Palestine ‘36 (Annemarie Jacir, 2025): 5/5
A sweeping, horrifying, breathtaking - as in, I kept gasping - historical epic about the Great Palestine Revolt of 1936-1939 that shows, in living color, how the British and the Zionists schemed to steal the land and the lives in a poor farming community. To think that this film was being made in the midst of an ongoing genocide, to think that the story it tells is still ongoing nearly a century later, is heartbreaking and enraging and a call to action for every one of us.


Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton, 2025): 2.5/5
Shackleton completes his uncompleted true crime documentary without all the necessary parts (a slyly appropriate approach, given that the subject is a famously unsolved mystery with no smoking gun) even as he uses the absence of those elements as an excuse to riff on the formulaic tropes and ethical lapses of true crime. But the real missing piece here, I'd argue, is any real attempt to reconcile his rather withering critique of the genre and the fact that he was apparently planning to indulge its every cliche.
Beyond one sheepish confession that he's drawn to the tactics of those films, however manipulative they may be, there's not much self-reflection here. Was it pure careerism or streaming-payout thirst motivating him to try to make a movie in a style he knows (and repeatedly, convincingly insists) is both limited and dubious in intention? Without any real reckoning with that contradiction, it's hard to take the movie's takedown of true crime that seriously. Had he gotten the authorization he wanted, his movie would embody every convention he points out with (petty?) amusement.

Also, really surprised that THE THIN BLUE LINE, the (brilliant) ground zero antecedent of so much streaming slop, doesn't get a mention. (And neither does Fincher's movie!)


The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, 2025): 3.5/5
Once again, Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet have crafted a stirring film about a European visionary who comes to America (the last time it was America at the beginning of its superpower era, this time it’s at the birth of the nation itself) and does battle with the new country that is at once fertile soil and an unsafe space. Seyfried is fantastic and Celia Rowlson-Hall's choreography was the perfect balance of earthly carnality and religious ecstasy. The last act really touched me. I don’t want to say more.


Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere (Adrian Choa, 2026): 2.5/5

Oh, "bring down the system"??? who set the system up huh????? HUHHHH??!!!!!!

As infuriating as you'd expect and doesn't tell me anything I didn't know already. It really gets at how culturally and spiritually barren the world is for young male right wingers. They have no genuine love or appreciation for human connection whatsoever, everything is transactional and about obtaining power through vapid signifiers. A film populated by men who'd probably call you gay when you say you liked a novel, a movie made before the year 2005, a piece of music made with non-synthetic instruments, or a heartfelt conversation with a woman.

SMDH we need to make podcast equipment more expensive.


Send Help (Sam Raimi, 2026): 3/5
Sam Raimi going full Sam Raimi. In a better world, Rachel McAdams would be a contender for next year’s Oscar. This feels like another film that will explain to future generations what the Second Trump Era felt like. Also, Raimi has an affection for out-of-control female anti-heroes that one usually only sees in gay male directors. High praise, that.


BOOK NOOK

The Other (Thomas Tryon, 1971)

So it's 100% because NYRB re-published The Other that I picked this up. Otherwise, it simply wouldn't have been on my radar. Published in 1971 by Thomas Tryon (hunky actor-turned-writer), this is a creepy twin story. Creepy identical twin boys, one who seems good and one who seems bad. There's definitely a murkiness here, and the reader is left in a position to guess or interpret, kind of like at the end of The Turn of the Screw. Which boy is bad? Which boy is good? Is one of them a ghost? Is one of them possessed? Who is killing all these people? And, how stupid is the family, leaving an infant alone in a house where people are being hurt or killed every couple of days?

It's a gothic story, too. They're in the old family house. The mother is mentally disturbed, beautiful and fragile. The grandmother is a wise crone with gypsy blood. There are unexplained happenings. There is magic, trickery, secrets, incantation, a severed finger, and a stolen ring.

I adore gothic writing when it's really good. Huge fan of Flannery O'Connor, Daphne du Maurier, and Shirley Jackson, to name a few. I'm not convinced that Tryon is quite up to their snuff.

