There’s no arguing that the single biggest media phenomenon of the last decade is Netflix’s powerhouse series Stranger Things. This series has crossed age, gender, and racial lines, and all kinds of lines, to connect people around the world. The amazing thing is that it almost didn’t happen at all. …
Let’s face it, we all love bubble wrap. Something about popping those tiny little AirPods is soooo satisfying. Then comes along the Syndicate to destroy everything, even this simple pleasure, because in book four of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, The Gate of the Feral Gods, Carl and Donut (along with all the other …
A strange island of stone has risen out of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine. Everyone is baffled by it, and the area is quarantined until the United States Army can go in and figure out what’s going on. But Edward Beck, Caro’s professor and secret lover, says …
The Four Seasons returns for a second series on Netflix, following the same group of friends throughout the year. The first season was a masterpiece of observation about love, life and middle age. It could be argued that it was so good it didn’t need a second series, and mostly …
Paweł Pawlikowski shared the Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes with the directors of The Black Ball, who spoke first. When he finally gained the podium for his own speech, Mr. Pawlikowski laughed and (accurately) said the staging of this moment was terrible. No such mistakes were made for …
The wild success of the mediocre A Complete Unknown has at least opened up a new trend for cinema: a fictionalised exploration of specific albums recorded by specific artists. These stories tend to hark back to the analogue era, not only because young people who can’t imagine making music without …
Oh my god! That was a close one! The end of Carl’s Doomsday Scenario was almost the end of Carl and Donut. But they made it through, right out of the frying pan into the fire. Level four is a crazy maze of trains. If they can figure out the …
Welcome to level three of the dungeon! When we last left Carl and Donut, they had just finished helping all the Meadow Lark residents down the staircase to level three. But once down the stairs, they were separated from them, and now they faced a whole new set of challenges. …
Jocasta just wants to have a normal life. But let’s face it, as Death’s only child, that was never going to happen. So far, she has mostly managed to steer clear of the chaos that comes with being a child of old ones. She’s found a place, a small college …
Surrealism is not my favorite film genre, but I will make a massive exception if it’s in the hands of Boots Riley. Not unlike his debut, Riley’s latest feature, I Love Boosters, is a weird, vibrant, funny, thoughtful, hopeful thesis on collective action and workers’ rights. At a time when …
It’s a trope seen more often in romantic comedies, but on this level at least Paper Tiger innovates: it is the rare thriller that relies on The Idiot Plot. The only way everything in Paper Tiger happens is because all three main characters are complete and total idiots. It looks …
A Woman’s Life (La vie d’une femme) is the kind of daily-life movie at which French cinema excels. What we have here is nothing more and nothing less than slices from one woman’s life over a few years and the everyday problems that she experiences. This is both the kind …
“Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives” utters the popular opening credits narration from the daytime soap, Days of Our Lives. This also rings true for Ferzan Özpetek’s latest film Diamanti, which heavily peers through time’s hourglass in its depiction of the past and present …
Note: This review contains some mild spoilers for season 5 of The Boys. Back in 2019, The Boys burst onto the scene by having a supe burst through an actual person. This year, we have the fifth and final season, and it is an absolutely wild ride to an explosive …
Diego Luna has used the attention gained from the success of Andor to make a fascinating movie about a young Mexican woman’s tough life in Spain. Broadly speaking it is about the ways resentment and annoyance can spoil attempts to build a better life. Ashes also knows the power of …
Everybody enjoys a good “what-if”. It’s a thriving genre of literature and movies alike. And of course, we all do this constantly in our own lives, “What if I hadn’t married him?” “What if I finished college?” “What if I never moved there?” The questions are enough to drive you …
Babe: Pig in the City this ain’t. There are some similarities, in that Hen was filmed using real animals with humans as incidental to the plot, but this Hungarian film set in Greece is so disturbing that it’s definitely not for kids. It is from the perspective of a black …
Two decades after his extensive and impactful work with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Chidgasornpongse presents his debut feature, 9 Temples to Heaven (9 วัด สู่สวรรค์). The film is a selection of the Quinzaine des Cineastes of the Cannes Film Festival. The film follows a huge family of 9, who take their dying …
It’s always exciting to see a popular actor subvert expectations. Not only does it allow the actor to flex different creative muscles, but it also shows audiences that there is more to them than meets the eye. 2025’s The Smashing Machine attempts this feat with its leading star, Dwayne Johnson. …
Dominga Sotomayor is one of the biggest names of the new generation of the Chilean cinema. Alongside Pablo Larraín and Sebastian Lelio, her films achieved the international recognition and received attention for their boldness. Her debut feature, De Jueves a Domingo, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Her most …