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I have wildly complicated feelings about this! Video incoming...

In the ever-growing canon of beautiful, but empty movies, this is one of the better ones.

Durga Chew-Bose’s adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s novel steps into rather large shoes left behind by Otto Preminger’s first attempt. And it doesn’t necessarily fumble the task, but more so just does little with it.

Where Bonjour Tristesse succeeds is in its fixation on the everyday, crafting an immersive but well-paced environment for the audience to sink into. However, while it's ittedly gorgeous, exactly the type of languid film what I was looking for on this warm day, it’s sorrily dragged down by a clunky script, which Chew-Bose does little to amend for the screen. On occasion, the dialogue lands brilliantly (“try to be wrong sometimes, it’s less lonely”), the actors’ best efforts at naturalism are eclipsed by prosaic lines that feel stiff and out of place.

Ultimately, Chew-Bose somewhat effectively recreates the feel and atmosphere of a psychosexual, mid-century, talky French summer film, but fails to imbue it with the emotions necessary to really explore the philosophical ideas it puts on the table. Like the wind-up toys strangely gifted to a too-old Cecile at dinner, the movie just kind of leaves them there.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Beautiful to look at, brutally paced. Conceptually, April is a brilliant film (the crippling loneliness of a taboo, and therefore thankless, job; the undiscussed ethical grey areas of abortion and bodily autonomy. etc.). But it sacrifices much of these great ideas in pursuit of visual immersion - which ironically pulls the viewer right out of the film (several people walked out of my already sparsely populated screening). I would love to have learned more about our protagonist Nina and her clandestine, Haneke-esque sex life, or more about the rising aggression of men in the village as they persecute Nina for her perceived moral violations against their wives and daughters. But every frame is about three full minutes too long, so as to cut the legs off of any extractable meaning. Many frames throughout the film read as though the director simply wanted to catch a fleeting moment of Georgia’s breathtaking landscape with little narrative justification. Pair that with visual gratuity of subjecting the audience to footage of real medical procedures, and April makes for a relentlessly bleak, tedious, and unpleasant viewing experience - with little real insight to add to its subject.

if you took the world's worst AI bot and told it to make a "French movie," this is what it would come up with

This review may contain spoilers.

The Brutalist has once again invited a question that’s been irking me for some time now. How easy is it to mistake competence for brilliance?

What I mean to say is that breathtaking cinematography, engrossing performances, and a captivating score are hardly containing whatever noxious substance lurks beneath the surface of this film. It was easy to be swept up in some truly astounding visual feats - a train exploding in the distance, the Statue of Liberty turning on its head, that incredible heroin-induced sex scene. It was also easy to fall face-first into some very moving sequences - like Adrian Brody’s László breaking down in sobs as his equally traumatized wife, Erzsébet, clinging to his dick, pleads with him to stay with her.

But three hours into The Brutalist, as we crawl towards a disastrously clumsy epilogue, the only question we are left with is: why?

Brady Corbet has taken up the mantle of representing the true immigrant experience, but his approach is so singular, so relentlessly bleak, that the film fails to speak much truth at all. Rather, it serves as some particularly persuasive propaganda.

Rape, when used as a device, can very quickly overtake a film. When Guy Pearce’s character Harrison sodomizes a stupored László in an Italian alleyway, the act comes as so literal and brutal a metaphor as to obliterate any event that occurs before or after it. It is also the act, along with yet another terrible, singular tragedy in which Erzsébet overdoses on heroin, which catalyzes the one message that the film seems to land on: the only solution now is to leave. But where to? The answer is sitting rather feebly before us.

What does Corbet want us to take away? What exactly does "it’s not the journey, it’s the destination" mean? And why was this made?

Three stars for competence, which has always been enough for the Oscars.

Three cheers to Halina Reijn for bringing moral obscurity to the table, for real. Babygirl softens the sharp, nihilistic edges of a film like The Piano Teacher and brings this story of sexual (un)fulfillment, power ping pong, and gendered intimacy to a new generation. Or rather, a very lusty and sexually frustrated contemporary audience.

When women of all ages guffawed knowingly in the theatre as Nicole Kidman jacks off to porn immediately after sex with her husband, it was clear this movie was about to strike directly at a widespread nerve in heterosexual relationships. The reason I compare Babygirl to the Piano Teacher is that, like Haneke, Reijn never stoops to villainize her morally dubious, sometimes reprehensible characters (albeit much less reprehensible than Haneke’s), instead trapping them in the webs of their own complicated sexual contracts and letting them attempt to work themselves out of it. Kidman is at her untethered best as Romy, the high-powered executive who falls for the seductions of an inscrutable intern named Samuel, played by an unfathomably sexy Harris Dickinson. The two embark in a rather confused, kinky-lite pas-de-deux involving milk, dog treats, and a particularly effective inclusion of George Michael.

Kidman and Dickinson are both incredible, but Antonio Banderas steals the show as Romy’s emasculated, sensitive artist husband Jacob - whose gentle and loving touch manages to repulse both Romy and the audience. Another character who Reijn refuses to mock, but instead sketch for us a fully realized man - attractive in his own right, a loving father, a ive husband, yet still falling short on some unspoken level known to us all.

However, some sketchings are less clear than others. The bizarre office environment, which a friend of mine described as “corporate life imagined by an artist,” is one. Another is Samuel, whose motivations seldom develop outside of confused babbling about “kids playing,” which results in the character coming across as an avatar of Gen Z wish fulfillment rather than a fully realized person. But Romy’s desires, even in her most confounding moments, are as rich and present as ever. The desire to be desirable, to nurture, to be nurtured, to guide, to have guidance, to escape - come bursting through the screen in the many uncomfortable silences between Romy and Samuel, when it feels like the two could be ensnared in this strange, sensuous bind forever.

With the aid of these performances, a thrilling contemporary score, and some stunning imagery, Reijn makes a picture that will get you criminally H’d up in the theatre, and then questioning why exactly that is.

been mulling it over, and I really think this is the best film of the past decade.

After I left this film I was speechless. A true experience with the sublime. God, what a gift.

Whatever you want to call it - stylish romp, gritty fairytale, modern tragedy, Anora is undoubtably a technical feat. With a captivating lead performance by Mikey Madison, donning the thickest Coney Island accent she could conjure, and breathtaking camerawork, Sean Baker crafts an immersive, genuinely hilarious experience for us that’s impossible not to enjoy.

