Reviews BBFF Dispatch #2: Two Baltic Movies Prominently Featuring Lakes Part of the Boston Baltic Film Festival 2025
Reviews BBFF Dispatch #1: Three Highlights from Estonia, Latvia, & Lithuania The following dispatch features reviews of Podnieks on Podnieks. A Witness to History; Five and a Half Love Stories in an Apartment in Vilnius, Lithuania; & Lioness.
Reviews Death Education Chinese teacher introduces the topic of death education to his students... by experiencing it firsthand - poetic documentary premiered at Sundance
Reviews Fritz on Fridays: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is more sadistic than bleak.
Reviews Orenda — Pirjo Honkasalo [IFFR ’25 Review] Orenda is by no means a bad film and in fact mightily impresses in moments, its inconsistency undermines testimony of any genuine orenda.
Reviews Star Trek: Section 31 — Olatunde Osunsanmi The Star Trek franchise has finally delivered its first truly unwatchable feature film
Reviews GO TO: Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024) dir. Soi Cheang And Soi Cheang’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, the star-studded crime actioner, is the most culturally relevant film to originate from Hong Kong last year.
Reviews REVIEW: From Ground Zero (2024) dir. various One of the most terrifying things ever filmed takes place in one of the 22 shorts featured by Palestinian directors from and about Gaza in the wartime anthology From Ground Zero.
Reviews Blu-ray Review: The Beast (2024) The Beast offers more with each new return than the previous one.
Boston Hassle INTERVIEW: Director Kelsey Egan on ‘THE FIX’ and Engaging with Criticism "YouTube and TikTok are the demise of cinema"
Reviews REVIEW: Harbin (2024) dir. Woo Min-ho The opening foreshadows the scale of the task ahead: to assassinate their colonizer and the Prime Minister of Japan, Itō Hirobumi
Reviews Fritz on Fridays: Man Hunt (1941) What greater thrill could there be than killing the leader of the Third Reich?
Essays Year Ender: Joshua Polanski's Top Ten Films of 2024 In a year darkened by ethnic cleansing, global conflict, and hopeless elections, it’s beautiful that beauty, more than depravity, captivates the minds of our best artists.
Reviews 'The People's Joker' - Queer superhero parody blasts genres and genders Proof that miracles do happen.
Essays The top 10 dirtiest movies of 2024 [Nickel Boys] No mainstream film this year was more uniquely cinematic than RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys.
Reviews Fritz on Fridays: You and Me It’s also a film that takes place from Thanksgiving to Christmas, making it a fitting time to run for this month’s column.
12:12: The Day Interview: 12.12: The Day Director Kim Sung Soo "This is how history continues its ongoing dialogue with the present and reflects why I continue to make films based on history."
No Gods Left Original Piece Black Velvet A genre-defiant drama about depression with a formalist flare, the Latvian-Lithuanian co-production Black Velvet uses some killer editing and funky cinematography to zero in on the strangeness and alienating effect of that unique sadness.
No Gods Left Original Piece Anna LOL Anna may not feel anything, but any audience even half paying attention will. Anna LOL is a remarkable film, and it is one of the best Baltic films I have seen so far this year.
Reviews Heavier Trip — Juuso Laatio & Jukka Vidgren This is likely the kind of thing that Werner Herzog was talking about when he said, “I’m fascinated by trash TV. The poet must not avert his eyes.”
Reviews Contact Lens The contacts work as metaphors for both seeing the world differently and the imprisoning cycle of routine.
![Orenda — Pirjo Honkasalo [IFFR ’25 Review]](/content/images/size/w600/2025/05/orenda-iffr25.jpg)
![The top 10 dirtiest movies of 2024 [Nickel Boys]](/content/images/size/w600/2025/05/nickel-boys-1-webp.jpg)
