Baltic Cinema Laguna Grief can be foreboding like a lagoon; it can simultaneously and contrapuntally be a site for a baptismal-like transformation. Laguna understands this.
Palestinian Cinema Palestine 36 Perhaps the most comprehensive and valuable narrative drama to survey the origins of Palestinian subjugation in the Levant.
Toronto International Film Festival 2025 Aki Aki is like a prayer ... beautiful, personal, and uncomfortable all at once.
Screenlife LifeHack If Unfriended: Dark Web is Screenlife showing the Internet at its worst, LifeHack, while not unafraid of that darkness, is much more optimistic about its potential.
Korean Cinema Dark Nuns The theology of Dark Nuns stands apart from the usually strong Christological theologies that the exorcism genre has stood on for decades.
In Review Online How to Train Your Dragon 2025's How to Train Your Dragon drags and loses its way under a strained and failed effort to make everything bigger and bolder.
Korean Cinema The Old Woman with the Knife For all their effort to hide age in the action, the filmmakers take the opposite approach to the symbolism.
In Review Online Karate Kid: Legends — Jonathan Entwistle [Review] Much like a child trick-or-treating in a small neighborhood and returning again and again to the same houses, the Karate Kid franchise will keep coming back until it no longer gets the goods it asks for.
Reviews Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk — Sepideh Farsi Fatima Hassouna might have had the brightest smile and biggest eyes in all of Gaza.
Chinese Cinema(s) Striking Rescue — Siyu Cheng [Review] Striking Rescue cinematographer Ai Yanjie loses sight of much of the action and regrettably tempers the blows of the stunt team.
Palestinian Cinema Leila and the Wolves — Heiny Srour [Review] Leila and the Wolves ... holds a special place within that tradition of boundary-pushing Leftist filmmaking from the Arab Levant.
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 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 The Fix — Kelsey Egan The Fix, a new South African sci-fi film that takes place in a world where breathable air is a thing of Earth’s pastime, opens perfectly.
Reviews Aberdeen — Ryan Cooper, Eva Thomas [TIFF ’24 Review] Perhaps it’s still an important film, but it’s not particularly good.
Reviews The Critic — Anand Tucker Any movie that features a theater critic as a main character invites more intentional criticism.
Reviews Maldoror — Fabrice Du Welz this anti-creative decision turns out to be an predictive of the woefully misguided and frankly arrogant film that it precedes.
Reviews Dancing Village: The Curse Begins — Kimo Stamboel Instead of relying on jumping out of closets and dark rooms to generate one-second bodily reactions, The Curse Begins funneled its horror through the horrible realization that one day, if you aren’t already, you too will grow old and decrepit.
![Karate Kid: Legends — Jonathan Entwistle [Review]](/content/images/size/w600/2025/06/KarateKL-Sony.jpg)
![Striking Rescue — Siyu Cheng [Review]](/content/images/size/w600/2025/05/strikingrescue_wellgousa_still01.jpg)
![Leila and the Wolves — Heiny Srour [Review]](/content/images/size/w600/2025/05/leila01-cr-heinysrour-severalfutures.jpg)
![Orenda — Pirjo Honkasalo [IFFR ’25 Review]](/content/images/size/w600/2025/05/orenda-iffr25.jpg)
![Aberdeen — Ryan Cooper, Eva Thomas [TIFF ’24 Review]](/content/images/size/w600/2025/05/aberdeen-06.jpg)