One scene that sticks out in particular is when Ivan, the son of a Russian oligarch who hires Annie as his quasi-girlfriend, proposes to her in bed. We begin with a shot of the two of them lying side by side, but when Ivan sits up to propose he leaves the frame. The camera is now focused singularly on Annie, as we watch a flurry of emotions flicker across her face - disbelief, joy, pain. Baker does this often, zeroing in on our protagonist as she wades in a world way out of her depths. Whether she’s naive or delusional, Annie’s experience of being clouded by desire against one's own better judgments is, in a way, universal. We see her slowly loosen the boundaries of her trade, taking her panties off when she shouldn't, stealing glances at Ivan when she shouldn't, being seduced by his promises when she shouldn't, and we understand her.

Anora is a beautiful film, but it’s not a perfect one. Landing at a whopping two hours and twenty minutes, Baker stuffs in numerous improvised scenes littered with repeated phrases and copious amounts of “fuck” that should have stayed on the cutting room floor.

The final scene is also quite divisive, but I was not phased by it. While I would have preferred the film to wrap itself up like it started, a gritty fairytale, Baker has never been a filmmaker interested in tidy conclusions (lest we forget controversial “filmed on iPhone” ending of The Florida Project - a somewhat jaded play on the Disney finale belonging to a world from which Moonee and her mother live just a tantalizing step away).

While Anora’s conclusion does not satisfy, it epitomizes the lapsed boundaries that have confused Anora, and by extension the audience, throughout this story. The film resists pinning Annie down to a single motivation - we are always unsure if her interest in Ivan is transactional or real, love, lust, or lust for what Ivan represents. We are unsure right along with her. And so, while the final scene between Annie and fellow class interloper Igor can be read as a cynical take on Anora “only knowing sex,” I think it’s more complicated like that. Anora, once again, does not know if this is love, lust, or a simple debt for Igor’s kindness. But when she receives his hug, Baker opts to leave us in that liminal emotional state. We don’t need all the answers. We’re only 23 after all.

Turns out no one needed to slew Auntie Roo...

If only Winnipeg was actually like that...

Universal Language is a breathtakingly gorgeous film - transforming Winnipeg's scant landscape and brutalist architecture into something you refuse to take your eyes off of.

Matthew Rankin has brought a sense of entertainment to Canadian cinema that our industry is desperately lacking. He is uninhibited in his worldbuilding - taking elements of Winnipeggian isolation, Quebecois absurdity, Canada's Iranian diaspora, and smashing them together to transport his viewers into a universe where Canadian anglo culture is conspicuously, and gratefully, missing; Louis Riel is commemorated on our dollar (as he should); and turkeys hold all the cultural currency (as they should).

What results is a thought experiment so bizarre and fun, that it sometimes gets lost in its own eccentricities. You may not understand it at all times, but Universal Language exudes a Canadian jouissance one could seldom fathom in this impossibly vast, cold nation.

Bring Them Down is a well-crafted and unsettling revenge tragedy for the new age. It tells the story of a family severed by grief, whose misperceptions of each other set into motion a series of events that could lead to the destruction of their livelihoods, and even their lives.

Christopher Abbott, as Michael, son to the family patriarch and shepherd of the family’s livestock, plays this role impeccably. Michael is capable of great violence, but Abbott imbues with much-needed tenderness. Likewise, this is Barry Keoghan’s best performance to date. He embodies Michael’s nephew Jack, who the viewer is directed to loathe for the majority of the film, with a delicate balance of juvenile vulnerability and thick-headedness.

Director Christopher Andrews flexes his storytelling prowess by making the very astute choice to split the film between Michael and Jack’s perspectives, allowing the viewer to sit with each character for an extended period of time, thus challenging our empathy for them, and the veracity of their hatred for one another - repeating certain shots and visual symbolism, but building upon their context so that, by the end of the intricate narrative, we find ourselves rooting for everyone. Andrews has delivered a wonderful contribution to Irish national cinema, and a compelling thriller in its own right.

This review may contain spoilers.

Conceptually, a movie has never been more timely. Through an incredible use of body horror, it visualizes an inner reckoning among women, what Demi Moore described in the Q&A following the film’s North American premiere as an “internalized violence against the self.” The Substance takes “we suffer for vanity” to an entirely new level, telling the story of an aging aerobics star, Elizabeth Sparkle (played by Moore) who is presented with a subscription drug that allows her to create a younger, perkier version of herself, Sue (played by Margaret Qualley).

The film attacks, head on, woman’s self-consuming pursuit of beauty, our pitiful attempts to stall time. Elizabeth and Sue belong to different generations, occupy different bodies of different values to the patriarchal industry they operate in, yet both are compelled, at great danger to themselves, to be beautiful. Sue, by staying in her own body. And Elizabeth by forgoing hers. What transpires is a cyclical feast upon the Self, which may just lead to the total destruction of both women, and the terror of the viewer.

What gives me pause about The Substance is where this terror comes from, and what we are to do with it. “Aging” has taken a central focus on the internet, as women tape their mouths before going to sleep and sip from customized straws to avoid the disfigurement of a wrinkle. More than ever, the inevitable, aged female body feels invisible. And thus it’s worth questioning whether body horror is the most productive tool for addressing its absence.

The Substance is a sparse film, with limited dialogue and heavy-handed, almost anime-style editing (not unlike Challengers). It relies on clipped montages that propel the film at breakneck speed, yet by the end of the second act it becomes repetitive, and we’ve learned nothing new about these characters or their motivations. Of course, The Substance is simple because it’s totemic, but its warnings are confused.

On the topic of beauty, vanity and oppression are always undergoing a delicate balancing act. Whether our obsession with the Self is a product of first-world consumerism, or of the cruel, capitalist standards of patriarchy. Whether women are to be shamed and punished for their narcissism, or sympathized for it. The Substance doesn’t seem to know.

