What makes Camp Miasma particularly great is the perspective through which it approaches a genre that has been dominated for decades by a very specific kind of gaze. There is a distinct pleasure in seeing the slasher through a different perspective, particularly when that perspective is so aware of the genre’s history without becoming trapped by it. This is the sort of stuff I, and many others, went into Ti West’s X trilogy looking for, though the successes and failures of those films can be long debated at another time.

Director Jane Schoenbrun clearly understands the films that came before them. There’s a surrealist quality to what Schoenbrun is trying to accomplish here, one that even recalls the Lynchian strangeness of Twin Peaks. At the same time, its aesthetic and sensibilities are rooted in the ‘70s and ‘80s slashers many of us watched at an age when we probably shouldn’t have been watching them in the first place. The result is a film that feels simultaneously nostalgic as it does alien.

That balance is especially impressive in an era where seemingly every horror film has to be meta. After decades of Scream-inspired self-awareness, it feels as though every new slasher is obligated to comment on the very tropes it uses. Yet Schoenbrun never allows that meta-ness to become the entire joke of a scene. The film knows every cliché it’s dealing with, yet it doesn’t simply point at them and laugh. Don’t get me wrong, Camp Miasma has some great comedic detours which are woven into the story itself, but the difference is they are serving to push the film forward rather than stopping it dead in its tracks for another knowing wink at the audience.

That understanding of the genre is ultimately what separates Camp Miasma from the forgettable horror releases that can otherwise get lost in the middle of the summer. Schoenbrun possesses such a deep understanding of what makes slashers appealing that they are able to apply an intellectual lens to the genre while simultaneously pulling back the curtain on the uncomfortable truth behind its success.

Because when you strip away the blood, weapons and familiar iconography, there is something inherently voyeuristic about the slasher. We watch people become targets. We watch their bodies, their sexuality and their fear become spectacles. Camp Miasma is interested in that relationship between the viewer and the viewed, and it never treats the audience as being completely separate from the spectacle.

This is where the film’s surrealism becomes particularly important. When Schoenbrun tears away the academic layer of the film, there isn’t a shallow shell underneath it. You still feel what these characters are experiencing, particularly through its central character. The Lynchian ambiguity allows the surrealism to seep into individual scenes without demanding that everything be explained. Ambiguity becomes almost another character in the film, quietly shaping our understanding of what we are watching.

For a film with such a broad conceptual scale, Camp Miasma also feels surprisingly intimate. Its ideas encompass genre history, sexuality, gender and pop culture, yet much of the film carries the feeling of a chamber piece. That contrast gives the film an unusual sense of intimacy despite everything it is trying to say.

Ultimately, one of my favourite things about Camp Miasma is how comfortably it fits into so many boxes without allowing any one of them to define it. It is a slasher satire, but never simply a parody. It is a commentary on sexuality and gender in pop culture, but never reduces its characters to academic talking points. It is voyeuristic while still functioning as a traditional thriller. It embraces familiar tropes without being defined by them.

The best genre films aren’t necessarily the ones that reinvent the rules. They’re the ones that understand why those rules worked in the first place. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma understands the slasher well enough to play with it, critique it, laugh at it and, most importantly, still enjoy it. What could have been another self-aware horror exercise instead becomes something considerably stranger, smarter and more satisfying.

From the coloured flowers in the opening shot to its overtly heterosexual society, One Night Only commits to its heightened reality. There’s an obvious political influence behind the premise, using the regulation of sex to comment on modern-day traditionalism or whatever old-minded conservative mindset you want to say. Off the bat, the film makes its position fairly clear. Still, once you get past that initial political commentary, it becomes much more interested in being a romantic comedy than the exploration the premise might’ve suggested.

And yet, surprisingly, it works.

At the centre of this one-night extravaganza are Allie and Owen, two people who enter this annual night with very different expectations from everyone around them. Played by Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner, the two gradually find themselves looking for something more meaningful. Taking a note out of early 2000s rom-coms like Serendipity, the irony is not lost on these two characters, with a fling built around a society obsessed with sex; the distance these two go leads to intimacy over immediacy.

This is where One Night Only settles comfortably into the familiar motions of the rom-com playbook. You can usually see where the story is going, and the film takes its time getting to the emotional beats you know are coming, but when they finally land, they’re worth the wait. Much of that comes down to the chemistry between its leads, whose performances give the increasingly conventional material enough sincerity to keep it from feeling completely mechanical like other rom-coms we’ve seen this year.