My Top 10 of 2025

Sirāt (Oliver Laxe)

It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)

One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Eddington (Ari Aster)

Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)

Weapons (Zach Cregger)

Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Companion (Drew Hancock)

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)

Splitsville (Michael Angelo Covino)

 

And the Next Ten (and not too shabby)

Hamnet (Chloé Zha)

Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor)

Vulcanizadora (Joel Potrykus)

Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)

Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)

Friendship (Andrew DeYoung)

The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffiths)

Eephus (Carson Lund)

Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine)

Presence (Steven Soderbergh)

 

Also really liked: 
The Shrouds

Warfare

Good Boy

F1

 

Good Year for Animation
Predator: Killer of Killers

Chainsaw Man

Demon Slayer

K-Pop Demon Hunters

* Hoppers (Daniel Chong, 2026): 3/5

Overstuffed but swift. At the end of a half hour, the conflict seems to come to the point where most movies end. But the movie keeps coming up with additional crises. 

 

Send Help (Sam Raimi, 2026): 3/5

Rachel McAdams killing a wild boar with a hand-carved stake is my fetish.

 

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (BenDavid Grabinski, 2026): 3/5

A Tarantino knock-off, plus time travel. Likable and diverting, if paper thin.

 

Paul McCartney: Man on the Run (Morgan Neville, 2026): 3/5

The best part is in the first twenty minutes, where Paul McCartney is demonstrably unsure of how he should proceed. This is the person whose first solo single repeats the line, “Maybe I’m a lonely man in the middle of something he doesn’t really understand.” Once he gets back on his feet, the doc is a mad rush through the next ten years, justifying and smoothing all of his choices. For what it’s worth, I like these McCartney albums while also thinking that none of them are better than the worst Beatles album.

 

Pillion (Harry Lighton, 2026): 2.5/5

Surprisingly unengaging despite the titillation and intrigue of the gay BDSM milieu. It’s a bummer that our protagonist’s love interest doesn’t seem to care much for him—and I would feel the same no matter the gender. A bloodless affair. 

 

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Nia DaCosta, 2026): 2.5/5

The zombie stuff goes all Day of the Dead, with trying to communicate with the zombies and revive their humanity and all. But most of the movie is about how horrible a Road Warrior-like band of humans are. The big set-piece involving Iron Maiden should have worked for me but didn’t.

 

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (Gore Verbinski, 2026): 2/5

Big-swing sci-fi satire, in the vein of Brazil but without its scale and romanticism or Everything Everywhere All at Oncebut without its volcanic spew of ideas.

 

 

The Outfit (John Flynn, 1973): 3.5/5

I watched this because it’s an adaptation of a book by Richard Stark (see below)—and indeed it nails Stark’s stripped down and ruthless tone. A good movie if you like to watch tough guys point revolvers at one another and transfer other people’s money from safes to bags. But then again I could watch Robert Duval, Joe Don Baker, Robert Ryan, Karen Black and Tim Carey read the phone book. 

 

Big City Blues (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932): 3.5/5

The plot of a young man moving to NYC from the sticks and getting bamboozled and over his head is a bit tiresome, but the film has a great, long party scene that takes up nearly half of the film’s running time, involves Humphrey Bogart himself, and ends in murder. Joan Blondel stands out: “that’s one girl I could recognize from behind.” Drunken debauchery, murder, suicide, a woman reading the then-scandalous lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness, and a reference to cross-dressing establish the film’s pre-Code bona fides. 

 

Five Star Final (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931): 3/5

Edward G. Robinson plays a newspaper editor who digs up a long-forgotten story about a murderess, with tragic consequences—proving people have been complaining about the media for at least 95 years (to little effect). A couple of explicit references to boobs and two (!) suicides (just off screen) establish the film’s pre-Code bona fides. 

 

Heat Lightning (Mervyn LeRoy, 1934): 3.5/5

A dozen strangers—including a couple of bank robbers, some rich girls, a sheriff, a huge Mexican family, and the two tough women who run the place and do a bunch of things the men don’t think women can or should do—collect in a diner in the middle of the desert. Like Five Star Final, this has a large and colorful cast. The two women who own the diner are strong and complex women who very much have sex with two obviously bad men, establishing the film’s pre-Code bona fides. A guy dies in closeup; last words: “Who cares” (!!)

 

Breathless, rw (Jim McBride, 1983): 4.5/5

Today (as opposed to when I saw, and quite loved, it in the theater when I was 16) I can see that Richard Gere’s Jesse is an adolescent/childish vision of a man. But I still find Gere and the film endlessly sexy, romantic and watchable. The less said about Valérie Kaprisky, the better, but Gere is a goddamn wonder: thrillingly handsome, charismatic, and always in motion physically and emotionally. 