In the film’s most powerful scene, Elizabeth manages to lock Sue away in the bathroom, and decides to go on a date, despite her now-deteriorating body. We watch in suspense and frustration as she slowly becomes incapable of leaving the home, returning again and again to the mirror to scrutinize her appearance, until she unravels completely and reanimates Sue - thereby imperilling herself. In this moment, we’re invited to empathize with Elizabeth. Any woman who has exited the bathroom feeling worse than they did when they entered it will understand her, root for her. But by the end of the film, which is undeniably spectacular in its execution and redeems its earlier shortcomings, we are laughing at her. Through the conventions of horror, we are invited more often to cringe away from her rapidly aging, disfigured body than we are to empathize with it.

In the horror genre, the elderly female body has often been used as a tool for terror. Cameras dance across wrinkles, burst blood vessels, sagging breasts, knobbled hands and knees, curved spines, varicose veins, and ask the audience to scream. As I watched Elizabeth’s aged body revealed to the rowdy Midnight Madness audience, and listened to them scream as they were asked to do, I thought of my grandmother, I thought of my mother, and I thought of my own body, and my fears towards it, and I felt very sad. The Substance is an absolute thrill of a movie, and a welcome addition to the body horror genre. But by exchanging much-needed moments of empathy for spectacle, it risks contradicting the desperately important message it wishes to convey.

This is an alienating film - something that was evident among the audience I watched it with, who responded with occasional cries of frustration at particularly well written moments, and a confused smattering of applause during the credits. It will be particularly alienating for men, who are rarely forced into the psyche of a female character for such an extended period of time (unless that character was written by a man).

My First Film was born of a one-woman, multimedia Covid performance piece by the director Zia Anger. And as someone who enjoys the sensibilities of female performance art, I feel lucky to have resonated with this difficult debut film.

It’s not a perfect film by any means - its tone is imbalanced, dialogue can be painfully on the nose (like a particularly cringe-inducing scene where a character spontaneously recites Maya Deren), and the final act goes through one too many waves of metatextual naval-gazing. But as Anger warns early on in digital notes to her audience, her work is esoteric, it’s not for everyone.

You don’t have to like My First Film to notice how far Anger is willing to push her medium out of its comfort zone. Aided by a particularly immersive score by Perfume Genius and dynamic performances from Odessa Young, Devon Ross, and Phillip Ettinger (give him his roses), this movie embarks on a cinematic journey unlike any other. Its innovative bending of the film form - incorporating complex, multi-layered storytelling devices across multiple time frames through some incredibly skillful editing, brazenly ushers this medium along, whether we’re ready for it or not.

However knotty it may be, My First Film is an audacious, patchwork poem to creation - how difficult it is to create, how easy it is to destroy. It’s something anyone could relate to, if they’re willing.

My parents have been telling me to watch this movie for forever, and I’m so glad I finally did! What a painfully beautiful film. As sentimental as it may be, I think its exploration of masculinity and violence as it relates to war is incredibly nuanced and empathetic - years ahead of its time. Also lots of room for laughs! Lili Taylor is precious as Rose (albeit a bit lacking in dimension - I don’t think the movie needs her to be Mother Theresa for us to empathize with her). And River Phoenix continues to be the most heavenly men to have ever existed in my opinion, gone way too soon (same for Jeff Buckley). Lastly, Nancy Savoca deserves her roses - the film is directed so brilliantly, it made me believe in love again. I now know where Romeo + Juliet got its fish tank scene, and this one is better.

...not to be dramatic but maybe the best movie ever made?

confused by the reviews on here, I thought this was great! it seems people are starting and ending their reviews at the premise, and ignoring the skill behind the screenplay, performances, and direction - all of which made for a thoroughly enjoyable, and surprisingly thoughtful film.

Weeping like a little baby. As any child of a non-Western family, to both resent the Hirayama children and realize you ARE them is a very painful thing indeed. For those of us who have been dislocated from our cultures, this movie will resonate stronger than any other.

Challengers is a ball-gripper of an experience - flooding your senses for its two hour runtime and climaxing (pun intended) with a final, all-consuming release.

In a time where veneers and fillers have begun to infiltrate our screens, the natural, sometimes even imperfect, beauty of Challengers’ three leads is a welcome one. Luca Guadagnino’s innate understanding of sex appeal is on full display here, as his camera soaks in the tension between Tashi, Art, and Patrick and never looks away, not even for a single frame.

Challengers features a few intimate scenarios - but like any good erotic film, it does not include the act sex itself. Instead, sex is displaced onto the game of tennis. Tashi conveys this idea in a particularly memorable monologue, where she explains to the boys the transcendent, lustful dynamic that occurs on the court between herself and her opponent, who she hates. We see this for ourselves in the final tennis match between Art and Patrick, who smile at one another in spite of themselves as their game finds its rhythm.

While Challengers floods your senses, it sometimes holds them hostage. The camera is restless, and the imagery is gorgeous - but this can become tiresome when used too frequently. The final match is gripping, but the unrelenting slow mo build-up stymies its suspense. If they were used more sparingly, these stylistic choices would make Zendaya’s final, primal scream that much more satisfying. The same goes for some very obvious choices in symbolism - the many, many symmetrical shots of Art and Patrick, the phallic banana and churro chomping - which verged into the juvenile.

However, boldness often feels like an endangered species in this current film climate. So Challengers, for the most part, rises to the challenge that our largely sexless culture has posed to it. The public fervour over this film signals that maybe there’s something twitching deep within all of us, begging to come out.

Every once in a while, I found myself enjoying La Chimera. But after about the fourth exit point, I gave up. For the entire first hour there's almost no indication as to what this movie is about, and for all its magical realism and promises of of something more experimental, it is woefully devoid of whimsy. The inventive plot just doesn't mesh well with Rohrwacher's slow cinema approach - which instead leaves La Chimera meandering and tedious. Once it finally does end, with our protagonist Arthur pulling on a metaphorical red thread, I couldn't help but feel that I had spent the last two hours watching a well-financed student film. An extra star for the gorgeous Italian countryside, and for Carol Duarte!

We need to bring back the unabashed sentimentality of the 80s, because this movie is the most delightfully earnest male fantasy I have ever beheld. At the end of the day, all men really want... is to play catch with papa. A concept so simple, someone on here said it could be written by a dog.

What an exhilarating pit of despair.

I've been feeling for a long time that comedies have lost their edge, and No Hard Feelings absolutely brought with it a very necessary bite. Was not expecting this to be such an incisive commentary on the millennial/Gen Z culture gap, but wow it was accurate! Jennifer Lawrence is also the perfect rom com lead - I don't know how we didn't see it earlier! Myriad flaws aside, I have not laughed at a film like this in a very long time.

