REVIEWS
Post-film thoughts.
The Long Walk: A Call to Action
Adapted from Stephen King’s first novel, The Long Walk features a deceptively simple pitch: 50 young men from across America enlist in a walking contest with a single winner.
Remaining Native: The Long Run
Remaining Native is the kind of film that will sit with you, shift your worldview, disquiet you, and make you laugh and give you hope time and time over in its tight 85-minute runtime.
Twinless: Death Is Irrevocable, You Can’t Take It Back
Twinless centres around surviving halves, Roman (Dylan O’Brien) and Dennis (James Sweeney), who meet at a twin bereavement support group and form an emotionally intimate bond through their shared trauma. The film takes us through a hyper-specific form of grieving: losing someone who not only looks exactly like you, but was also the person you were with since the beginning of your time on Earth.
Weapons: Horror with Heart
Weapons (2025) is a nightmare. Directed by Zach Cregger, who impressed audiences with his debut horror release Barbarian (2022), the film puts a spin on both a child and parent’s worst fear: an unexplained disappearance.
Mongrels: Fragments of Memories
“Mother’s hand is a healing hand…”
This phrase is one you hear in the form of a soothing, lullabye-esque song repeated throughout Mongrels, which is the feature film debut of Canadian writer and director Jerome Yoo. Long after the film ended, both the sound of this song and its simple, grounding sentiment lingered with me—a sign that the film struck me exactly where I believe it was aiming.
Bird In Hand: A Daughter’s Desperation
The love that often cannot be divorced from regret and the regret that can arise in spite of the love—this tension is the feeding ground for a good story. Melody C. Roscher’s Bird in Hand (2025) is no exception, exploring the nuances of being raised as biracial with only one present parent.
Squid Game Season 3: Waste All, Want Not
Absent of any particularly novel ideas, however, Squid Game still compels global audiences. Because, juxtaposing the most vile aspects of humanity, the show always and often reaffirms the intrinsic values of love, altruism, and family.
The Travel Companion: Free Flights vs. Friendship
The Travel Companion, which premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival, follows Simon (Tristan Turner), a struggling indie filmmaker who gets free flights due to his airline employee best friend and roommate, Bruce (Anthony Oberbeck). This benefit becomes shaky when Bruce starts dating Beatrice (Naomi Asa), a more accomplished filmmaker.
The Crowd (جماعت): Defiant Joy
A vertical video, clearly taken on a cellphone, of a chic millennial apartment. We pan over a group of friends dancing, goofing off, giggling. There is food and drink. One girl is singing. The opening scene of The Crowd resembles the kind of thing you could find on the camera roll of most people between the ages of 21 and 35 today. But by the end of the film, even this typical scenario feels like a statement of resilience.
Underland: Immersive Subterranean Cinema
Underland premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and is based on Robert Macfarlane’s novel of the same name. Director Robert Petit captured the stunning visuals and philosophical implications of various “underlands” or subterranean caves, storm drains, and even a lab two kilometers below the Earth’s surface.
Summer’s Camera: Picture Perfect
Summer’s Camera is writer and director Divine Sung’s debut feature film, but it’s hard to tell while watching it; the film’s natural depth and stunning composition carry the mark of a much more experienced filmmaker.
Resident Playbook: Growth at the Heart of Life and Death
In the place where life, death, and everything in between coexist, Resident Playbook (2025) takes us back to the Yulje Hospital universe in the form of young blood.
The Pitt: Medicine Without Melodrama
With enough driving force to keep you latched onto every medical malady, though, you’d assume The Pitt is another stock series full of shock value cases and genius treatment plans. Instead, The Pitt is a jarringly intimate look at the inside of a Pittsburgh trauma center that is understaffed and underfunded—with all the ideological weight these settings and circumstances must bear.
The Balconettes: The Truth in a Woman
Noémie Merlant’s The Balconettes is a femme-powered comedy/thriller/drama that met some of my hopes and expectations, fell short of others, and surpassed my imagination, leaving me in awe at times and horror in others.
Invention: Gray and Fading Memory
Directed by Courtney Stevens and co-written by Stevens and star Callie Hernandez, Invention fascinatingly blurs the line between documentary, surrealism, and melodrama. Hernandez plays “Carrie” Hernandez, a semi-fictionalized version of herself in a semi-fictionalized portrayal of her emotional journey after the passing of her estranged father.
Sister Midnight: Strange Appetites
Once you get on its distinctly weird wavelength, Sister Midnight is a wholly unique and unexpected film, anchored by a standout performance from Radhika Apte.
Companion: Predictable Plot, Perfect Execution
Starring the modern final girl of final girls, Sophie Thatcher, Companion approaches themes of misogyny, female rage, and domestic violence with the same subtlety as a hammer to the head. But that doesn’t make the movie any less compelling, especially with such searing commentary.
Sinners: A Bloody Good Time
Set in 1932, Sinners establishes an incredibly intimate historical placement, describing American history through personal struggle instead of gimmicky news articles or radio broadcasts.
Adolescence: Patriarchy Laid Bare
As Jamie pleads his innocence, Detective Bascome, portrayed by Ashley Walters, slides printed screenshots of Jamie’s Instagram across the table. They display a series of aggressive comments and innuendos that the young boy typed under suggestive photos of female Instagram models. “How do you feel about women, Jamie?” Bascome asks. Immediately, I perk up in my seat. This is not what I expected.
The Wedding Banquet: A Beloved Queer Text, Refreshed
Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet is an ambitious and multi-layered adventure. Against themes of queer and cultural identity, found and chosen family, the story deconstructs its characters to their most vulnerable forms and their actors bring to the table a well of lived experience and intelligence that acts as the glue pulling everything together.