 

Andor, Season 1 (Tony Gilroy, et al, 2022): 2/5

Touted by many as the best TV of the year, but I don’t get it. The drama involves among other things breaking into a fortress and then out of a high-tech prison—but never really manages to ratchet up much tension. And all the Star Warsfan-service is pure distraction. 

 

How to Shoot a Ghost, 27m (Charlie Kaufman, 2025): 1.5/5

Jackals & Fireflies, 20m (Charlie Kaufman, 2023): 1.5

Two poetic bores. The poet/screenwriter, Eva H.D., appears in Jackals, and is pretty cute. I sincerely hope she’s Kaufman’s girlfriend (alas, there is no public affirmation).

 

C’est la Vie, 8m (Ari Aster, 2016): 2/5

A self-lacerating (and generally lacerating) direct address monologue by a homeless person over a couple dozen tableau. Funny (ish) and caustic (ish). 

The Turtle’s Head, 12m (Ari Aster, 2014): 3/5

An eventually-funny parody of detective fiction where the investigation of the case becomes overwhelmed by the detective’s obsession that his dick is shrinking. 

Basically, 15m (Ari Aster, 2014): 2/5

A self-lacerating (and generally lacerating) direct address monologue by a would-be actress over a couple dozen tableau. Funny (ish) and caustic (ish). 

Munchausen, 17m (Ari Aster, 2013): 3/5

Bonnie Bedelia (!) plays a monstrously overbearing and narcissistic mother, an Aster signature.

The Strange Thing about the Johnsons, 30m (Ari Aster, 2011): 3.5/5

A terrifically fucked-up story of a son sexually abusing his father (!!). You can’t say that Aster doesn’t have balls. 

Beau, 7m (Ari Aster, 2011): 3/5

The source of the stolen suitcase bit—and the general air of anxiety and homicide—from Beau is Afraid.

Herman’s Cure-All Tonic (Ari Aster, 2008): 2.5/5

Harold collects the green goo being excreted by his dying father and sells it to people as a cure-all medicine. 

 

Arnulf Rainer, 7m (Peter Kubelka, 1960): 2/5

Snapping rapidly back-and-forth between all-black and all-white at different cadences, with either white noise or silence on the soundtrack. Primal!

 

 

BOOK NOOK (too too precious!!)

 

Howl’s Moving Castle (Diana Wynne Jones, 1986)

Jack read this for his English class at school, so I read it too. It was published after a couple of Miyazaki’s masterpieces, but it still could plausibly be the origin of so much of the director’s sensibility—where everything is peacefully mutable and a projection of the (child) protagonist’s anxious and changing subconscious. (Or at least I THINK that’s partly what’s going on in Totoro, Spirited Away, Ponyo, and The Boy and the Heron.)

 

The Seventh (Richard Stark, 1966)

The very definition of lean and mean. Tightlipped Parker just participated in a heist at a football stadium and is holding the money. After a couple of days of holing up in an apartment with a girl, he walks to the corner store for some cigarettes and when he comes back, the girl is dead and the money is gone. Stark’s 24 Parker novels were adapted into Boorman’s Point Blank, John Flynn’s The Outfit (see above), as well as Goddard’s Made in U.S.A. (from 1968. How have I not seen this??). 

 

 Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model (Mor Loushy, Daniel Sivan, 2026): 2/5

Holy FUCK I don’t have the emotional energy for this right now. Moral of the story being the 00’s and early 2010’s were awful to women from slut shaming (sexual assault) to body image (size 6 is obese).

"But the public wanted more!"

“The public” was 16 years old, Tyra.

Also, is Tyra Banks an evil genius/pathological expert at deflection and self victimizing OR a casualty of an uncaring industry, unknowingly perpetuating the same cycles of exploitation she herself once endured?

I don't know, and apparently neither do the filmmakers.

Ahed's Knee (Nadav Lapid, 2021): 3/5

This is a fine "I need to get out of the city and yell about how angry I am about Israel's politics" film. Nadav Lapid letting loose here; not the best film, kept me at a distance with some editing choices, but there are a few excellent speeches he unleashes about how dishonest everything is in Israel, how people are afraid of hearing the truth. All packed within a meta story about a filmmaker who wants to say things he can't say because he'll get in trouble for telling the truth.

rewatched Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008): 4.5/5

"Martyrs are exceptional people. They survive pain, they survive total deprivation. They bear all the sins of the earth. They give themselves up. They transcend themselves...they are transfigured. [...] But there are only victims left."