I am about to say the most insufferable thing you can possibly imagine: Sydney Sweeney is too much of a Stacey, and Glenn Powell is too much of a Chad, to be effective rom com protagonists. I think we're having a Mandela effect with rom coms where we're ing them as movies about "hot people fucking". But oh... they are so much more than that. Anyone But You is a promising start to the rom com renaissance, but I need them to be more believably quirked up than this. Potential video incoming!

Very well crafted movie with gorgeous cinematography. Unfortunately it has a slow cinema sensibility to it (a distinctly Canadian one actually) that just wasn't for me. I think the film could've benefitted from a richer script in of dialogue because the first two acts somehow drag on a bit without really letting us get to know Nora , Hae Sung, or Arthur - as individuals and within their relationships. Nora and Arthur, for example, meet over a quick montage. I know Song was going for feeling/atmosphere over narrative, but I strongly believe that once you know the intricacies of who these people are, the stakes hit that much harder. The final act however was very redeeming. The bar scene and the scene where Nora walks home after sending Hae Sung off, leave us sitting in very grey emotions without needing to provide an answer. By the end, Hae Sung feels like a ghost who has re-entered Nora's life in order for her to let her past go. Beautiful - and a generally solid feature debut for Song.

and ladies this is why we don't marry male writers

There’s a shot in Killers of the Flower Moon which will stick with me for a long time. Silhouetted by the light of fire and engaged in the repeated motions of labour, the Fairfax townsfolk work to save the blazing land of Bill Hale’s estate. This prolonged image, which looks like a Kara Walker tableaux, is a perfect symbol for systemic oppression - figures engaged in the futile task of preserving what will only be burned away. What American history tells us is that oppression is not ive, but active. And Killers of the Flower Moon very evocatively sheds light on the countless times Indigenous and Black prosperity has been intentionally snuffed out in the name of white supremacy.

I often hesitate to use this phrase: but Killers of the Flower Moon is an important movie. It spotlights an instance in history which would go on to be repeated, and continues to repeat itself to this day in subtler ways. It’s also, to no one’s surprise, an expertly crafted film. But it’s not without its flaws.

Having soured on Leonardo DiCaprio’s acting style years ago, Killers renewed my appreciation for him. He had the near-impossible task of portraying a simpleton who undergoes a moral conflict, and he does it perfectly. Every detail is a studied one. From the low, stammering voice, to the signature De Niro frown (how else are we supposed to accept that they’re blood relatives?), to the anguish he performs in his jail cell - DiCaprio toes a wonderful balance of comedy without levity, and drama without losing character. His more outward performance is contrasted beautifully by Lily Gladstone’s deeply subdued one. Mollie experiences endless hardships in the film, and her strength lies not in physical power or yelling, but in moral fortitude; her continued nurturance, trust, and maybe even forgiveness. Gladstone plays Mollie’s grief internally, and does it with a nuance and delicacy that often goes under-appreciated by awards shows. A win would be deserved.

There are many things to appreciate about Killers of the Flower Moon. It’s thrilling score and the bounding drum that allows the action to flow without tedium. The motif of photography, which provides a double meaning of Indigenous dignity, and of colonial indexing and surveillance. A cast made up of a few major stars, and many lesser known actors who have been working in the industry for decades. The air of comedy whenever the white men are in a scene together, highlighting their buffoonery. And lastly, the risk Scorsese took in ending the movie with a meta radio broadcast, emphasizing how these stories become dramatized and diluted through legend. The extra meta addition of Scorsese as an announcer was a nice late-career touch.

Where Killers of the Flower Moon falters is in its storytelling. Jorge Cotte remarked in The National that the film does away with the suspense of its source material (the David Grann book presents the Osage murders as a mystery with ambiguous suspects), and zeroes in on a more specific story to focus on “how an individual descends, through greed, complicity, and cowardice, into unforgivable acts of despoliation and violence.” I think the film would have benefited from doing both. Killers is about a series of murders, with an entirely unsuspecting perpetrator (at least, unsuspecting to the Osage people, to whom he is a trusted friend and benefactor). The film loses the voice of the Osages halfway through and slips into the classic “paranoid men getting arrested” plot so familiar to the Scorsese third act. Yet the greatest strength of Killers is in the fresh, historically silenced subjects it chooses to focus on - so to lose their perspective is to lose its reason for existing. We do not need another Goodfellas or The Departed. While DiCaprio and De Niro were great in their roles, the film would have been significantly more powerful if it had stayed in the POV of the Osage people from beginning to end - letting us meet these white men, allowing us to trust them, and then flipping the switch on us midway through to unmask Bill Hale as evil incarnate.

Mollie’s POV is a grounding force in the story, yet it drops off about two hours in. And it does not suffice to switch perspectives. Bill is more or less a one-dimensional villain (his real life counterpart deserves nothing more than that) and, given the three and a half hour running time the film doesn’t seem too interested in getting to the heart of Ernest’s inner conflict. So more time could have been spent with the Osages. To feel the utter devastation of these losses right inside the community would have made Killers of the Flower Moon a five star movie for me.

Now into his 80s, Scorsese has proven to us his mastery. Killers of the Flower Moon is an epic in every sense of the word, and a damning indictment of the American Dream (dream for who?). But it’s built on a scale so large, that some of its humanity gets lost in the process.

This review may contain spoilers.

The flaws of Poor Things are nullified, at least to be, by its daring.

Yorgos Lanthimos, who burst onto the scene with his incest-happy parable, Dogtooth, is no stranger to provocation. And while his movies have gradually gotten more palatable, Poor Things feels like a welcome return to edginess. Only this time, with a higher budget and an even louder (albeit confused) message.

The performances in Poor Things are generally captivating and challenging (with the exception of Jerrod Carmichael, whose uncharacteristic woodenness sticks out like a sore thumb). Particular performances to note are Emma Stone, whose nuance and depth save her character from crudeness and monotony, and Mark Ruffalo, who plays against type and is a genuine delight whenever he’s on screen.

