Reviews
SONG SUNG BLUE Review: Loving Impersonation Misses the Real Thing
Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson star in Craig Brewer's music-infused drama, inspired by a true story.
AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH Review: Another Visual Marvel Undercut by Sloppy Storytelling, Underdeveloped Characters, and Cliched Dialogue
Despite their supposed lack of pop cultural impact or influence, the James Cameron-directed Avatar films (2009, 2022) have collectively grossed more than five billion dollars, suggesting that, whatever the series’s inability to break through to the terminally online, Avatar and...
THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE Review: Portrait of a Lady on Religious Fire
Amanda Seyfried stars in Mona Fastvold's ode to the 18th century religious figure.
THE HOUSEMAID Review: Delightful, Surprisingly Effective Trash
Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried star in Paul Feig's new, airport-trashy thriller.
IS THIS THING ON? Review: Standup Comedy, Midlife Marital Crisis, Familiar Trajectory
Will Arnett and Laura Dern star in Bradley Cooper's new film.
DAVID BYRNE'S AMERICAN UTOPIA 4K Review: Barefoot in a Suit
Spike Lee directs an electrifying film that leaps off the stage in Criterion's sterling new release.
Screen Anarchy Last Minute Gift Guide 2025 Episode 1: Kino
Dave Canfield, your Creature Feature Preacher here with the Screen Anarchy Last Minute Gift Guide for 2025. We’ve got several episodes coming in the next few days that showcase a bunch of easily-obtained, movie-related movies, music and collectibles, courtesy of...
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...
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT Review: Fun, Bloody, and Surprising Christmas Slasher
Surprise! The seventh film is the charm for a 40-year-old slasher franchise.
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...