I actually found myself having the most fun when the film forgot about its own rules and started to let the two leads simply fall for each other in the funniest ways possible. The absurdity surrounding certain scenes or predicaments created an endless fountain for comedic moments to flow, yet the emotional core was surprisingly straightforward but effective nevertheless. Beneath all the political commentary and world-building through TV broadcasts lay a story about two people finding a genuine connection in a world that has turned intimacy into a scheduled event. I felt there were ways to tie in the overdependence on dating apps into this whole plot, and while it did play a part in the film, it was ultimately a missed opportunity to tie more realism into this film that is otherwise far-fetched.

There’s a much sharper satire hiding somewhere inside One Night Only. A society that criminalizes sex for most of the year could provide plenty of material about religion, politics, marriage, repression and government control. The film gestures toward those ideas, but rarely explores them with enough depth to make them as compelling as the central romantic story.

That creates an interesting contradiction: the film’s biggest selling point is also its biggest weakness. The “Sex Purge” concept is what makes One Night Only stand out from a sea of conventional studio rom-coms, but the movie becomes more effective whenever it moves away from that concept and focuses on its characters.

That doesn’t make One Night Only a particularly groundbreaking romantic comedy, nor does it fully capitalize on the potential of its political premise. But it does make for an unexpectedly charming one. The film takes a ridiculous concept and gradually strips it down to something familiar, sincere and occasionally quite funny.

The Sex Purge might be the hook, but the romance is what ultimately makes One Night Only work.

Long before algorithms buried content and platforms quietly decided what deserved visibility, Public Access channels operated like the internet before the internet: messy, unpredictable, occasionally disturbing, but undeniably alive in every way possible. There’s almost no modern or past equivalent to how radical and absurd this era in television was, yet the documentary captures that energy with every frame. From performing artists to the emerging filmmakers and journalists, all the way to activism and conspiracies, everything shared the same channel, which broadcast the known, with no censorship of who or what you would see.

What makes Public Access so compelling is how distant, yet familiar, it all feels. The faster you look past the dated technology, the sooner you realize that this unrestricted TV really laid the groundwork for the internet we all know and use today. From watching experimental performance art to watching low-quality, niche-humoured talk shows, you begin to realize that the Twitch streamers, unqualified social commentators (rage baiters), and influencers of today all feel connected in some way to these early cable-access personalities desperately fighting for attention in front of cheap cameras and green-screened backgrounds.

What makes Public Access so fascinating is how distant, yet familiar, it all feels. Once you look past the outdated tech and experimental production styles, it becomes impossible not to recognize the DNA of today’s online culture. Twitch streamers, Instagram influencers, niche creators, and the rage bait content creators we all hate all feel like ramifications of these early cable personalities trying to entertain whoever is watching. Instead of simply documenting this niche, raw form of the internet, the film pulls back the curtain on the groundwork which was being laid. From the Public Access television, we learnt who gets a platform, what deserves attention, and how audiences discover content. All of these still relevant questions all were answered decades before social media existed.

Without having any attachment or nostalgia for this weird period in the late ages of cable television does do one interesting thing in giving me an unexpected perspective. For younger audiences, like me, this isn’t solely the story of a forgotten art medium when you really boil it down; it feels like the origin story of the internet itself. Public access television opened the floodgates for most media long before Silicon Valley claimed to have done the same. Without Public Access, the sites we use every day, like YouTube, simply wouldn’t have been the same. In hindsight, these broadcasts felt strangely authentic through the documentary’s lens, showing both the unbelievable creative freedom and talent that were discovered and the chaotic instability that now defines online culture.

At times, Public Access does become so captivated by its own footage that the darker implications of this medium feel lost. Scenes involving explicit programming and increasingly provocative broadcasts hint at the inevitable consequences of an almost unrestricted platform, yet the documentary remains more interested in observation than analysis. It raises many, many, many questions about who controls public expression, where responsibility begins, and whether truly open platforms can survive once money, corporations, and algorithms take them over and reshape them, but it rarely pauses to explore those questions in depth.

Public Access ultimately succeeds as more than a nostalgic look at a forgotten corner of television history. It captures a moment when media felt genuinely raw, amateur, and completely unpredictable, while quietly suggesting that the debate over openness, visibility, and control never disappeared. The platforms changed, but the questions remained the same.

And the response to the film reflects that split. The mix of positive and negative reactions doesn’t really feel like a debate about whether the film is “good” or “bad” in a traditional sense. It feels more like evidence of where the overall audience currently sits. Moviegoing has shifted into something increasingly event-driven and niche, where everything needs to feel like a moment you can’t miss in a format you can’t find. Backrooms, in that context, is interesting because it still manages to generate attention and discussion while refusing to fully conform to a Hollywood narrative blueprint.