While I’m generally not a fan of too much CGI, the sets of Poor Things were incredibly imaginative and imbued the movie with an almost off-putting wonder - save for the boat sequence, the entirety of which was quite tedious narratively (Carmichael’s performance may be the reason for this) and unforgivably ugly compared to the rest of the movie.

I’m aware of the discourse surrounding Bella’s sexuality, with people being upset that the character (who starts the movie with the brain of an infant) has so many sex scenes. While I was discomfited by this at first, I came to appreciate how boldly the film confronts society’s fixation on young girls. We need to stop conflating “the male gaze” with “any film directed by a man” - as none of the sex scenes depicted Bella in a particularly objectifying way. Instead, they look at her in the same way she looks at sex: frankly, almost sexlessly. A movie which is so clearly a parable for the circumstance of women in patriarchal society should not be taken so literally. Bella is not literally a child, she is an experiment - both for God, and for us as viewers. I disagree with the backlash - what else is new.

By the third act, however, the film loses its magical edge entirely. When Bella returns home to her ailing (or “dying “ rather) God, adorned now in corsets and, now burdened by the realities of life under patriarchy, moving about with a sombreness that only a grown woman could have, Lanthimos forgoes the whimsical bubble that shielded us from the flaws of his film. For the entire movie, Poor Things uses its characters as symbols for different ideologies and histories - which is so allegorical that we cannot be miffed when they tell us outright what the themes of the film are. At least we’re all on the same page, in service of a strange but compelling thought-experiment (what would it be like to be born anew, free from the shackles of social mores?).

But this falls apart in the final scene, where Bella lounges on a chair in her garden, her Parisian lover and former fiancé flanking her, her former-husband now braying on all fours as a goat, and the littler version of her (another Frankensteined infant-woman, played by Margaret Qualley) obeying her beck and call. Is Bella a girl boss now? Does she represent the final phase of womanhood - a woman who is capable of deeper thought and consciousness, who is sexually liberated, and who is in charge? Whatever the final message may be, it is not only literal and jarringly earnest - but also somewhat dampens the film’s original, very esoteric and very fun hypothesis. I don’t think Lanthimos needed to provide us with answers. Answers are the killers of whimsy.

Whoever was the first to compare Emerald Fennell to Sam Levinson hit the nail on the head. Early on, I noted that Saltburn felt much like season two of Euphoria - stuffed full of elegant, but useless visuals. My frustration with this film comes from feeling exhausted by directors who are trained in visual language, but refuse or are unable to that language with meaning. You can say as many words as you want, but without intention or meaning, it's just babble.

Why were the characters in costume at Oliver’s party other than to look cool? Other than to get that Eyes Wide Shut masked-head-slowly-turning-towards-camera shot? It has been done before. The maze running has been done before. Dancing naked through the mansion has been done before. Even Jacob Elordi necking a girl in a window has been done before (by Sam Levinson).

This useless imagery would be redeemed if it weren’t for the fact that many viewers will have put together about 30 minutes into the film’s running time that Saltburn is a tepid copycat of Anthony Minghella’s masterpiece, The Talented Mr. Ripley. The former a less shrewd, less captivating Tom to the latter’s Dickie. This is where my frustration doubles.

Minghella’s film, adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel of the same name, is not the first, and certainly not the last film to execute a queer-coded doppelgänger, outsider, class thriller. Many iterations of this exist in popular culture - the most recent of which is Ingrid Goes West. But where Ingrid Goes West exalts the conventions and themes of persona and envy in The Talented Mr. Ripley by using them to explore something fresh about contemporary society (the ills of social media), Saltburn does absolutely nothing with them. Much like season two of Euphoria, it felt as though Fennell had put together a moodboard of visual references that she then threw a well-trodden plot at when she realized she needed a story.

What makes Saltburn shrink next to The Talented Mr. Ripley is that, in Minghella’s film, Tom is cunning and horribly jealous, but as we watch him undergo an endless string of killings we cannot help by sympathize a bit with the ever-complicated web that he, by his own hand, cannot escape. He is a deeply terrifying, pitiful character - as Minghella so expertly conveys through the final shot of Tom in the reflection of a mirror on his closet door - clutching the cloth he used to murder the very last person who saw humanity in him.

In Saltburn, Oliver’s turn feels abrupt and unearned. His killing spree is downright malicious and vengeful, and it is difficult to pity him. This turn also comes so early, that by the time Fennell reveals to us the half-cooked twist that Oliver “was bad all along”, it doesn’t land because we’ve just spent the last 50 minutes watching him be bad. Unlike Tom, Oliver does not prey on his victims out of desperation. He kills them out of spite. And yet, AND YET, we don’t even get to see him do it. We don’t even get to see their bodies. Whatever for?

Not only does Fennell fail to build suspense, she fails to spark terror. In a movie that promises shock, there seems to be little effort to actually shock its viewers. The best scene in Saltburn is when Oliver fucks Felix’s grave - for the sheer reason that it didn’t seem ripped from another film, and that it was genuinely shocking - as Fennell so relentlessly promised. If the two other gross-out instances, cum-slurping and period blood-smearing, were enough to shock audiences then good. But if those moments are being propped up by the “thrilling twists” of other, much more astute films, then there is not much to be said for them.

Saltburn is a sloppily tacked Pinterest board of beautiful but tired visual references, held together with a narrative spun by much defter hands before it. Overall, this movie could stand to have a bit more reverence for its progenitors.

The Iron Claw's gut punch could be near-fatal, if it wasn't trying to be a Kevin Von Erich biopic.

While Kevin is deeply compelling, having survived all five of his brothers, the film would've benefitted from trying less to hit all the milestones of his life, and instead leaning into mood - traversing the brutal emotional landscape of this family's story. Given so little insight into the worlds of the brothers who died, the emotional beats that should've ruined me instead fell flat.

Generally, the characters are undeveloped. The brothers, especially Kerry, are backdrops for Kevin's pain and disbelief. Kevin is one-note - a virtuous bystander to tragedy. Their father is the same, rendered into a caricaturish villain who is completely ambivalent to the deaths of his sons. The real man was terrible, but I would have been interested to learn why he became this way - maybe a scene where we watch him grapple with the death of his first son years back, and decide to embark on a self-fulfilling prophecy that would result in the deaths of almost all of his children.