First rewatch since 2011 and I completely forgot how the film doesn't let you ever catch a break, like at all.

Leigh's Hot Take: this is a love story.

The Assassin (Hou hsiao hsien, 2015): 2.5/5

Sustained on beauty for about half its runtime, until Hou's utter disinterest in compelling dramaturgy or depicting a fight scene clearly drained me. That opening title card though? Rapturous.

964 Pinocchio (Shozin Fukui, 1991): 1.5/5

Time to admit I'm not a fan of Japanese cyberpunk.

In My Skin (Marina de Van, 2002): 2/5

God forbid a girl has a hobby…

A softer side of the New French Extremity movement. Wouldn't rank it too highly either. (We just know so little about the character of Esther so it's hard to decipher her motivation or why she gets so obsessed with self-mutilation/cannibalism.)

Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke, 2024): 5/5

“If you love until it hurts, then you cannot hurt anymore. You can only love more.”

Thank you, Therapy Robot at the Shopping Mall.

Just stunning, immense, and poignant. This is not a film for decoding. It’s one you let wash over you, let it rearrange your molecules a bit. Jia has crafted something that feels genuinely unprecedented here, a decades-spanning meditation that functions less like traditional narrative and more like watching time itself learn how to work through its past to better dream of a future.

And Zhao Tao, man. Jesus Christ. Zhao Tao and her silent symphony as Qiao Qiao. She carries entire emotional universes in her silence, embodying the specific kind of hurt that comes from loving something - or someone - that keeps disappearing on you. Whether that’s her abandoning lover Guo Bin or China itself feels deliberately ambiguous. The way she processes being left behind mirrors how entire communities get left behind by rapid modernization. She’s dealing with the macro and micro simultaneously—the boyfriend who vanished and the homeland that keeps shape-shifting beneath her feet.

And that final moment when she finally speaks - shouting as she joins those mysterious nighttime joggers - hit me like a freight train. Throughout the film, her muteness felt almost mythical, like she was this silent witness to history. But that shout - whether it’s her rejecting Guo Bin for good or just asserting her right to exist on her own terms - feels like the sound of someone finally claiming their voice after decades of observation.

In the end, maybe it's about being a regular person, "caught by the tides" of history - just like everybody else. We cannot avoid the rising tides -- but at the very least, we can learn to swim.

BOOK NOOK (or is that too precious?)

The Painted Bird (Jerzy Kosinski, 1965)

"Against the background of bland colors he projected an unfadable blackness. In a world of men with harrowed faces, with smashed eyes, bloody, bruised and disfigured limbs, among the fetid, broken human bodies, of which I had already seen so many, he seemed an example of neat perfection that could not be sullied: the smooth, polished skin of his face, the bright golden hair showing under his peaked cap, his pure metal eyes. Every movement of his body seemed propelled by some tremendous internal force. The granite sound of his language was ideally suited to order the death of inferior, forlorn creatures. I was stung by a twinge of envy I had never experienced before, and I admired the glittering death's-head and crossbones that embellished his tall cap. I thought how good it would be to have such a gleaming and hairless skull instead of my Gypsy face which was so feared and disliked by decent people. The officer surveyed me sharply. I felt like a squashed caterpillar oozing in the dust, a creature that could not harm anyone yet aroused loathing and disgust. In the presence of such a resplendent being, armed in all the symbols of might and majesty, I was genuinely ashamed of my appearance. I had nothing against his killing me."

Unflinching work about a lesser told story of WWII with scenes of unimaginable horror and brutality. Prose was beautiful though and moving. Apparently this book was canned after scholars/literary circles realized Kosinski lied about it being autobiographical.

 2025 Takes a Turn for the Better

 

* Sirāt (Oliver Laxe, 2025): 5/5

Laxe says that he is trying to heal by making the viewer die before dying. Christ what a goal. The result is a powerful and primal experience that pairs away everything that is unnecessary, placing its characters on a stark and existential stage and puts them through it. And thanks to the bass music and pace, I think it becomes a body movie—what it feels like to be in this body/those bodies. The result was real PTSD (for me).  A lot of naysayers talk about it not having enough meaning to justify its cruelty, but for me there was thematic resonance for the actual experience of war for, say, the Palestinian people. Comps sited by Laxe include: Sorcerer/Wages of Fear, Vanishing Point, Apocalypse Now, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Road Warrior, Two Lane Blacktop. You know…some of my favorite movies ever.