Structurally, the film avoids a clean linear path. It moves between narrative clarity and abstraction, never fully committing to either. That push and pull becomes one of its defining traits, but also its main point of tension. The experience of watching it isn’t smooth-it’s constantly shifting between attempting to guide the audience and actively destabilizing that guidance.

That tension is where the film becomes most revealing. There’s a version of Backrooms that feels much closer to its original YouTube miniseries roots - leaner, more fragmented, and purposefully incoherent in its commitment to creating a strange atmosphere over structure. But what we get instead feels like a negotiation between that vision and something more traditionally structured. You can feel the studio notes throughout, shaping it into something more legible wherever possible. At a certain point, it almost feels like the film splits in two: one half is pure abstraction and visual odyssey, the other is a more conventional narrative spine trying to hold it in place. That internal conflict never fully resolves, even after the credits roll.

What makes that especially interesting is that the film is directed by a 21-year-old, which is genuinely impressive regardless of how you feel about the final product. There’s been discourse around whether someone that young could have actually made it, but that conversation feels largely irrelevant. If you subscribe to the idea that there’s “no way” a “kid” made this, you either didn’t really engage with the film, or you’re not familiar with film history. Look at Orson Wells in his early 20s, or Damien Chazelle in his early work, the idea of young filmmakers attempting ambitious, structurally unconventional cinema is not new, and is a practice I hope Hollywood never ends.

Ambition perfectly captures the feeling behind Backrooms. Even when it doesn’t fully land, I can still appreciate its big swings. The constant shift between extended dialogue-driven scenes and long stretches of visual abstraction leaves it in an uncomfortable middle ground. At times, it feels like a genuine exploration of form and audience expectation in a lychian filter. At other times, it feels like a nothingburger trying to carry more weight than it can support.

That contradiction ultimately defines the film for me. It is both an interesting experiment in pushing mainstream audiences toward abstraction and a fragmented piece of cinema that is still struggling to decide which version of itself it wants to be.

After breaking the mysterious “One Wish Willow” to win his crush’s heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.

Curry Barker’s Obsession only satisfies the premise shown in the trailer. Across its 108-minute runtime, there’s barely anything built beyond its fun central idea. However, it does one thing right: it begs the question - if there’s a good idea for a film, should we just let anyone turn it into one? For Blumhouse, it seems so.

Derived from films I wish I’d be lucky enough to forget, you can feel the influence of hits like Smile and the early works of Osgood Perkins before he came into his own throughout this mess. The film commits the cardinal sin of horror; it’s genuinely bored me. The first few scares play directly into mine and the audience’s senses - the one thing you don’t want to happen, happens. But after the initial one or two horror sequences, Barker’s debut feature falls into the same routine we sit through every three or four months. It’s cringeworthy, desperate to feel “different” at the expense of its own individuality, and constantly trying to be something it’s not.

What bugs me most about the film is how weak the core plotting really is. Beneath all the horror elements and supernatural gimmicks is a story we’ve already seen countless times before. The film mistakes its “wish-granting” concept for depth, as if adding a strange supernatural layer automatically makes the narrative more compelling. Instead, it feels like a stretched-out idea desperately trying to convince itself it’s more original than it actually is. No matter how you frame it (horror, romance, or dark comedy), the plot remains lazy, predictable, and painfully overdone.

Films like Smile or Weapons are the kinds of horror films people will still be talking about years from now. The same won’t be said for lesser, far less entertaining counterparts like Obsession.

One thing most horror films already have going for them is the cast. This ensemble, made up mostly of unknowns, sadly never has anyone captivating enough to carry that spotlight. From the very get-go, there’s an awkward balance of overacting and underacting in nearly every scene. Unlike some of the standout performances we’ve already seen this year from lesser-known actors, both Michael Johnson (Bear) and Inde Navarrette (Nikki) feel more like examples of what not to do in a film than how to truly stand out.

Not all the blame should fall on the cast. For his debut feature, Barker leaves me more worried about the career we may all have to sit through next. Ironically, I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw his next project is an entry in the Texas Chain Saw Massacre franchise - the series every struggling filmmaker seems destined to pass through eventually.

If there’s one thing Obsession gets right, it’s giving the audience an ending for the ages. But be careful what you wish for. Me? I was hoping for a fun movie. If only I had thought about all the ways that could go wrong, much like the many failures buried within Obsession.

