder to swallow than Salò, this is an unsettling, essential gem."

"In fact, the whole John Cassavetes: Five Films set. This is the starter kit for anyone who wonders about the roots of the American independent film movement. Seeing Cassavetes’s debut, the politically charged love story Shadows, is like watching the birth of a giant. Meanwhile, Faces and A Woman Under the Influence are searing portraits of the blinding pain true love can bring when a marriage ends up tearing a family apart. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening Night, on the other hand, are noirish sagas of death and business. Plus, Charles Kiselyak’s moving documentary A Constant Forge offers up the proper historical and cultural perspective on one of American cinema’s true visionaries."