 

Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, 2025): 4/5

Collateral Damage, the Movie. Marty is a detestable, narcissistic trainwreck who leaves a trail of ruined lives in his wake. But if that alone doesn’t turn you off, there is lots to love and admire in this wild screenplay, vivid characters, suspenseful and exhilarating filmmaking, and superb acting. Dazzling and audacious shit, and I just kept repeating “What the fuck kind of a movie is this?” with admiration.

 

Hamnet (Chloé Zhao, 2025): 4/5

For me, the most luxuriously emotional movie of the season, a quality not to be underestimated. Between the love and the death, it’s a lot to put yourself through. But finally it’s a powerful expression of the power of art to make your pain something that everyone can feel and share—to help carry the burden. Helped me to see Hamlet as the tragedy it professes to be and not just a story of revenge gone wrong. 

 

The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, 2025): 3.5/5

Starts as a pretty effective and suspenseful heist-gone-wrong movie, then slowly morphs into a heist-gone-sad movie. Not unlike Dog Day Afternoon, but really just feeling like a lot of 70s movies (compliment). John O’Connor is convincingly non-plussed.

 

Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, 2025): 3.5/5

Not the disaster that I had been led to believe. Really about how you can’t look to the other person in your relationship to make you happy; you have to stoke your own fire. The script getting us there isn’t great, but the filmmaking elevates it. 

 

Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, 2025): 3/5

This would be a good document to send to aliens to demonstrate the normal relationship between grown children and their parents. Neither side really feels compelled to dig into the details of their own lives and complexity, so they just end at vague updates and comforting and non-invasive generalities. This is a kind of love, and neither side objects.

I hear people say that they would love to have a conversation with one of their parents who has died, and I do sometimes think about the things I would like to ask my dad. Like, why he didn’t seem to like to engage and play with me more? (Something I like to do with Jack, and I’m the age that Dad was then). But this is something I never really asked him at the time, because I wouldn’t have liked to complain and I don’t think he would have had the words for it anyway. So yeah deep thoughts, though a very paltry drama. 

 

The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025): 2.5/5

Narratively and stylistically wandering and wooly. As with the spaceships in Bacarau (which I was also not wild about) there’s just stuff that doesn’t add up or pay off. (I’m looking at you Hairy Leg). An ambient thriller, meaning the notes are there but they just kind of hover rather than coalesce into a tune.

 

Rebuilding (Max Walker-Silverman, 2025): 2/5

A sad character moves from point A to point A and ½ on the emotional scale. The most internal of the three John O’Conner performances that I saw in 2025 (still haven’t watched The History of Sound), and the least successful. 

 

The Plague (Charlie Polinger, 2025): 2/5

The oft-told story (Lord of the Flies, here at water polo camp) didn’t evolve swiftly enough, and the stylistic flourishes didn’t much work for me.

 

The Housemaid (Paul Feig, 2025): 1.5/5

Ludicrous and incompetent. The marketing sets up a two-hander between the two women in opposition to one another—and at least that would have granted a kind of power to both. But [spoiler] they both turn out to be powerless victims of a man. Many times, I asked myself, “Why is this scene in slow motion, and without dialogue,” and I think the reason is always that the drama was so unconvincingly shot that this was the only way to save the scene. And fer chrisakes, why is this movie 130 minutes??

 

Oscar Shorts

The Singers, 18m (Sam Davis, 2025): 3.5/5

Live action. A singing contest in a run-down bar expresses the best of humanity and of artistic expression. 

The Girl Who Cried Tears, 16m (Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski, 2025): 3/5

Stop-motion. A nice metaphor for the people who make money off of artists, and very impressive on a technical level.

Retirement Plan 7m (John Kelly, 2025): 2.5/5

Animated. When did the Oscar’s start nominating New Yorker cartoons for best short?

 

 

* GOAT (Tyree Dillihay, 2026): 3/5

Typical under-dog/under-goat sports story, but entertaining and swift. It aimed to please, and it did. The nice thing about sports movies is that no one has to die at the end, just lose. Jack cried (for joy) at the climax. 

 

* Wuthering Heights (Emerald Fennell, 2026): 2.5/5

All adaptations of Wuthering Heights must reckon with the fact that in the original text, the first half is sweepingly romantic and the second half is the romance-free story of Heathcliff returning rich and taking his bitter revenge on the two families over two generations. Many versions simply elide the second half. Fennel’s version mixes the romance and vengeance, filing the first half with longing and the second half with plenty of (pretty hot) sex. Especially dirty is the proto-BDSM scene where Cathy is laying in a loft and peeking at two servants having sex, when Heathcliff lays down on top of her and covers her eyes with his hand. As with Saltburn, Fennell is better at creating images (that final dance in Saltburn is an all-timer) than at creating coherent characters or real emotions.

