International: Europe Reviews
THE PLAGUE Review: Zero for Conduct Again
Joel Edgerton, Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, and Kenny Rasmussen star in Charlie Poling's psychological thriller.
AMSTERDAMNED II Review: A Playful Late Sequel
Let's start with a bit of history. Back in the eighties, we had this young upstart director in the Netherlands who did things everybody told him you couldn't do. His name was Dick Maas and I'll be damned if he...
EUROPE'S NEW FACES Review: Harrowing Migrant Experiences
Sam Abbas' documentary details a long journey built on hopes for a better life.
Tallinn 2025 Review: LIFELIKE Moves Beyond Coming-of-Age
Turkish director Ali Vatansever examines how a family shifts its dynamics as a terminal diagnosis intersects with caregiving, belief, and the virtual spaces that offer temporary escape.
Tallinn 2025 Review: SUNDAY NINTH Probes Memory, Estrangement, Blurred Line Between Fiction and Documentary
Kat Steppe's feature fiction debut examines the disintegration of memory and identity through a hybrid fiction-documentary lens, using the fractured relationship between two estranged brothers as its narrative anchor.
RETURN TO REASON Blu-ray Review: The Dizzying Avant Garde of Man Ray
The first years of cinema, the seventh art was treated more as a technological marvel than a device with which to tell stories. Even when the technology progressed and storytelling took over, artists still found ways to explore the...
Tallinn 2025 Review: THINK OF ENGLAND Dramatizes Britain's Attempt to Boost Morale with State-Mandated Porn Films
Richard Hawkins' film moves from period workplace comedy, rooted in the absurdities of producing a pornographic film for the war effort, toward a psychological drama shaped by mounting instability.
Tallinn 2025 Review: BLINDSIGHT Retools the Amnesia Narrative Through Immersive Experience and Storytelling Rug Pulling
Adrian Sitaru's latest work employs first person immersion to build a narrative puzzle that shifts into the register of a 'Black Mirror' episode, revealing a film with far more layers than its early realism and family drama implied.
Tallinn 2025 Review: FATHER, Immersive and Visceral Psychological Study of Guilt and Grief
Selected as Slovakia's submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, the film is an incisive study of psychological rupture and its social reverberations.
Tallinn 2025 Review: NO COMMENT Finds Marital Comedy in a Political Crisis
Norwegian director Petter Næss turns to political satire to explore how a marital crisis intersects with the machinery of contemporary governance.
I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING! 4K Review: Talking About the Weather
Powell & Pressburger completists will be pleased with the new transfer.
LITTLE TROUBLE GIRLS Review: A Phenomenal Directorial Debut
Jara Sofija Ostan and Mina Švajger star in Urška Djukić's remarkable film that's about more than coming of age.
THE TALE OF SILYAN Review: Astonishingly Precise Visual Storytelling
The myth that I have always associated with storks is that of them delivering babies via the chimneys of Europeans. I remember vividly the first time I drove through the Romanian countryside and saw a nest on every post, and...
Now Streaming: MEAT KILLS, Or Rather Misguided People Do...
Hailed as "the bloodiest Dutch horror movie ever" and proudly touting the NC17 rating it got during its States-based festival run, Martijn Smits' Vleesdag a.k.a. Meat Kills seems to be gunning for the gorehounds. As such I almost didn't see...
SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE Review: Worse Things Than Death. Unleash Hell. And So Forth.
Jorrma Tommila and Stephen Lang battle to the death in Jalmari Helander's pulverizing action thriller.
SIRAT Review: Meditative and Loudly Distorting
Directed by Oliver Luxe, the film is Spain's official Academy Award entry for Best International Feature.
MR. K Review: Revealing a Grand Illusion
Crispin Glover stars. If you want to take a mental break from complicated and intricate plotting, and give in to the absurdities of an European art flick, 'Mr. K' will be a highly rewarding moviegoing experience.
Toronto After Dark 2025 Review: SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE Really Really Really Loves Blowing Up Commies
After the epic Western-Thunderdome Nazi-killing smorgasbord that was Sisu, Finnish director Jalmari Helander returns to his large northern Europe canvas for another round of battle with Finland’s enemies. This time, it's in the key of Mad Max: Fury Road, against an...
San Sebastian 2025 Review: REDOUBT, Measured, Poetic Study of Obsession, Isolation in Rural Sweden
Swedish filmmaker John Skoog reconstructs the true story of Karl-Göran Persson, a Cold War-era farm laborer who turned his home into a private fortress.
Serial Killer Brno 2025 Review: QUEEN OF FUCKING EVERYTHING, Finnish Darker Comedy Series, Taps into BREAKING BAD Territory with a Twist
Writer-director Tiina Lymi delivers a darker Finnish crime dramedy that examines the collapse of middle-class identity through the story of a real estate agent whose gradual descent into criminality exposes the moral fragility beneath social respectability.
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