The Encampments (Michael T. Workman , Kei Pritsker, 2025): 4/5

Excellent work. I held it together until they played the phone call of 6 year old Hind Rajab begging for someone to come save her life as Israelis shot into the car she was trapped in surrounded by the dead bodies of her family. Then I was weeping. This documentary is very important and will be in the future when the protestors of last year are eventually vindicated just like the kids in 1968 were.

Friendship (Andrew DeYoung, 2025): 3/5

There’s something definitely going on here. The motif of Marvel movies seems to be the key. It feels like the tell that this film is about the absolute emotional and spiritual poverty of contemporary American life and the increasingly desperate measures we will go to to fill the void. Robinson’s self immolation seems far fetched but it’s only a little bit heightened. He goes over the top but in doing so makes us face what we all have the potential to be if we totally gave in to our goblin selves. And Paul Rudd, an actual Marvel hero, is just perfect.

Parthenope (Paolo Sorrentino, 2024): 1.5/5

I'm like 0 for 5 or however many Sorrentino films there are. He's like the Italian version of Terrence Davies - another director who I simply cannot find one single film in their oeuvre to enjoy.

I'm Still Here (Walter Salles, 2024): 3/5

Competent and often moving!

Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, 2024): 3.5/5

Elegant and beautifully shot. This is little more than a glorified travelogue that's practically devoid of much subtext or even critique - but lots of wonder in its place: less the Brechtianisms of Tabu but rather a more controlled and condensed version of Arabian Nights wily chaos.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024): 3.5/5

There’s a Kubrick film this reminded me of but to say which one ruins it. Brilliant use of actual protest footage. Stirring.

Fountain of Youth (Guy Ritchie, 2025): 0.5/5

The ancient Greeks warned us never to tempt the gods. The Hollywood gods, however, can be summoned by little more than a streaming contract, a few past-their-peak A-listers, and the seductive idea of “what if Indiana Jones evolved, but worse?” Thus arrives Fountain of Youth, Apple TV’s grand plunge into the tepid, over-chlorinated waters of the action-adventure genre; where the only mystery more elusive than the titular fountain is why anyone agreed to make this movie.

By the end, Fountain of Youth doesn’t so much conclude as it politely dissolves, like a sugar-free lozenge in lukewarm water. Apple TV, for all its deep pockets and deeper desire to disrupt cinema, has somehow created a movie with the visual excitement of a desktop screensaver from 1995 and the narrative coherence of a botched PowerPoint from a non-profit organization. There are worse ways to spend two hours; but most of them involve jury duty, amateur dental surgery, or watching this film again. In the end, Fountain of Youth may not deliver eternal life, but it will make you feel like you’ve lived forever.

Mountainhead (Jesse Armstrong, 2025): 3/5

Succession on meth. The black humor really zeroes out to blood-boiling despair, so be prepared, but there’s at least a steady supply of A-grade zingers.

The Rehearsal: Season 2 (Nathan Fielder, 2025): 5/5

A million chef's kisses. Nathan Fielder's comedic brilliance and originality is simply unmatched. No one else is doing comedy today anywhere near his level.

Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023): 3.5/5

Breillat's back baby!

The Accidental Getaway Driver (Sing J. Lee, 2023): 3/5

Dustin Nguyen is due for an American renaissance. I hope American filmmakers see this and hit him up (apparently he's had a perfectly lovely acting career in Vietnam for quite some time when Hollywood stopped offering him meaty roles).

Magazine Dreams ( Elijah Bynum, 2023): 3.5/5

If you thought the date between Travis Bickle and Betsy in Taxi Driver was awkward, it's downright pleasant compared to the one between Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors) and Jessie (Haley Bennett).

Spellbinding character study fueled by raging id and sheer hatefulness. Even at its most overwrought, there’s a certain delusional mania to the narrative that many outsiders among the audience will surely recognize. Majors’ performance is a revelation. (Shame he's a shitbag IRL.)

La Cocina (Alonso Ruizpalacios, 2023): 3/5

I approached this expecting a typical immigrant narrative, but I was completely unprepared for such a fascinating contextualization of NYC's working-class multicultural fabric. Altman would be proud...