Before going further, the film’s content advisory should be taken seriously. Calling the imagery extreme feels insufficient. Having seen countless documentaries, very few approach what is presented here. Out of respect, these moments are better left undescribed, but for those unprepared, this will be a difficult watch.

“You have a responsibility, as I do, to tell the truth. You pixelate this and that’s journalistic malpractice.”

Not a second of American Doctor is wasted. Director Pih Si Teng avoids the historical exposition of centuries of debated and reframed stories and fully commits the documentary to immediacy and urgency. By presenting the film from a perspective grounded in the actions of these physicians, the audience is placed alongside these three men as they navigate impossible conditions. Every decision carries weight, from scarce resources to limited amounts of time, the doctors have to confront not only how to save lives, but which lives they are able to save.

The film is effective in placing its audience on the front lines. The visuals are unrelenting, offering little space to process what is being shown. Moments of brief calm are quickly interrupted, reinforcing a sense of instability that mirrors the environment itself. That intensity does not stop once on the filmmaking end, shots linger, leaving behind images and emotions that are difficult to shake even weeks after experiencing the documentary.

Many of the film’s creative choices reflect its commitment to truth-telling. Presented through almost a war-journalist lens rather than a distant, observational lens, it avoids softening its most painful blows. What is shown is deliberate. These decisions may deter some, or many viewers, but they align with the film’s central argument: that to look away, or to obscure, is to fail in documenting reality.

While the subject matter is inherently polarizing, the film remains largely observational until its final moments, where it shifts into something more direct. Described by Teng during a post-screening Q&A as a “cry” or “scream to be seen,” this turn reframes the film not just as documentation, but as a call for recognition. Whether that shift strengthens or disrupts the film’s earlier restraint may vary for viewers, but its intent is clear.

American Doctor aims not only to inform, but to confront. It returns to its opening idea, the right to know and pushes it further, challenging the audience not just to witness, but to reckon with what they have seen. The film does not offer solutions, nor does it ask for agreement. It simply refuses the comfort of distance.

For this authenticity, we can thank Baz Luhrmann and the extraordinary archival restoration of 36 previously unseen hours of footage. What emerges from this lost footage isn’t the advertisement we all know of “The King of Rock and Roll,” but something much more intimate.

This is not quite the concert film you may be expecting, nor is it a conventional documentary you’ve seen hundreds of times. Instead, EPiC exists in a space between genres, blending immersion with observation. Like Elvis himself, it resists being confined to a single category. For the King, that refusal to fit into a box defined his artistry. For a film, however, that ambiguity proves more complex.

This documentary highlights how Elvis’ authenticity extended beyond his music. The new footage reveals a performer who understood the weight of his cultural significance, choosing restraint over spectacle when it came to his personal life and views. Elvis believed his views were personal, not performative, and that his speech influenced millions. In an era increasingly defined by celebrity commentary, this documentary effectively showcases something raw and authentic about how Elvis carried himself when he wasn’t on stage or in front of a camera, perhaps, for the first time, giving him a platform to speak freely without the weight of criticism over him.

What’s most compelling here is not simply Elvis the icon, but Elvis the man. This newly restored footage captures someone comfortable in his own skin, unbothered by insecurity. It’s clear that Elvis wasn’t chasing approval; he was chasing authenticity. That’s why moments of attempted censorship hit with emotional weight. You sense how deeply it cut into his sense of self.

Yet, with this amazing exploration at the foreground of this documentary, EPiC still struggles. It avoids the traditional rhythms of a concert movie, there’s no clear build toward a singular climax, though the film also refuses the guiding framework of a traditional documentary. There are no talking-head interviews, no external analysis or narration, no real insights beyond Elvis himself. The opening of the film is in particular uncertain, failing to establish a clear emotional or thematic entry point, and the end does not make any necessary change on this level.

Still, the film’s unwaivering energy, like Elvis himself, becomes its greatest strength. Spending this amount of time is just as exhilarating as it is exhausting. Director Baz Luhrmann understands this balance more than anyone, making his audience juggle with this energy instead of hiding it away. The pacing of the film is made for its audience to feel Elvis’ unbelievable schedule, letting us be immersed instead of entertained. This very grind that defined his later years is a major focus of the film’s subject matter. Rather than simply telling us he was overworked, the film lets you feel it.

By the time the closing title card appears, it’s revealed that in just four years, Elvis performed over 1,000 concerts, sometimes more than three in a single day. The statistic lands not as trivia, but as tragedy. The myth of The King has always been larger than life. EPiC quietly suggests the cost of maintaining it.

