In 2023, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) released a list of the fifty greatest Canadian films ever. At the top of the list, it was not the name of David Cronenberg, Sarah Polley, Jean-Marc Vallée, or Atom Egoyan. It was Zacharias Kunuk with his historical 2001 film, Atanarjuat: The Fast …
Director Maryam Touzani, who co-wrote Calle Málaga with Nabil Ayouch, starts extremely strongly with this tale of an elderly woman finally making her own choices in life, but loses the courage of her convictions. This is ironic as this is very much a story of how you cannot have your …
We don’t choose our family. Love them, hate them, they are our families, and we are stuck with them. Some of us are blessed with living, supportive ones; others not so much, and the rest fall somewhere in between. Black Rabbit is a story of brothers who fall somewhere in …
Cotton Queen is the debut film of Russian-Sudanese writer-director Suzannah Mirghani and very clearly made for an international audience. The establishing shots of laughing teenager cotton workers watching Tiktoks make sure, even if we know nothing about Sudan, we know it’s firmly in the now. And while it is Sudanese …
Comedian Mae Martin’s (Feel Good) first venture into drama is a confused exploration of a dysfunctional town with a mysterious school. What has the potential to be a Lynchian mystery falls flat as it struggles to combine two perspectives. Told through two separate viewpoints, Wayward follows cop Alex Dempsey (Martin) …
Of all the hype bubbles that form around the first reactions to a new release, One Battle After Another generated some of the most effusive of this century. And I mean that almost literally, since many of those reactions contained the pull-quote-ready taglines that marketing departments love so much — …
The Cut, starring Orlando Bloom, is an intense film about all the psychological drama that goes on behind the scenes of a boxer determined to make weight and redeem himself. It’s gritty and massively thrilling and one of the most interesting films of the past year. That’s why I was …
We live in a cinematic era fascinated by the origin stories of founders and their revolutionary creations, but not all of them seem as urgently relevant as that of Whitney Wolfe and Bumble. The promise of exploring the creation of a dating app designed as an antidote to the toxic …
While you may know the talented actor Jeremy Ray Taylor from It, for his latest role he’s branched out into the world of action comedy with London Calling. Starring opposite Josh Duhamel, the actor plays Julian, the LARPing son of a crime-boss who has to learn how to become a …
With Urchin, Harris Dickinson – one of the UK’s brightest young stars – makes the move from actor to director like so many before him. He does not star in this debut feature, making only an uncredited featured appearance early on in this story of a young rough-sleeping drug addict. …
Even before her debut feature, Sophy Romvari has become a highly regarded upcoming director among the online cinephiles. Her shorts Norman Norman, Still Processing, and It’s What Each Person Needs were part of the selections at the Toronto International Film Festival. Criterion Channel acquired some of her other films, such …
This movie, for which the English title should be My Tennis Coach and it’s weird that it isn’t, is an affable Italian road movie about the coming of age of a wannabe tennis player. The entire thing is built around the nuclear-level charm of Pierfrancesco Favino (who previously worked with …
In their first directorial effort as a directing duo, Nicole and Valentina Bertani debut at the Concorso Internazionale of the Locarno Film Festival with Mosquitoes (Le Bambine). In 2022, Valentina screened her first film, The Crown Shyness (La timidezza delle chiome) at the Giornate degli Autori of the Venice Film …
Playing in the Orizzonti competition program at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival, Thai director and screenwriter Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s latest vision Human Resource doubles as an intimate character study and a meditative portrait of contemporary Thai life mapped through the soul-sapping mechanics of corporate grind, a kind of a white-collar …
Writer-director Mihai Mincan told the room at the Venice Film Festival that the idea of Milk Teeth came from a real case of a girl who disappeared carrying a bucket of walnut shells to the garbage. His movie also makes an interesting companion piece to another film from the festival, …
Writer-director Shahad Ameen begins her movie with the last thing you’d expect from a story set in Saudi Arabia: snow. The message of this image is clear: if stereotypes are all you know then you know nothing at all. And as we follow three people on a secret, dangerous journey, …
No deer longs for the hunter’s arrow, and no art designed to maintain the status quo is ever as good as it thinks it is. Say what you will about Luca Guadagnino, he has made three solid movies in the last eighteen months, a level of career output rarely seen since …
Juror #2 could not have come out at a stranger time in world events towards the end of 2024. As a director, Clint Eastwood’s interests have been captured by the contradictions of life and justice in the United States: there are often clear-cut guilty and innocent parties, but who prevails …
Nicholas Hoult had a theme in 2024. The Order, director Justin Kurzel’s latest dramatic feature based on true events, puts his character in a very similar situation as in Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2. Both Bob Mathews (The Order) and Justin Kemp (Juror #2) are morally compromised men making bad (desperate, …
In the following effort for the Croatian director Hana Jušić, she presents God Will Not Help in the Concorso Internazionale of the 2025 Locarno Film Festival. Following her debut at the Venice Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori with Quit Staring at My Plate, the Croatian author takes a look at the …