Reviews
Toronto 2026 Review: LOOK BACK Sees Hirokazu Kore-eda Struggle to Bring Tatsuki Fujimoto's Acclaimed Manga to Life
Celebrated filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda returns to the pages of Japanese manga for inspiration once again, unveiling this thoughtful adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s acclaimed 2021 coming-of-age one-shot, Look Back. Reuniting actresses Natsuki Deguchi and Aju Makita, both of whom featured prominently...
Toronto 2026 Review: ELSINORE, Centered By Andrew Scott's Haunting, Unforgettable Performance
In Elsinore, the new biopic on Scottish actor Ian Charleson (1949-1990), director Simon Stone thankfully avoids most of the usual cliches of the genre to create a deeper cinematic experience. Anchored by Stephen Beresford's (Pride, 2014) script, with a career-defining...
RESIDENT EVIL Review: Zach Cregger Brilliantly Reimagines the Decades-Old Series for Our Discontented Times
After 25 years, seven films, an animated series, and even a live album, it took Zach Cregger, the writer-director behind back-to-back horror standouts, Barbarian and Weapons, to properly adapt Resident Evil, CapCom’s survival-horror videogame franchise, into a live-action film that...
SLOW HORSES S6 E1 Recap: You're a Target. And So Are You. You Too.
Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, and Kristin Scott Thomas reprise their roles in the British spy series.
Toronto 2026 Review: BAD LIEUTENANT: TOKYO, Takashi Miike's Fairy Tale of Redemption
Is the Bad Lieutenant ‘franchise’ an excuse for wild auteur filmmakers to craft slyly black comedies full of sex and violence, and ideation-detritus that never made it into their other pictures? Is the Bad Lieutenant franchise even a franchise, or...
THE HISTORY OF CONCRETE Review: Nothing Is Permanent
John Wilson's documentary is illuminating, fascinating, hilarious, and poignant.
Home Video: THREADS 4K, THE WAR GAME 4K, and More From Severin
The list of films dealing directly with what it might be like to experience a nuclear war at ground zero is shorter than you might think. As powerful as Dr. Strangelove (1964), and Fail Safe (1962) are, they’re also highly...
Toronto 2026 Review: WILD HORSE NINE, All Flourish and No Feeling
What does Salvadore Allende’s 9/11, Hank Williams, the JFK assassination, and an empathy for insects have in common? How does a stable democracy result in homosexuality, which leads, eventually, to fine quality cheeses? Writer-director hyphenate Martin McDonagh is here to...
Toronto 2026 Review: FURIES, A Feverishly Hellish Heist By Women Scorned
What is the world coming to when you have to steal your own hard earned money? Dalia is in need of a significant surgery. Until then, her medicine is only available on the black market, where half of it is...
Toronto 2026 Review: ALL OF A SUDDEN, Gently Drawing the Viewer Into More Difficult Realities
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's latest, All of a Sudden is a revelation. A meditation on the everyday lives of his characters and the weightier ideas orbiting them, the film transcends the experiences and ideas it presents. Considering that the film glides between...
THE SECRET AGENT 4K Review: A Masterpiece of Memory and Resistance
It's hard to fathom, even in hindsight, how a film about a dictatorship, its long reach into the lives of seemingly ordinary people, a love of old movie houses and carnivals, and something of an experimental narrative structure, could translate...
Toronto 2026 Review: MINOTAUR, Russia As A Psychological-Visual Labyrinth
Andrey Zvyagintsev interrogates Russia in the same way 1990s era Zhang Yimou interrogated China: Methodically, metaphorically, and with an astutely savage eye for beautiful visuals to mask the criticism. There is a scene in his latest film, Minotaur, where the...
Vlissingen 2026 Review: YOURI, A Great Film About A Great Friendship
The Film by the Sea festival in Vlissingen (a.k.a. Flushing) started this year on a high note with its opening film Youri, by Sander Burger. The festival always has a large section dedicated to literary adaptations, and its main theme...
SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM Review: It's All About Growth
It's the latest sly, LOL comic adventure from Aardman Animation -- need we say more?
Toronto 2026 Review: RIVER, Survival Slasher Has an Experimental Streak
What is in the water in 2026 for the slasher horror subgenre? Between Avalon Fast flirting and subverting expectations in Camp, and Jane Schoenbrun's deep dive into eros and thanatos (and the pleasure principle) in Teenage Sex and Death at...
Toronto 2026 Review: THE REMOTES, The Voices that Haunt the Night
Many of us (myself included) have come to rely on our smartphone apps maybe a little too much, especially ones that tell us where to go. Even in our own hometowns, we can turn to google maps or Mapquest to...
Toronto 2026 Review: Singaporean Drama AH GIRL Elevated by Assured New Director and Astonishing Young Lead
The debut feature from Singaporean writer-director Ang Geck Geck Priscilla is a semi-autobiographical story of a family’s separation, as seen through the eyes of a seven year old girl. Struggling to fully understand the gravity of the situation, and what...
Toronto 2026 Review: HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!, Beautiful, Vibrant Portrait of Loss and Romance
Rinko Kikuchi stars in filmmaker Josef Kubota Wladyka's beautiful, vibrant, quirky, weird, imaginative, and genuinely moving portrait of moving on from devastating loss.
Toronto 2026 Review: FJORD, Palme D'Or Winner Finds Many Arthouse Audience Buttons to Push
Roger Ebert once described film as a “machine that generates empathy.” For writer-director Christian Mugiu, this is very much true. But what if that empathy was slyly and sharply weaponized into a provocation? Enter Fjord. In our increasingly globalized...
PRACTICAL MAGIC 2 Review: Second Time Isn't a Charm
When Practical Magic was released in 1998, no one probably thought it would become a special movie for a whole slew of teenage girls and young women. And not just because of witchery, black cats, and pointy hats, even though...