Exploitation in the wrestling industry is a major theme here, yet it never feels like the movie is able to explore it to any true extent. Kevin's children went on to be pro-wrestlers themselves, a fascinating fact to leave out of the film given that this sport destroyed the bodies and minds of his siblings.

What saves The Iron Claw is its old-fashioned sensibilities. The stilted script, stock-ish characters, cliched story beats, and sentimental emotions allowed me to enjoy the film for the most part, despite its myriad flaws. (That dream sequence did have everyone in the room crying - although it felt to me derivative of a much more emotionally eviscerating scene from The Lovely Bones).

Lastly, my viewing of the film was weighted with the knowledge that Durkin chose to leave out altogether a sixth brother, Chris Von Erich, the youngest member of the family who also wrestled, and who also committed suicide. Durkin rested this choice on a notion that the film "couldn't handle one more tragedy". This is unfathomable. A film about four out of five brothers who die before their time is tragic. But to leave out a sixth life, also gone too soon, is a tragedy in and of itself.

One of the most emotionally and stylistically powerful movies I have ever watched. Saw it five days ago and haven't stopped thinking about it since. Will be discussing in the next video!

William's Oldroyd has crafted an unexpectedly sexy joyride through the barren world of Otessa Moshfegh's 2015 thriller. While some might see his nods to Hitchcock as vestiges of thriller's past, Oldroyd's intelligent pacing and Moshfegh's abject humour bring a stylish and optimistic flair to the genre.

Every performance in this film, from Eileen's drunkard father to the hideously tragic Mrs. Polk, is utterly captivating. Anne Hathaway is unsurprisingly incredible as Rebecca - allowing only nanoseconds of a glimpse beyond the character's glamorous persona. It’s so impossible to dig through Rebecca's layers, that there’s isn’t a moment on screen where she does not unsettle.

Thomasin McKenzie plays Eileen with a gentle facade that strains to cover the maimed person within. Her pert face and charming New England rasp coerce you into empathizing with this pitiful character. The film delivers its most pivotal moment not through dialogue or choreography, but instead with an impossibly subtle shift in McKenzie’s face - that alone earns an Oscar nod.

The cinematography is an obvious homage to Hitchcock, but never feels derivative. Ari Wegner’s many slow zooms and lingering close ups keep you unnerved, his grainy visuals rendering the unforgiving Massachusetts landscape into something oddly seductive. Eileen is a delight - I'm very excited to see what William Oldroyd brings us next.

Ah yes, every quintessential romance begins with a: "Sorry I destroyed your business and the memory of your dead mother. But now that you're unemployed you'll have time to date me".

I do watch this movie every November though...

When reporting on Nazi official Adolf Eichmann during his trial at Nuremberg, Hannah Arendt was struck by Eichmann's perplexing ordinariness. She remarked: "Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period."

Eichmann's plainness is a trait Arendt would go on to use as the foundation for her theory on the "banality of evil" - how an entire public could so quickly become complicit in mass atrocities, and go about their daily lives while carnage was wrought all around them. And until now, I have never seen a film more effectively capture this idea than Jonathan Glazer's penetrating psychological drama, The Zone of Interest.

Set in the little oasis that SS officer Rudolf Höss, his wife Hedwig, and their family have built right next to Auschwitz, of which Höss is the commandant - The Zone of Interest gives us a slice of life into the everyday activities of these figures. The goal, according to Glazer and his team, was to get to the "atom-splitter" of an idea (according to producer James Wilson) why Hedwig Höss told her husband that they would 'have to drag her kicking and screaming' away from Auschwitz when told about his job transfer.

Glazer's Höss, played by Christian Friedel, is feeble-mannered and soft-bodied. We never see him commit any atrocities on screen, and are witness only to the even-tempered nature he brings home - which peaks only in moments of bureaucratic ambition. Hedwig, played by Sandra Hüller, is less delicate. Hüller plays Hedwig with a pinch of brutishness - clunking about the house and barking orders at staff. She is only tempered when surrounded by her worldly goods or joking in bed with her husband, as firearms blast off outside their window. These are people who have pushed and networked their way to the top - which, if it weren't for the relentless screams carrying through their house, you could believe was a bid for Höss to be nothing more than an ad executive.

The film makes a pointed effort not to include imagery inside the concentration camp - only allowing us glimpses through tight shots of Höss as he calmly observes the brutality, and very daring infrared scenes of a girl smuggling apples for the prisoners. But, violence or not, The Zone of Interest reads as a daylight horror. Mica Levi's bone-chilling, absorbing score plays heavily over extravagantly crafted scenes of the family frolicking in a river, or lounging in arm chairs as smoke from the chimneys balloons in the background. And that is the key - Auschwitz is a backdrop for these characters - whose horrific talent at compartmentalization allows them to sleep at night - even sometimes during the day, as their fellow human beings scream in terror on the other side of the wall.

Glazer and his cinematographer, Łukasz Żal, made sure to keep a "critical distance" from their subjects - watching them with a static camera and allowing them to move about the house undisturbed by the production. What this makes for is actually quite claustrophobic - endless shots of the family and their staff walking through doors, sidling past their dog, or pushing past each other. The result is calming, hypnotic. These lives, free of worry about the world outside the house, are monotonous and familiar. The repetitive shots, paired with a heavy score and eerie soundscapes, comprise two films. As Glazer puts it, "one is the film you see, and the other is one you hear." The horror of Zone of Interest is not sensational or eye-catching. It is remarkably, frighteningly regular.

This is one of the most brutally accurate depictions of a girl's sexual-coming-of-age I've ever watched. How to Have Sex is atmospheric, horrifically relatable, and riveting from beginning to end. I love the way Molly Manning Walker imbues so much personality and joy into our main character, Tara (depicted immaculately by Mia McKenna-Bruce) - I really came to love her like a friend by the end of the film. The first half of How to Have Sex is so enjoyable and funny, that its emotional beats hit that much harder. Its exploration of teenage rebellion, the lines of consent, and peer pressure could easily dip into the territory of an after-school special, but Walker handles it with such grace, understanding, and style that you're able to truly immerse yourself without being lectured to. All around wonderful, brutal film.

This review may contain spoilers.

I have extremely conflicting feelings about this film.