In stripping away the spectacle, the film doesn’t just restore footage. It restores humanity.

In 1990s Iraq, 9-year-old Lamia must bake the President’s birthday cake. She scrambles to find ingredients for the compulsory task, fearing punishment if she fails.

Director Hasan Hadi approaches this material with deliberate restraint. By maintaining a sense of distance between these characters and the overarching presence of oppression, the film can operate in a space of quiet observation. This style of storytelling is common among directors who tackle this subject matter, as it allows the audience to relate to the cause-and-effect of everyday life while tension, whether political or social, lingers in the background. Rather than foregrounding the film’s main conflict, the story lets bits of realism emerge organically. This all contributes to the film’s overall feeling that these are lived-in places and stories rather than constructed ones.

This approach allows the characters not necessarily to change their circumstances, but to learn how to live and operate within the suffocating constraints. This is where the film’s sense of realism fully settles in, at least for me. It feels as though Hasan Hadi is making a quiet but devastating point: we live in a world where it’s easier for these children to adjust to a broken system than to hope for change.

While watching the film’s structure, I felt an overwhelming connection to the work of Jafar Panahi, particularly 1995’s The White Balloon. From having a child at the focal point, to the political background and tension, and the simplicity of small tasks ballooning into impossibilities, there’s a clear influence here. At first, I interpreted these similarities in structure and narrative as just a friendly influence, but as the runtime went on, it began to feel closer to emulation or derivation.

That leads to my main hesitation. While following children navigating life in an oppressive system remains emotionally powerful, the framework itself isn’t new. Iranian cinema has long explored this terrain, and recent films like The Florida Project or the more mature Nickel Boys have also used childhood as a lens to examine systemic injustice. The child-as-witness has become a familiar cinematic language. The question, then, is whether The President’s Cake meaningfully expands that tradition, or simply refines and repeats it.

Directed by John Patton Ford, whose previous and debut film Emily the Criminal leaned heavily into grit and moral tension, his second feature takes a noticeably lighter, more playful route. How to Make a Killing follows a calculated but charismatic little guy (played by Glen Powell) who carefully tangles himself into some killer situations, each time getting himself closer to his lost family’s inheritance.

Powell plays the kind of character you’d jump out of your seat to see Tom Cruise in, maybe 30 years ago. By playing the smartest person in the room, Powell is smooth, charming, and just self-aware enough to be dangerous. It’s a performance that leans fully into his movie-star appeal rather than asking him to disappear into something darker or more transformative, similar to his work in Richard Linklater’s Hitman.

While this film doesn’t quite live up to the expectation of being an elevated, satirical take in the vein of American Psycho’s “kill everyone to get what you want” mode of storytelling, there’s still plenty to enjoy here with this strong, but small cast at the helm. Looking past its lead, Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick and the great Ed Harris all lend their talent, serving the momentum of every scene beautifully.

It’s only right to point out right off the bat: this isn’t a perfect film. It doesn’t have the layered mystery of what makes Rian Johnson’s Knives Out films amazing, nor does it embrace the cold psychological detachment of a Patrick Bateman-type character study. Instead, it works comfortably within its own lane. The humour lands more often than it misses, the pacing very rarely drags, and the film is simple enough that it never feels confused about what it wants to be.

Technically, everything is solid enough to pass by. The cinematography is clean and functional, the editing keeps things moving, and the score does its job without demanding attention. There’s nothing here I’d necessarily change, or anything I found myself particularly thinking about. This film is honestly some simple, effective and polished filmmaking, making it clear how John Patton Ford understands something many new directors misunderstand (and something that was taught to me in film school before I dropped out): you should prioritize flow over flair.

Where the film might lose some viewers is in how safe it chooses to play things. It rarely challenges the audience or pushes its premise to a truly uncomfortable place. The twists are predictable, and certain story beats feel familiar. But here’s the thing: it’s still entertaining enough that you don’t grow frustrated with that very predictability. Since the film never pretends to be groundbreaking, its safer brand of filmmaking feels intentional rather than lazy. You’re not watching it to have an out of body experience, you’re here for a good time, and thats whats delivered.

John Patton Ford seems fully aware that this story wouldn’t work if taken too seriously. Removing both himself and the audience from strict realism allows the film to breathe in a space where exaggerated narration and heightened situations make sense. It’s not trying to redefine the crime satire genre; it’s trying to deliver 100 minutes of escapism.

