REVIEWS
Post-film thoughts.
Toy Gun Bandit: No Way Out
What sets the film apart from other crime-thriller films is the beating heart at its core. None of its characters (bar a few) actually want to be there, doing what they’re doing. Each one knows they’re only making their situation worse, that they’re teetering on a point of no return.
No Rest for the Wicked: Even in Death
Doomed, gay vampire romance is by no means a new concept, but Director Kasper Kalle’s take on vampires refreshed the genre with a layer of the paranormal and body horror.
Girl in the Night: For the Misfits
Every aspect of this film makes it hard to look away for even one of the 94 minutes it gives us. Girl in the Night uses the night to its advantage: blue and green lighting emphasize the monotony and mind-numbing boredom Rok feels at work, and gorgeous orange and yellow hues spread across faces and combine with waxing and waning instrumentals to raise the tension in intense physical scenes.
Diary of a Mad Old Man: Distorted Desire
From a persistent foot fetish that leads to Utsugi getting Susu’s footprints engraved on his gravestone to his cartoonish rejection of anything and anyone that isn’t Susu, you can’t help but watch with a morbid and pitiful fascination as he gets lost in a relationship he’s largely projected onto his daughter-in-law.
Sunburn: The Warmth of Youth
The film is nostalgic, yet keeps moving forward. By forcing all of its characters outside with no access to an online world, it feels like it could be happening in any era. They wander the streets, play a day-long game of Manhunt, chase after the ice cream truck, bask in the sun, and have a water balloon fight all while coming to terms with the end of a chapter in their lives.
Littermates: A Makeshift Family
Inspired by their own family dynamics, Tinkham and Woloson successfully captured the silly and trivial aspects of growing up along with the deeply profound relationship only found between siblings. They bicker, they fight, they get into trouble together, and they work together despite constantly butting heads.
Memories of a Forest: Family Trees
Literalized through the titular forest, Memories of a Forest is a story of roots and generations—the stories we know of the people who came before us, cycles of trauma and societal expectation, the precarious choice between tradition and forging your own path. Inspired by real experiences, and filmed with an almost documentary-like sensibility, using real forests and some non-actors, Katharina Rabl takes a relatively simple story and injects it with surprising complexity.
Vintage Violence: Doing It for the Views
Seemingly fascinated with the intersection of performance and reality, Vintage Violence is one of the few entries in recent years that feels truly entrenched in online culture. Kotlyarenko approaches the subject not with an intention of warning, but an understanding that the online world is part of our reality just as anything else. Every detail, down to the individual users in Carter’s livestream chat, feel deeply human and all too real.
Furies: Taking It Back
Unlike other heist films, where the thief’s motive is one of vengeance, greed, or ego, the motives of the thieves in Furies are rooted in justice and reclamation. It is not the desperation of having nothing that drives these characters to rob the bank, but the knowledge that their own property is being kept from them.
Resident Evil: Achievement Unlocked
In Resident Evil, Cregger and his co-writer Shay Hatten ask how far you would go to avoid an inevitable change. Would you run and hide? Stand, fight, and survive? Perhaps you won’t know until you’re backed into a corner and forced to make the decision, wasting ammo, energy, and precious time.
Jollyface: White Guilt and Black Crimes
The reveal that the police deliberately dismissed the case is where Jollyface finds its sharpest edge—particularly the moment Blair watches the footage herself and realizes the cover-up wasn't negligence, it was a choice. The system didn't fail Nick. It worked exactly as intended.
River: Terror Downstream
The story of the film itself is nothing to write home about, but really, who is watching a slasher for a hero’s journey? We’re all here for the thrills, and River delivers.
La Gradiva: Always Forever
Versions of these teenagers existed centuries before they were ever born, they exist now as they are, and they will continue to be reincarnated as the centuries go by, worrying about the same things, stressed about school, trying to fit in with their peers, wondering who they are or where they come from.
Love is the Monster: Abuela in Action
The tug-of-war between Abuela and her daughter is one of the biggest ways Love is the Monster drives the narrative forward. García and Regidor portray this friction intensely and authentically. Some days, they are civil. Others, they quarrel over how to best take care of the grandchild. The heat to their performance is felt beyond the screen.
Stuffed: Still Life
Melling and Comer prove themselves as all-rounders in both their acting and singing abilities, the film almost entirely a two-person show, while Rhys establishes his filmmaking talent. The journey he takes the viewer on is one of accepting both life and death. Stuffed is about love as preservation. It is looking at preserving not only the body, but the human spirit as well.
Fjord: The Forgiving Cold
The film follows Lisbet and Mihai’s struggle to prove their innocence and maintain their traditional, conservative values when faced with a system that they feel is out to get them. It asks the audience to sympathize with a family we may disagree with, and forces us to confront our own biases and beliefs—but not always in the film’s favour.
Where the River Begins: The Jungle Decides
Juan Andrés Arango’s third feature film captures an incredibly personal and honest story led by amazing non-professional actors, making the raw emotion that much more impressive. Each scene feels naturalistic and quietly beautiful, letting the viewer immerse themselves in the lives of the characters and, as a result, root for Yajaira and María from the get-go.
Coyote vs. Acme: Sisyphus is Happy
It is through this seemingly never-ending legal proceeding that Wile E. Coyote, Kevin, and Paige realize that maybe winning the case, catching the Road Runner, keeping the boulder at the top of the hill, isn't their real goal. Perhaps the goal itself is the chase, the hill, and the journey.
The Odyssey: A Homeric Reckoning
Where Homer celebrates Odysseus as a hero returned, Nolan admonishes him as a harbinger of death. As heartbreaking as it is harrowing, the writer-director pulls on the thematic foundations of Tenet (2020) and Oppenheimer (2023) and once again asks the audience to reckon with one man’s destruction of the world.
Lucy Lost: The Journey to Belonging
Lucy and Milly care for each other with an affection and understanding of the other’s struggles that can only make you invested in their bond from the very first scene they share.