Cinema has the power to drag us into the depths of conflicts we’d rather ignore in real life. The driving force behind Anniversary started for me long before the movie itself: in its brilliant ensemble. Someone had the fantastic idea of bringing together some of the most promising and underrated …
In Aranya Sahay’s Humans in the Loop, technology and morality collide in a gripping story about the fine line between human judgment and artificial intelligence. The film follows Nehma, a woman deeply passionate about innovation but forced to confront ethical dilemmas that shake her sense of purpose and identity. At …
How does one top a near-perfect piece of cinema such as 2021’s The Black Phone? This supernatural thriller from Scott Derrickson is easily one of the best horror films in recent years, with a story so creepy and haunting that you’ll need to sleep with the lights on. The right …
The expectations surrounding A House of Dynamite, Kathryn Bigelow’s new and highly anticipated film, were understandably stratospheric. After military tension and psychological analysis masterworks like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, the prospect of Bigelow returning to a theme of war and existential crisis — dealing with the nuclear …
It is always, always interesting to see art about the making of other art. The choices people make, why those choices resonate, whether those choices were deliberate or accidental, and how much people get into their own way is always fascinating to watch. It certainly helps if you have a …
Following the intense and visceral rawness of All Quiet on the Western Front and the meticulous religious intrigue of Conclave — both of which are among my absolute favorites from their respective release years — the mere idea of Edward Berger tackling a psychological thriller focused on addiction and moral …
Plainclothes follows closeted 90s police officer Lucas (Tom Blyth) who spends his workday luring gay men into the toilet at the mall before arresting them. Set in 1997’s America, a story about cops luring men into bathrooms to out them a few years ago would have been a distant shudder …
Giuseppe Verdi may have been dead for the past 124 years, but his legacy as Italy’s greatest 19th century opera composer is as alive as ever on stages around the world. Viva Verdi!, however, the documentary by director Yvonne Russo, shows another side of his legacy in music education and …
Before I even sat down to watch The Voice of Hind Rajab, its real-life story had already flooded my soul. Contrary to my personal tendency to go into screenings with little to no familiarity with the respective film, this time, my prior knowledge was complete. My curiosity and, frankly, my …
It’s rare that a festival can get me so excited when I’ve seen every act on the lineup before; but such is the case with Future Days festival in Birmingham at The Crossing, a one-day alternative event curated by This is Tmrw – the promoters having spotlighted some of the …
When we talk about Coldplay’s journey from a small Manchester stage to becoming one of the biggest bands in the world, one name quietly but significantly stands out – Debs Wild. A music consultant with an instinct for recognising raw talent, Wild was among the very first people to see something …
The Iraqi-French director Abbas Fahdel is known for studying war and conflicts in the Middle East. His debut feature, Back to Babylon, is a return home after an immense exile, and analyzes the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq and Gulf wars in the country. His most celebrated film, Homeland: Iraq Year …
My expectations for Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt were, I confess, moderate, but they leaned toward cautious optimism. I like most of his films, with Challengers being my favorite, and I generally admire his work, even if I don’t consider myself an unconditional fan. However, the initial reception of this …
Curiosity and hope were my personal feelings going into the cinema to see Hamlet (2025). I knew beforehand this would be another transposition of Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy into a contemporary context, an exercise that’s always risky in itself. However, the decisive factor in giving the film a chance was, without …
The emotional rollercoaster Giacomo Covi’s character undergoes in A Year of School is so relatable it’s obvious why he won the Best Actor prize in the Orrizonti strand of this year’s Venice Film Festival: a new prince has been crowned. In fact all four of the main actors in A …
In 2021 a small French movie called The World After Us played the festival circuit because it was one of the first modern movies to address life in the modern gig economy. It was a direct precursor to At Work, in that they are both about a novelist in Paris …
I’m not a sports guy, which I feel is important to state before I go any further in this review. Friends and family have tried many times before to teach me the rules of games like football and baseball, but to no avail. I can analyze a Broadway show or …
This comedy-thriller manages to be both very funny and gruesomely violent, with an appetite for the strange and startling that had the Venice Film Festival audience barking with shock as often as laughing. For the most part, the bold mood swings work, largely thanks to a setting which includes several …
There is a fascinating new trend in cinema gathering steam: action movies with hardly any dialogue. Finland’s Sisu from 2022 shows Nazis being slaughtered without saying much about it, while America’s No One Will Save You from 2023 has a young woman fighting off an alien attack. And now Detroit …
“Allegedly, The Strangers: Chapter 2 is scheduled to hit cinemas later this year. It cannot possibly be as awful as this one. I may have to rethink my life choices if it is.” I concluded my review of The Strangers: Chapter 1, one of 2024’s worst films, with these words. …