 

Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001): 3/5

Begins with energy and authenticity—and becomes more cartoony with every plot development. Denzel so dominates the film that it’s a bit unsatisfying that he wouldn’t win in the end. A very adolescent vision, although this is not necessarily an insult.

 

Fire Will Come (Oliver Laxe, 2019): 3/5

Some tremendous images—including great scenes with cows, horses and dogs, as well as all-timer forest fire scenes. Still, it fails to build a story of dramatic power. 

 

Requiem for a Vampire. (Jean Rollin, 1972): 3.5/5

Despite being short and almost wordless, the film expresses the yolk that is put upon a new vampire and the despair of forever being tied to particular location. Some tasteful softcore scenes express both desire and queasy revulsion. 

 

Something’s Gotta Give (Nancy Meyers, 2003): 3/5

Nice that it takes seriously the love- and sex-lives of people in their 50s and 60s, and the Hamptons interior-decoration porn is on point. But Nicolson at this age kinda grosses me out. Will Diane Keaton choose nice and loving Doctor Keanu Reeves or lecherous Nicolson (who owns the most successful rap label in history???). I wonder.

 

Nocturne, 8m (Lars von Trier, 1980): 3/5

You wake in the middle of the night and are haunted by obscure imagery. Part Bergman and part Eraserhead. Four years before von Trier’s feature film debut.

 

 

Book Corner

Shadow Ticket (Thomas Pynchon, 2025)

Silly, fun and inessential - akin to late works like Hawks’ Hatari. This is not an artist at the height of his powers. Instead, it’s an 80-year-old not giving a fuck and just doing what he likes, which in this case means goofing around with genre, systems and vectors of power, multiple overlapping non-publicized international organizations, some slap and tickle, and tons of puns. For example, although the main subject is the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, most of the so-called plot revolves around the missing daughter of “the Al Capone of Cheese.” General loose-limbed pursuit of the silliest, funniest and most satiric ideas down to their logical conclusion. Stay open to arcane and fake-arcane references as well as to sudden veers into deep wells of emotion and historical relevance. 

 

Vigil (George Saunders, 2026)

Really disappointing. Complete retread of Lincoln in the Bardo, which was my least favorite of his works anyway. Same disembodied voices dealing with people who are dead (and in this case dying) but also adds a somewhat preachy (if, admittedly, accurate) environmental handwringing. Bummer.

Return to Silent Hill (Christophe Gans, 2026): 0.5/5

“In my restless dream, I see that town. Silent Hill. You promised you'd take me there again someday. But instead, you took me to a shitty movie adaptation of it, James.”

WTF did they even TRY to make this a good movie????

Her Name is Sabine (Sandrine Bonnaire, 2007): 4/5

A rather touching documentary by renowned French actress Sandrine Bonnaire.

As the title suggests, HER NAME IS SABINE is about her sister who, after many years of being undiagnosed, now has a severe case of autism. Intercutting between Sabine's daily life in a care home where she's working on her independence, to VHS family tapes of her as a young teen full of life and joy, the contrast is simply devastating. After previously being institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital for five years, Sabine's personality that defined her has now vanished and throughout the film, Bonnaire uncomfortably invites us to contemplate on Sabine's circumstances and whether they were avoidable by the healthcare system, and herself.

As a filmmaker, Bonnaire is unobtrusive in her approach, allowing events to gently unfold which provides a tone that is mediative but also detached. Even if Sabine walks into frame, whilst interviewing a relative or care worker, in order to ask a question, Bonnaire always tries to take the matter off-camera in order to politely not interfere but likewise provides a glimpse of Sabine's behavior.

Although the film is about Sabine, it also wants to discuss autism in a wider context, especially how society represents it and how doctors treat it. When interviewing one of Sabine's care workers, Bonnaire asks how they define autism, with one of the answers being, 'it's an annihilation of the self'. It's a quote that seems outdated so many years later, but there's something deeply disturbing about it in relation to how we're perceiving this common disability.