In the end, How To Make A Killing is less about reinvention and more about execution. It may not demand repeat viewings or any form of analysis, but as a showcase for Glen Powell’s effortless charisma, it does exactly what it sets out to do. Sometimes a film doesn’t need to be masterful to justify its existence, sometimes it just needs to be fun. And this one, simply, is.

For context, Iron Lung follows a lone prisoner sent into a blood-filled ocean on an alien moon, piloting a rusted submarine on what is essentially a suicide mission to map the unknown. The film is adapted from a short indie horror game of the same name, known more for its atmosphere and tension than for any real narrative depth. On paper, that minimalist setup sounds like it could work as a tight chamber piece. In execution, it absolutely does not.

For 125 minutes, this chamber piece drags on with some of the worst plotting I’ve ever sat through, and not even some of the greatest filmmakers in the world could pull off a chamber piece of this scale in concept, let alone a first-time director with no real background in the world of film. I’m trying to pull positives out of this monstrosity, but there are truly no redeeming factors; it’s awful from start to finish.

A lot of critics have already pointed out that the film is ineffectively structured like a “Let’s Play,” except without any of the interactivity that makes that format engaging in the first place, something the film’s director is most well known for on YouTube. What that leaves you with is an endless loop of watching this character move from puzzle to puzzle, side quest to side quest, without any sense of participation or escalation. It’s just dull observation, which is brutal in a medium where you’re supposed to feel involved, or at the very least entertained.

The way this film came to be only makes the end result more baffling. Iron Lung was largely crowdfunded and driven by Markiplier’s massive online following, which explains how a project this undercooked managed to reach the finish line. That kind of built-in audience safety net feels less like creative freedom and more like a lack of restraint, and the movie suffers because of it.

This also highlights a bigger issue with celebrity jump-overs into filmmaking. With every internet personality who decides they can just leap from civilian to filmmaker comes a horde of fans who’ll sing their praises no matter what, and it’s honestly fascinating how hard this film has been carried by whatever Markiplier’s fanbase is called. Sitting through Iron Lung becomes almost more tolerable if you trick yourself into viewing it as some alternate YouTube sketch (minus the comedy), but even then, it’s far more boring than it is interesting. Yes, it’s adapted from some niche video game that Twitter users will insist is a masterpiece, but it simply doesn’t translate to the big screen nearly as well as they think it does.

It also goes without saying that Markiplier, who’s been in front of a camera for decades at this point, should be more comfortable on screen. Instead, he can’t act to save his life. There’s something almost sobering about how bad his line deliveries are when contrasted with the sheer chaos of the film around him, paired with a near-total lack of emotional range in every scene. I genuinely find it puzzling how this project even secured funding beyond sheer name recognition.

The technical elements, which are usually the most important aspects of a chamber piece, don’t fare any better. The sound mixing, voice acting, and cinematography never come together in any meaningful way. It’s almost as if they poured blood over the entire mise-en-scène and called it an aesthetic. It’s horrid stuff, and it only reinforces how little control there is over the film on a fundamental level.

I’d definitely say to stay FAR away from this one unless you’re a die-hard Markiplier fan, and even then, I’m not convinced that’s enough to make this experience worthwhile.

Don’t be deterred by the lack of thrills the film has to offer, there is still much to enjoy with Jodie Foster. For the first time in a good amount of time, Foster is finally back in a role which feels fully inhabited, she genuinely believes in, and lived in. That’s not to say her recent work, such as Nyad (a film I’m quite fond of), isn’t strong, but Foster is at her best when she’s allowed to explore the psyche of a character.

This is a strength of hers which traces back to her earlier career with the notable The Silence of the Lambs, where her control of suspense and drama is both precise and emotionally rich. While A Private Life doesn’t reach the heights of her most iconic performances, I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t doing impressive work here.

As for Rebecca Zlotowski, who directs her 6th feature film here building an impressive resume, having worked with great actors such as Lea Seydoux, Natalie Portman, and now Jodie Foster, shows glimpses into her rich experience as a filmmaker, in particular being a great actor’s-director having a track record of getting great performances out her leads. But where the film loses its footing comes with the mishandled execution of the film’s larger concepts.

Nearly half an hour in, Zlotowski hits the audience with an almost lynch-ian dreamlike sequence which briefly elevates the film to heights it hadnt reached yet, fusing score and editing with striking imagery that flows through memory, fantasy, and reality. It’s a truly inspired moment that hints at what the film could have been. Unfortunately, this level of ambition isn’t sustained throughout the 107 minute runtime, and the narrative soon collapses into convolution, dampening what might have been a far more daring and exciting experience.