On the one hand the visuals are so exquisite, and the first half especially made me really yearn for sentimental melodramas and epics. The beautiful flute-heavy score and Leone's languid, trademark cinematography make for such a beautiful and warm, nostalgic viewing experience. I feel like the early 80s were an especially rich time for those kinds of movies. The runtime doesn't feel particularly oppressive, since the film successfully immerses you in the lives of Noodles and his friends. It effectively builds together a story of survival turned greed, and I think it needs that 3.5 hours to let us really understand the characters and see their slow moral decay.

That being said, the two horrific rape scenes left a sour taste in my mouth. This movie has a very troublesome relationship with its female characters - segregating them as madonnas and whores and yet forcing them all to suffer the brutality of male violence. The rape scenes, both of which (quite remarkably) were committed by De Niro's protagonist Noodles, are excruciatingly long and harrowing to watch. And the film makes no explicit effort to condemn or challenge Noodles after they happen.

But the reason I feel complicated about it is that, I'm actually not sure the film NEEDS to condemn him. We, as an audience, can discern that this is a gangster film. That Noodles becomes, like his love interest Deborah (Elizabeth McGovern) predicted, nothing but a "two-bit punk". He is not a true protagonist who keeps his love interests in a glass case. And I think his assault of both the "whore" character (Tuesday Weld) and Deborah proves that on its own. Women of any calibre are collateral in this seedy underworld. And in my opinion the best gangsters movies are the ones that depict a naked brutality in their gangsters rather than romanticize them. Yet it doesn't get rid of that sour taste. I'm interested to figure out why that is.

Matt Johnson and his team have proved again their ability to bring hype to a Canadian film that is... distinctly Canadian!

Blackberry was wonderful. It could appear on the surface like a by-the-numbers "corporate downfall thriller", but you can see them nodding to the genre every so often in a way that feels like a loving parody (I think this is displayed most effectively in Jay Baruchel's heinous wig). The film balanced its comedy/parody with some pretty hard-hitting emotional beats. The acting was incredible - Glen Howerton's multilayered and bombastic performance as Jim Balsillie was a particular standout for me. It felt like it had a very distinct visual identity that films of this kind so often lack! I also loved the musical moments - I'm a sucker for a Moby montage.

My only reservations were (1) that the first half of the film dragged out a bit, which made the rest of it fly by almost too quickly. And (2) I like that it's an office thriller, but I would have liked to have spent some time with the characters in their personal lives. At one point, Douglas Fregin (played by Johnson) mentions that the engineers and sales staff are giving up 80 hours a week to work for the company - but we never get to see this sacrifice firsthand. Are he or Mike Lazaridis sacrificing personal fulfilment to be successful? We don't get to see that, so it feels like we don't know them well enough to fully empathize with them when everything comes crashing down.

Ultimately though, Blackberry is a gem and I recommend that everyone goes and sees it! The film really lets you simmer in the concept of what perfection means in the competitive marketplace, and how quickly it's transformed into obsolescence. It really is that classic Icarus tale, and while it's hard to empathize with tech capitalists screwing people over to get ahead (and forging what is the digital dystopia we live in now) I couldn't help but think... ah... they're Canadian! Let them have it!

Such an exquisite movie! I was not expecting this to be as gratuitous as it was, but wow this film revels in its violence. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover takes place almost entirely on a stage - and every single facet of set is meticulously crafted - it actually reminded me a lot of Julie Taymor's Titus with its deconstructed sets and ahistorical-ness (...and the sheer creativity of the gore). The costumes, designed by Jean Paul Gautier, are avant-garde and change colours as the characters glide from room to room. You can see how Peter Greenaway's art background inspires his filmmaking - every frame is as extravagant as the food on the plates or the Flemish painting hanging on the wall of the restaurant. I found the score to be extremely affecting - the themes are quite repetitive but they're used sparingly and at the most effective times. The acting is incredible - Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon are particularly outstanding (almost all of the dialogue is delivered by Gambon alone, and he delivers it with 100% intensity the entire way through). This film is Greek in its stakes - and it makes me feel like we're missing melodrama in our movies today. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is not for the faint of heart - its violence is as decadent as its visuals. But wow, this is a masterclass. I wish it was talked about more.

Such a lovely predecessor to s Ha and the like. Girlfriends takes a very slice-of-life approach to themes of intimacy in female friendships, mid-twenties stagnation, and romantic uncertainty. It's a tender movie, but does not feel overly precious in its handling of the characters (particularly Susan - played by Melanie Mayron, who is at times coolly aspirational and at others quite dopey and fumbling). Standing at my very own mid-twenties crossroads, I found this film to be deeply comforting. It's going on the favourites list!

This was incredible! Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks, and William Hurt are mesmerizing in their performances (Hunter in particular may have won a place as my favourite actress from this movie alone). William Hurt is extremely sexually charismatic in this film, in a way I've never seen on screen before. The film threatens to head into cliche territory, but manages to cleverly subvert and complicate your expectations at every turn. I loved the very distinct and complex ethical comes of the three protagonists, and found myself resonating with every one of them to one degree or another. It's a slow burner (the intro scenes are a bit hard to follow) - but by the half hour mark I caught myself sitting on the edge of my seat with my mouth hanging open. That Gaddafi report sequence had some of the best camerawork and choreography I've ever seen.

Absolutely riveting, and so unique!

I can definitely say that I love this movie. However, I can't say that I enjoy it. That's exactly what I was thinking about Crash when I came upon Roger Ebert's review, "I ired it, although I cannot say I "liked" it".

I'm a big fan of anyone who takes a step as bold as Cronenberg did here. Crash has its issues - its glossy, voyeuristic approach makes it difficult to ever properly penetrate the characters (sorry), making it difficult to ever empathize with any of them. That being said, I think we're severely missing movies as erotic, heightened, and thematically provocative as Crash is. Also, I loved to see 90s Toronto depicted so effectively (the city at that point was a bit of an industrial wasteland and the way Cronenberg focuses on our winding highways was done so impeccably - although it makes me dread getting my license). Overall, it's bold and I love it for that reason alone.

This review may contain spoilers.

two hours later and I'm still pissed they killed Bing Bong

For me this was the perfect example of a movie failing to execute its concept. It was genuinely unpleasant to watch and not because it's a horror film.