A melancholic watch that will either enlighten you or break you.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Nia Da Costa, 2025): 3/5

Did I want to wallow into sadism and psychopathy? Not really.(That's what keeping up with ICE is for!) Did I want this to quickly descend into HOSTEL-level torture porn? Nope-a-roni.

But by that point THE BONE TEMPLE has already established that it's about showing the spectrum of human possibility, and that it's also going to be about Ralph Fiennes' Dr. Ian being kind and goofy and awesome and hanging out with Samson and his manhood.

Oh, and DaCosta? Not as frenetic and unhinged as Boyle (quelle surprise), which is good and bad. Stylistically, it never threatens to go off the rails, which feels more quietly confident and lets the crazy stuff be what it is without being overtly crazier. However, it also means the aforementioned sadism is entirely unleavened with any distracting aesthetic flourishes. Hopefully, both her and the franchise won't wallow in those waters in what's to come. (I know humans are capable of awful things, Alex. I'm sentient.)

The Unknown Country (Morrisa Maltz, 2022): 3/5

Gladstone is remarkable and luminous as usual, and it’s wonderful to see her play the lead in a contemporary film. Her expressive face which would have made her a star in the silent era usually tells us more than her character Tana is willing to commit to words.

Apples (Christos Nikou, 2020): 3/5

You mean this carefully shot satire of conventional social values with a surrealistic conceit and mannered performances is a *Greek* film?!?

Dave Chappelle: The Unstoppable (Rikki Hughes, 2025): 3/5

I only laughed a couple of times but his storytelling of history and personal experiences get better every time and he drops some insane lore here.

Resurrection (Bi Gan, 2025): 3/5

Has Shu Qi even aged a day since MILLENIUM MAMBO?

I kind of struggled to get onto Bi Gan’s wavelength here. Which for an almost 3 hour film… Not ideal.

Each of the five chapters is a technical marvel, including an astonishing 40 minute one-take, and each blends culture and history into a specific genre with fearless invention. Yet as the film went on, my engagement began to dwindle. While the visual storytelling remains consistently captivating, the stories themselves did not invite the same rapture.

These are not traditional narratives built around arcs. They function more as states of mind, guided by dream logic rather than causality. That approach is intellectually compelling, but emotionally uneven. I won’t pretend I understood everything, and that openness to interpretation is part of the film’s appeal. RESURRECTION welcomes revisiting and rewards contemplation. Even so, for all its beauty and ambition, I found myself wishing for a bit more bite.

Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs, 2025): 3/5

A lovely reminder that two friends talking in an apartment is just as much the stuff of cinema as a car chase or an army blowing up a bridge. Found myself thinking of the Proustian concept of Lost Time and art’s ability to regain it. A conversation in 1974 recorded and now it’s a film that will immortalize this fleeting moment in a way theater cannot.

Falcon Lake (Charlotte Le Bon, 2022): 4/5

"I just feel it. This is my proof."

A brooding exploration of first love, during that time when we first begin to feel such emotions so intensely. Perhaps the film’s ending is inevitable, but much like all of our relationships, it is the journey, not the destination, that matters most.

 I liked the first half of 2025’s movie slate way better than the back half. It’s Fizzle Fall and Wimpy Winter. In descending order of interest: 

 

Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025): 4/5

Sensitive and literate script that slowly reveals itself, becoming increasingly richer and more layered. Stand-out moments are several scenes that seem to be happening to the main character but are revealed to be within performances—a way to take a step back and examine the moment while also highlighting the judgement that she feels from the “director watching” and the “shame for her own inadequacy” as the father-as-director says when describing… The crux of the drama, outlined beautifully in a monologue that eventually gets played out three times in three different ways. The dramas that are played out in the house stay in the house like trauma—just as the urge to suicide is passed from the grandmother to the father (surely) and then to daughter—and the “room where it all happened” gains great dramatic weight. Best ending of the year?

 

Good Boy (Ben Leonberg, 2025): 3.5/5

The horror elements are muddled. But the central conceit – that the protagonist is a dog – is exceptionally well executed and a good idea. There is some CGI and anthropomorphism. But overall, there’s a lot of great dog acting, and real dog behavior, which is new-feeling and fun to watch. Comparable to last year’s Flow.

 

Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine, 2025): 3/5

On the minus side, it’s heavily indebted to the Dardennes. On the plus side, it’s heavily indebted to the Dardennes.

 

Rental Family (Hikari, 2025): 3/5

A bizarrely gormless performance from Brendan Frazier—he has “innocent sincerity” turned up to 11. On the minus side, it’s heavily indebted to the Hirokazu Kore-eda. On the plus side, it’s heavily indebted to the Hirokazu Kore-eda.

