Some of the most romantic movies to ever exist (Before Sunset) don’t feature even a kiss. Enter Past Lives, Celine Song’s achingly romantic two-hander about a pair of entangled Korean childhood friends who must navigate their deep connection across 7,000 miles (she’s in New York, he’s in Korea) and 24 years as they drift into...
A contemplative and unique Korean thriller, Jung Ju-ri’s Next Sohee is artfully directed and performed with reserved grace. Sohee (Kim Si-Eun) is an “extern”, a student worker exploited for their labor, mandated to work a call center as a precondition for graduation. Ju-ri turns the office worker grind into a mental prison that chisels away...
The occult dabblings of the Nazi party casts a dark pall over the estate of a witchy Baroness circa 1975 Austria in Marie Alice Wolfszahn’s Mother Superior. The atmospheric, feminist midnight movie tells the story of deep-cover nurse Sigrun (Isabella Händler) as she attempts to puzzle out the mysteries of her lineage, only to stumble...
Georgie (Lola Campbell) is a 12-going-on-30 type, living on her lonesome in her London flat following the death of her mum in Scrappers. When her estranged deadbeat dad (Harris Dickinson) hops the fence and re-enters her life one day, Georgie has to navigate her newfound feelings towards her out-of-the-woodwork parental figure in writer-director Charlotte Regan’s...
Dying babies. Dead bodies. Mass graves. Shelled maternity wards. War crimes. 20 Days in Mariupol is not for the faint of heart. It is however an urgent and unblinking reminder of the atrocities occurring to this day in Ukraine, with director Mstyslav Chernov documenting indiscriminate violence in horrifying detail. This makes for a documentary that’s...
A feel-bad Belgium coming-of-age story, Veerle Baetens’ When It Melts focuses on increasingly predatory pubescent children as they learn the art of exploitation. Icky but powerful – and powerfully performed (young Rosa Marchant is outstanding) – this somber drama is incredibly uncomfortable but packs an emotional wallop. Though it becomes increasingly obvious where things are...
This Finnish response to John Wick sees a prospector take out a Nazi army in gory style. ‘Sisu’ is an insanely over-the-top historical-actioner that's pure grindhouse delight and little more.…
Ari Aster’s black comedy ‘Beau is Afraid’ is a wild swing - absolutely brilliant and hysterical in moments and completely self-indulgent and unnecessary in others. It’s bold, and singular, and…
'Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant', a thoughtless flex of American war-time exceptionalism, is a weak byproduct of the Military-entertainment complex. Thin characters and poor dialogue can’t mask the overwhelming stench of…
Through no fault of a committed and campy Nicolas Cage, 'Renfield' is a stiff horror-comedy that never manages to be scary or funny, opting instead for an unwelcome onslaught of…