Reviews
SCARLET Review: If Hamlet Was a Sword-Wielding Warrior Princess Having a Boss Fight in the Afterlife
A young woman finds herself in a horrifying afterlife, where many things look like our familiar reality, but with a few macabre twists. A brief flashback interlude informs us that the heroine is Scarlet, a medieval-era princess who tried to...
EUROPE'S NEW FACES Review: Harrowing Migrant Experiences
Sam Abbas' documentary details a long journey built on hopes for a better life.
ATROPIA Review: Uproarious War Satire
Alia Shawkat, Callum Turner, Zahra Alzubaidi, Tony Shawkat, Jane Levy, Tim Heidecker, Lola Kirke, and Chloë Sevigny star; Hailey Benton Gates wrote and directed.
RESURRECTION Review: Fashioning an Alternate History of Cinema
Jackson Yee and Shu Qi star in Bi Gan's new film.
ELLA MCCAY Review: James L. Brooks' First Film in 15 Years Flounders, Stumbles, Flops
Emma Mackey stars, supported by Albert Brooks, Ayo Edebiri, James Lowden, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julie Kavner, Kumail Nanjiani, Rebecca Hall, Spike Fearn, and Woody Harrelson.
DUST BUNNY Review: Highly Enjoyable, As It Straddles the Line Between Whimsy and Gruesomeness
Mads Mikkelsen, Sigourney Weaver, and David Dastmalchian star in writer/director Bryan Fuller's dark, fantastical tale.
LONE SAMURAI Review: A Mythic Promise Gets Washed Ashore
Legend says Japan was saved twice by a miracle. In 1274 and again in 1281, as Kublai Khan's Mongol forces advanced to conquer the archipelago, samurai mounted a desperate coastal defense, only for brutal typhoons to surge in and tear...
Tallinn 2025 Review: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Heartbreaking Story Tracks a Maid's Journey Through Egypt's Fractured Class Dynamics
Sarah Goher's film, submitted as Egypt's entry for the Academy Awards, offers an intimate, day-long portrait of a child's maid navigating shifting family and class dynamics.
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.
HIS GIRL FRIDAY 4K Review: Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell Wage One Battle After Another
Directed by Howard Hawks, Criterion's new 2-disc edition includes Lewis Milestone's 'The Front Page,' making for easy comparison between original and remake.
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S 2 Review: Redundant Sequel Fails To Justify Its Existence
Between a fervent fanbase numbering in the millions, multi-generational, cross-over appeal, and box-office returns almost 30x the original investment, a sequel to 2023’s gateway horror hit, Five Nights at Freddy’s, the cinematic adaptation of Scott Cawthon’s uber-popular indie video game series,...
ROSEMEAD Review: True Story About a Mother's Love That's Too Centered on the Son
It's always odd when a film is based on a true story that is either old enough or simply wasn't major enough news that we don't all know it. Does it count as "spoilers" for the movie to direct people...
KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR Review: Cycles and Consequences
Uma Thurman stars in Quentin Tarantino's revenge epic.
I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING! 4K Review: Talking About the Weather
Powell & Pressburger completists will be pleased with the new transfer.
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