 

Wicked: For Good (Jon M. Chu, 2025): 3/5

I took a gummy, and watched this—and ended up liking it. No one is more surprised than me (having abhorred the experience of the second act when I saw the play the Pantages). Colorful, fun, and more coherent that part one.

 

* Anaconda (Tom Gormican, 2025): 3/5

Paper thin, and the comic timing is somewhat off—but swift and a fine night at the movies for the whole family. At this point, Jack Black is certainly Jack’s favorite actor. Black’s star has risen so far that here he somewhat convincingly plays the alpha to Paul Rudd’s (!) beta. 

 

Steve (Tim Mielants, 2025): 2.5/5

Cillian Murphy is terrific, but this anxiously empathetic story of a school for emotionally challenged teens too often feels like a senior thesis play at The London School for Overacting. Thank God it was only 90 minutes.

 

Jane Austin Wrecked My Life (Laura Piani, 2025): 2.5/5

A mid romance with a slightly annoying protagonist. Cliches abound, but it’s about someone who adores Jane Austen novels, so I guess it’s meta? Thank God it was only 90 minutes.

 

Megadoc (Mike Figgis, 2025): 2/5

Whatever you think about Megapolis, at least it’s eccentric—a quality that this documentary could use more of. Instead, there’s nothing that sets this above the average DVD extra feature. 

 

Dangerous Animals (Sean Byrne, 2025): 2/5

The characters and kills are colorful, but this is mostly a brutal and uninteresting woman-taken-captive-in-a-cage movie. The third act couldn’t (and didn’t) come fast enough. Would be into to seeing the protagonist and antagonist in a better movie.

 

Sinners, rw (Ryan Coogler, 2025): 2/5

I’m sweeping back the tide here, but this movie continues to not work for me. Broadly cartoonish Southern accents. Self-righteous contrast of “good” blues music (yuk!) with “bad” Irish jig music (also yuk). That scene where they interrogate at great length a guy who has been wandering around outside as to why he needs to be invited in AFTER they have seen a vampire munch up one of the twins and run away. Then they all just die anyway. AND after all the vampires and other characters are dead, the surviving twin deliberately manufactures a suicide mission to kill clan members (??) with a machine gun (???).

 

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (Ruben Fleischer, 2025): 1.5/5

Every decision seems to have been made to play optimally in China—incredibly broad in terms of plot, characters, use of CGI, and acting/mugging. Jack liked it a lot—and for the same reason I liked The Sting when I saw it when I was his age: It’s fun to be tricked by a movie. As in The Sting, they are fooling a character on screen, but also the audience. When all is revealed, it feels like magic. Unfortunately, this one is more like The Stink.

 

Match (Danishka Esterhazy, 2025): 1.5/5

Some of the reveals are amusing, but this is mostly broad and uninteresting woman-taken-captive-in-a-cage movie. The third act couldn’t (and didn’t) come fast enough.

 

The Friend (David Siegel, Scott McGehee, 2025): 1.5/5

This one’s a real dog (yuk yuk). Plods along and lacks spark. Many, many cuts to the dog’s droll reaction to things.

 

The Rip (Joe Carnahan, 2026): 3/5

A well-told story about shifting loyalties among good cops and bad ones. Has some similarities to (slight spoiler) the above-mentioned The Sting. I have come to like (and to a certain extent respect) Matt Damon, but I was surprised how much I liked Affleck here. Are these guys getting better at acting after all these years?

 

Terms of Endearment, rw (James L. Brooks, 1983): 5/5

Absolutely expert middlebrow. Debra Winger was never better—she’s wonderfully relaxed and charming. Perhaps heresy, but is this MacLaine’s best performance? The only possible alternatives are The Apartment and Some Came Running. (Although I’ve never seen The Children’s Hour).

 

Great Expectations (Alfonso Cuarón, 1998): 3/5

Unconvincingly updates Dicken’s plot to the contemporary NYC art scene (but couldn’t they have gotten a semi-decent artist to create Ethan Hawke’s supposed canvases—what’s here is ludicrous). Leaves out some of my favorite bits from the book (like when Ms. Dinsmore and her rotting wedding dress goes up in flames), but it retains the book’s young-adult-ish naivete (not a compliment). Patrow is perfectly cast as someone so remote and poised that she could come from a box (compliment).