From the outset, Chef and his employees are way too creepy and hostile to invoke any sense of mystery or suspense within the film. Chef in particular is incredibly aggressive to the point that I could not bring myself to find him scary or compelling... and he's played by RALPH FIENNES. Anya Taylor Joy's character is a boring cliche of the smug outsider. She is also one-dimensional. Every other character is too, but they are also not over-the-top enough to be effectively satirical either.

Chef delivers the entire thesis of the film before the halfway point even comes, rendering the rest of the movie completely uninteresting. At least Triangle of Sadness built its rich characters up in such a way that you couldn't help but laugh at their humiliation. With this it did not feel like any of the guests actually deserved their "just desserts". It was also an odd choice to have the head chef of a gourmet restaurant enacting the class revenge, because it then seemed like one petty rich man's vendetta against people who spited him instead of an adequate class commentary. Not to mention that the class analogies are so on the nose it's almost unbearable.

Unfortunately, none of the technical elements of this film came together for me. The acting was stilted, as was the writing. The pacing was awkward. The sound mixing was unintentionally disorienting. The score was loud and ill-placed (there was an entire scene where Chef is screaming for everyone to be silent so they can hear a man screaming, but the score plays over it so loudly that it drowns his screaming out. So when the music cuts out as he goes underwater, we were never privy to the actual diegetic sound Chef was referring to). The colour palette was unpleasant and all over the place.

I think we need to slow down with the smug class allegories for a second. Overall I really did not enjoy this film. And no, I didn't think it was fun lol.

How can a film be so precious and so bleak? As someone who really isn't a fan of Three Billboards, I really think Martin McDonagh is a genius when he doesn't try to write American culture and politics. Banshees is a perfect vehicle for his talents. I have no idea how he managed to make these two grown ass men so unbelievably adorable . The way I SQUEALED when Colin Farrell says he doesn't want to throw his estranged friend's severed finger outside because "it'll get dirt on it".

Don't even get me started on that little baby donkey.

CW: Sexual Assault

There's something about media which makes a point about being overtly feminist that compels us Gen Z/young Millennials to do an instant eyeroll. Feeling that these sentiments are pandering. Outdated even. A "post-Me Too fatigue" that elicits instant cynicism. I did this eyeroll when I first glanced at the posters for Women Talking.

Then I watched the film, and that compulsion was extinguished almost immediately. Women Talking tells the story of a colony of Mennonite women, from elderly to children as young as four, who have realized that they have been being drugged by a group of men in their community, brutally raped in their beds at night, and for the fertile - impregnated. In the likeness of a 12 Angry Men, one room-one night-procedural, a select group of the women gather to discuss their next moves: stay and fight, or leave.

Canadian darling Sarah Polley, strikes an astounding balance of devastation, unbridled rage, tenderness, and even gentle humour in this feature. It's a rotation of the some of the most incredible actors living today - Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Michelle McLeod, Judith Ivey and Sheila McCarthy deliver my favourites performances of this year - Claire Foy's performance may be my favourite of this entire decade. While Women Talking can, at times, be slightly on the nose with its message - its desaturated palette a bit too bleak for the eyes - the totality of its emotional power, thanks to its impeccable direction and majestic score, are enough to make it live in your head for days, weeks even. Its films like this that remind me of the sheer beauty and power of this craft. I was simultaneously reflective, devastated, and deeply inspired when I left the theatre, wiping my face into my scarf.

Then I found out it was based on true events, and was violently reminded of the abuse women everywhere still face every single day on this planet. This year, a string of random fatal attacks have been carried out on our transit system. All but one of the victims were women. A woman just a couple streets away from me was assaulted in her bed a month ago. I am 26 and already exhausted by feeling like prey every time I leave my home. Women Talking reignited an anger in me that I've been suppressing for a few years now - too tired to be angry at the insidious, silent, pervasiveness of gendered violence in my society. I said to my friend yesterday that if we took our anger out about all the times we've been abused in our lifetimes, I'm not sure our society could function.

This is a sentiment echoed in the film. Women Talking is about a specific, true event that occurred in a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia only 10 years ago. But it is also a parable for a wider system of violence. It reminds me that we can't grow complacent, that we still need this movement. It's an absolute shame that such a remarkable achievement of a film could was so hideously overlooked at the box office. Art like this, which so effectively moves us to change, must be protected.

Oldboy takes Oedipus Rex and turns it into a balls-to-the-wall psychological y2k thriller with some of the most bonkers acting, camerawork, and action choreography ever to make it to screen. So great.

I've never seen a movie that's so thematically complex, suspenseful, epic, erotic, brutal, fun, and silly all at once. It also included some of the most interesting camerawork I've ever seen. I'm mad it took me so long to see this. Genuinely a masterpiece through and through... except for the scissoring.

This film is definitely not for everybody since it's a bit tonally jarring and will likely age like milk - but I really enjoyed watching it! The performances - Zoey Deutch and Mia Isaac's in particular - tow a really great line between camp and sincerity. I think the movie asks a lot of interesting and nuanced questions about online stardom and the attention economy in a way similar to Ingrid Goes West, but still offers a very fresh perspective!

Also, I'm not sure how Dylan O-Brien managed to make a sex scene so revolting and hot at the same time... but he did.

This ripped my heart out. It's the kind of movie that unfurls itself so slowly and carefully that you have no idea what it's about till it's over. 24 hours later and I'm only now catching onto the meaning of that beautiful fading-polaroid shot. The film plays so effectively as memory, that it managed to forever instil itself in ours'. Absolutely, gut-wrenchingly brilliant.

How can you narrow it down to just four! These are all of mine (and counting) (and in no particular order).

• The Devil Wears Prada
• s Ha
• Four Rooms
• The Social Network
• Muriel's Wedding
• Uncut Gems
• Kuch Kuch Hota Hai
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople
• Exotica
• Gaslight

...plus 96 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Whether they humanize sex work or not, these films depict the lives of erotic dancers!

• Zola
• Hustlers
• Dancing at the Blue Iguana
• Exotica
• Magic Mike
• Magic Mike XXL
• The Players Club
• Flashdance
• Showgirls
• Striptease

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Michael Douglas plays himself a lot...

• Fatal Attraction
• Basic Instinct

it's all in the title

• The Princess Diaries
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
• Robots
• Sleeping Beauty
• Shark Tale
• Ella Enchanted
• Bend It Like Beckham
• Center Stage
• Confessions of a Shopaholic