Reviews Archives - Page 5 of 148

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Sundance ‘26: ‘SHAME AND MONEY’ is a Deeply Eastern European Tale of Scraping By

Shame and Money, writer-director Visar Morina’s pastoral-then-metropolitan slice-of-life drama from the landlocked Eastern European Republic of Kosovo, interrogates what’s left when a family’s livelihood collapses and they’re forced to fend for themselves in a new environment. For Shaban’s hardworking family, upheaval begins when their untrustworthy brother steals the family cow. Their routine of livestock tending,...

Matt Oakes · Jan 25, 2026

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Sundance ‘26: ‘BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY’ Experiments with Identity and Fake Friends

We meet 14-year-old Sid Bookman (Ani Palmer) in a video chat room. It’s 2006, New Zealand, still deep in the dial-up age. Talking to a guy online, Sid says she’s 18 and claims her camera’s broken. It’s not. A chubby, shirtless 35-year-old wanks off on the other side. It’s these moments from the early internet...

Matt Oakes · Jan 24, 2026

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Sundance ‘26: ‘SILENCED’ Relitigates the Amber Heard–Johnny Depp Trial Through the Lens of Weaponized Defamation Law

Historically, men would duel to the death when their reputations were tarnished, but international human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson argues that “too many men were dying that way, so they introduced defamation laws.” This was supposed to be a more civilized method—allow legal practitioners to decide what is and is not true regarding reputation and...

Matt Oakes · Jan 24, 2026

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Sundance ‘26: ‘MUM, I’M ALIEN PREGNANT’ Is a Gross, Slimy Kiwi Hootenanny That’s Not Entirely Full Term

Mary (Hannah Lynch) isn’t up to much. Mostly, she loafs around and jerks off to hentai porn. When a new neighbor, Boo (Arlo Green), around her age, shows up, the antisocial underachiever befriends the socially awkward loner because he’s got tentacles on his dong. Turns out he’s probably an alien, as the title unsubtly suggests....

Matt Oakes · Jan 24, 2026

FESTIVAL

Sundance ‘26: ‘AMERICAN DOCTOR’ a Charged Account of Gaza’s Humanitarian Breakdown

American Doctor forces audiences to confront the carnage inflicted on Gaza’s civilians, particularly children, early and often. For anyone who somehow avoided footage of dead babies across social media in 2025, the film offers a corrective almost immediately. One doctor argues it would be “journalistic malpractice” not to show the corpses, claiming that omitting them...

Matt Oakes · Jan 23, 2026

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Sundance ‘26: A Childhood Displaced in Syrian Refugee Doc ‘ONE IN A MILLION’

Aleppo, Syria, 2025. A bombed out shell of its former self. Ten years prior, it was a flourishing city filled with bustling markets, food stalls, prayer, and congregation. Co-directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes chronicle that ten year transformation through the lens of Israa, an Aleppo native. Filming for One in a Million began in...

Matt Oakes · Jan 23, 2026

FESTIVAL

Sundance ‘26: ‘CLOSURE’ Is an Electrifying, Devastating Search for Meaning in Loss

Shot with cinematic flair, Michał Marczak’s Polish-language documentary Closure is a rattling search and rescue: both for an actual missing kid and the soul of the father searching. Following the disappearance of his teenage son Chris, Daniel diligently scours the Vistula River, hoping to either recover his son’s corpse or uncover some hint that he...

Matt Oakes · Jan 23, 2026

FESTIVAL

Sundance ‘26: ‘THE LAKE’ is a Dire Warning of an Impending Environmental Meltdown

You may have heard the headlines before: without immediate intervention, an “environmental nuclear bomb” is set to go off in the Western USA, in Utah. The Lake, an urgent, fact-filled documentary from Utah-native and first-time feature documentarian Abby Ellis, starts by providing an alarming statistic: over half of the water in the Great Salt Lake...

Matt Oakes · Jan 22, 2026

FESTIVAL

Sundance ‘26: Commercialism, Competition Breeds Tragedy In ‘THE LAST FIRST: WINTER K2’

In the winter of 2021, a group of 60 climbers—a mix of professional mountaineers, Sherpas, and an uncomfortably large number of novices on a paid expedition—gather at a Himalayan base camp to attempt one of the last unclaimed feats in alpine sport: summiting K2 in winter. The Last First: Winter K2, from documentarian Amir Bar-Lev,...

Matt Oakes · Jan 22, 2026

STREAMING · NETFLIX

‘28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE’ A Funky Continuation of the Infection

Nia DaCosta proves a steady hand in continuing the 28 Years Later story, this time framing it as an ideological battle between two opposing forces: Ralph Fiennes’ atheist humanist Dr.…

Matt Oakes · Jan 13, 2026

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