Playback: Rian Johnson, Twists and Turns, from BRICK to WAKE UP DEAD MAN
Rian Johnson wants you on the edge of your seat. The American director delights in twisting beloved genres into razor-sharp puzzles, from slick noir capers to sci-fi paradoxes. His films are (mostly) clever, without condescension. In Brick (2005), he drops...
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...
ScreenAnarchy's Top 25 Films Of The 21st Century
We're almost at the end of the year 2025, and that means that the first quarter of the century is already gone. How did that happen so fast? Do quarter centuries currently go by as fast as decades did when...
Playback: Kleber Mendonça Filho, Civic Tremors, from NEIGHBORING SOUNDS to THE SECRET AGENT
Kleber Mendonça Filho makes politically charged dramas that draw their power from the everyday, letting ordinary Brazilian life tighten with the slow, simmering tension of a thriller. His films lay bare the class rifts and quiet violences embedded in the...
ETERNITY Review: Shockingly Charming Afterlife Love Story That Shouldn't Work, But Does
Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, John Early and Da'Vine Joy Randolph star in director David Freyne's film.
THE RED SPECTACLES Review: Mamoru Oshii's Absurdist Take on Authoritarianism Gets a Second Life
Memory hardens around those who experience violence, turning guilt or pain into an armor they must carry long after the wounds close. That burden is the doorway into Mamoru Oshii's The Red Spectacles, a film where guilt materializes as a...
Playback: Lee Sang-il, Ruptures and Reckonings, from CHONG to KOKUHO
Lee Sang-il drills into the emotional ruptures of life. His films study how people break -- and who they become afterward. The Japanese director built a career on emotionally precise, performance-driven dramas that illuminate how people fracture under extraordinary pressure....
Playback: Guillermo del Toro, Monstrous Beauty from CRONOS to FRANKENSTEIN
Guillermo del Toro treats fear as a form of faith. His stories believe in what frightens us because it's often what defines us. The Mexican director builds ornate, allegorical worlds where the monster is never merely monstrous. His films are...
NOW YOU SEE ME: NOW YOU DON'T Review: The Magic's Gone in This Third Act
Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, Justice Smith, Morgan Freeman star in director Ruben Fleischer's newest film.
Playback: Lynne Ramsay, Emotional Ruptures from RATCATCHER to DIE MY LOVE
Lynne Ramsay studies how pain takes shape. The Scottish director harnesses a poetic, sensory style in which her intimate stories of grief are barbed and transcendent. She is drawn to haunted characters, whether that be openly or implicitly. These stories...
Playback: Yorgos Lanthimos, Disorder and Discomfort, from KINETTA to BUGONIA
Yorgos Lanthimos delights in discomfort. Lanthimos built a career on ritualized absurdity and moral distortion, spinning stories where love, control, and social order are pushed to the brink of the surreal. From Dogtooth's domestic isolation to Poor Things's sexually-charged, Frankensteinian...
Playback: Kelly Reichardt's Small Gestures, from RIVER OF GRASS to THE MASTERMIND
Kelly Reichardt has spent her life chronicling the unhurried, uncertain rhythms of American life. Reichardt's films linger on people who live just outside the margins -- drifters, workers, artists -- capturing the fragile connections that hold them together. From the...
Brooklyn Horror 2025 Review: CAMP, Avalon Fast's Dreamy, Spellbound-by-Grief Sophomore Feature
Grief clings to us like smoke; no matter how far we walk, its scent lingers. Emily (Zola Grimmer) knows this too well. At 16, she struck and killed a young girl who ran in front of her car. Years later,...
Playback: Jafar Panahi, Cinema Under Pressure, from THE WHITE BALLOON to IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT
Jafar Panahi makes films under immense pressure. The Iranian filmmaker's conditions of censorship and surveillance have become the grammar of his storytelling. Out of those limits, he's built one of the most radical bodies of work, where love for one's...
URCHIN Review: Harris Dickinson's Unflinching Debut Shows How Addiction Devours the Vulnerable
Frank Dillane and Megan Northam star in Harris Dickinson's directorial debut.
Playback: Bill Condon, Spectacle and Secrets from GODS AND MONSTERS to KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
Bill Condon loves a spectacle, not just for the noise or the glamor, but for the ache that hides behind it. The lonely showman, the fading diva, and the monster who only wants to be seen; Condon tells stories where...