In the end, A Private Life feels like a film caught between restraint and ambition. Jodie Foster’s ambition frequently suggests a richer, more psychologically complex outing than the one she’s given, while Zlotowski’s flashes of visual and emotional boldness only emphasize her restraint in other areas. The result is a film that is thoughtfully made and conceptually compelling, yet frustratingly unable to rise to the level of its own ideas.

First off, history was made today. Sinners is officially the most-nominated film in the history of the Academy Awards. 16 nominations is absolutely amazing. Ryan Coogler couldn’t be a better person to deserve this, great work throughout his entire career.

Now onto the actual nominations. There are some amazing surprises and some unbelievable snubs, but to save everyone the confusion, I’ll go category by category with my takeaways.

I get that the Academy needs to have some big blockbusters in the mix so the casual person at home watching the Oscars can say they’ve watched something every year, but F1 isn’t the right pick in my opinion. F1 is the odd one out on this list of fairly heavy hitters. Personally, I would’ve gone with Avatar: Fire and Ash, or even Weapons.

In the case of Bugonia, this feels like Yorgos Lanthimos won the battle and came out victorious against Mona Fastvold and The Testament of Ann Lee, as well as Jafar Panahi for It Was Just an Accident. Not to say Bugonia isn’t a great film, but I’d have those few films in over it.

As for No Other Choice, I chalk that miss up to The Secret Agent winning most of the international categories, which isn’t a surprise to me.

Directing is not really any surprise to me. I didn’t feel Guillermo del Toro would get in, and he didn’t, so I can’t say I’m disappointed, though I would have loved to see him back in the mix. Granted, just about a decade ago he swept awards season with The Shape of Water, where he won not only Best Director but also Best Picture, so I can’t be mad when he’s already gotten his flowers.

Now here come the problems. HOW DOES AMANDA SEYFRIED NOT GET IN FOR LEAD ACTRESS??????? Not to sound biased… but both Kate Hudson and Emma Stone getting nominated over Seyfried is absolutely crazy to me. A truly generational snub, in my opinion. I feel sorry for all my friends who will have to endure my insufferable anger toward this category for the next few months. This is Jamie Lee Curtis winning over Angela Bassett levels of crazy.

Also, Chase Infiniti not getting a nomination, despite the film she leads getting 13 nominations, doesn’t add up. This is also frustrating when breakout actors don’t receive recognition for breakout roles (even Dominic Sessa for The Holdovers went through this too).

Dwayne Johnson not getting in for Lead Actor is a bit surprising to me. I never thought I’d have him in the conversation for winning anything, although I do think he should still be in this lineup. Wagner Moura picked up a lot of momentum coming out of the Golden Globes, and it goes without saying that both Leonardo DiCaprio and Timothée Chalamet have all the momentum going into this category. Those are my current top three, though I can see any of them winning depending on how SAG and other precursors go.

I’m just happy to see Ethan Hawke get in for Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, honestly one of my favorite performances of the year. I don’t expect him to put up much of a fight; I’m just glad he’s there.

The big one out of Actress in a Supporting Role is Ariana Grande, and it seems like both Amy Medigan and Wunmi Mosaku got those last two spots. I do think the major problem with Wicked: For Good was the campaigning of both Ariana and Cynthia Erivo for this category. I have a feeling the voting was split between the two of them, and actresses like Wunmi Mosaku must’ve just beaten them out in a close race.

Aside from Amanda Seyfried not getting in for Lead Actress, Paul Mescal not getting in for Supporting Actor is absurd to me. Coming out of TIFF, I had Paul Mescal as a lock to win this category, now he isn’t even nominated. This is this year’s biggest snub, in my opinion, similar to how I felt Charles Melton gave the best performance in May December a few years back.

In Cinematography, I don’t see any real snubs. I would’ve loved to see Anthony Dod Mantle get in for his work with Danny Boyle on 28 Years Later, but that was a long shot, since I don’t believe it was campaigned at all.

Visual Effects is also a fun category. We find ourselves in yet another year without Marvel Studios getting in at all, though their best shot, in my opinion, would’ve been Thunderbolts*. The misses here, for me, are Superman, 28 Years Later, and Tron: Ares not getting in at all, with the real head-scratcher being The Long Bus landing a nomination.

Apple did put out The Long Bus, and they’re fairly good at getting their films into these below-the-line categories; I just feel other films could’ve used the nomination more.

No notes for the Sound category. Sirat or F1 should probably win here, though if we start to see films like One Battle After Another or Sinners begin to sweep their categories, it will start with a win here.

Once again, I don’t think there’s any clear snub for Editing. I’d love to see Sinners take this one, though One Battle should put up a good fight. F1 earns another deserved nomination here, though how it got into Best Picture is still crazy to me.

Production Design feels like the category where I would’ve most expected Wicked: For Good to show up, but that film got completely shut out without a single nomination. Sinners is my pick here, though if Frankenstein is going to take home any hardware, it’ll be here and in Makeup and Hairstyling.

Elio feels like a very weak link in Animated Feature, but then again, it’s a very weak year for animation. How we went from the juggernauts of last year with Flow and The Wild Robot to Kpop Demon Hunters is an interesting falloff.

The only thing apparent in International Feature is that the Academy does not like Park Chan-wook one bit. This isn’t anything new, though I did think No Other Choice would at least be nominated, and not win. But it seems like the Academy isn’t over him, and the WGA is clearly not going to vote for him after going against their no-writing strike.

It’s funny how Wicked: For Good has had both of their original songs nominated in nearly every precursor, but the Oscars put in neither. Golden from Kpop Demon Hunters seems like the favorite right now, but I wouldn’t sleep on I Lied to You from Sinners.

It’s fun to see Avatar: Fire and Ash get in here, though this is 110% Frankenstein’s category to lose. If that upset were to happen, I could see it going to Sinners.

Casting is this year’s newest category, and I frankly don’t know where to go with this. I’d imagine it would be voted on very similarly to SAG’s Best Ensemble category, which is their top prize. I think I’ll be going with Sinners for the win, especially with the surprises of Delroy Lindo and Wunmi Mosaku getting in for both supporting categories, which I didn’t expect in the slightest.

Blue Moon getting into Original Screenplay is such a win! I’m glad this film is getting the praise it deserves. I don’t think there are very many snubs in this category, though I do think Sorry, Baby would’ve been a great pick here, though I wouldn’t necessarily take anything out of these nominations to fit it in.

I feel Bugonia is the odd one out here, but this category shouldn’t even be a competition, Paul Thomas Anderson wins this all day long for One Battle.

Highest 2 Lowest should be here over Bugonia, along with Marty Supreme probably over Bugonia as well. I do think this category is already decided, and Sinners will take home the award. Ludwig Göransson might be the Hans Zimmer for the next generation.

I’m glad both Kokuho and The Ugly Stepsister got in here for Makeup and Hairstyling. I will admit I didn’t expect The Smashing Machine to miss Lead Actor but get in here. I do think Frankenstein will beat out Sinners for this award, though.

Its worth mentioning that the following did not receive a single nomination:

Jay Kelly

No Other Choice

Wicked: For Food

The Testament of Ann Lee

Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

**I have not watched enough of the Short Films or Documentaries nominated to give a proper input.

This year, however, that trend finally feels disrupted. With Dead Man’s Wire, Gus Van Sant delivers an unexpectedly sharp, engaging thriller that proves January doesn’t have to be a cinematic wasteland. Anchored by a compelling lead performance from Bill Skarsgård, the film is an absolute delight to experience in the midst of a drought.

Set in the 1970s, Dead Man’s Wire comes at a strangely perfect, or resonant, cultural moment. We’re living in a post-Luigi Mangione world, where stories about a lone individual standing up against powerful corporate forces feel especially charged. The film centeres around that same uneasy question: Is it ever justified to commit extreme acts to bring a sense of justice to institutions that otherwise feel untouchable, doing whatever they please to the helpless little guys of society? Van Sant doesn’t hand the audience an easy answer. Instead, he lets the tension sit, forcing viewers to wrestle with the morality of rebellion, desperation, and personal conviction after the credits roll.

Structurally, the film follows a relatively linear path, but Van Sant avoids allowing the story to fall into a pit of simplicity or one-note storytelling. I feel the inclusion of Coleman Domingo in this project is a big credit to that. His addition helps splinter the flow of the film just enough to keep it moving, injecting chemistry and quite literally rhythm as he plays a radio host into what could have felt like a straightforward thriller.

Domingo’s voice work in particular carries surprising emotional weight, elevating everyone he shares the screen with in ways that are subtle yet incredibly effective. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Al Pacino delivers a villain performance that’s perfectly executed to get under your skin in all the right ways, shameful, intimidating, and deeply unsettling, without ever tipping deep into caricature.

What ultimately makes Dead Man’s Wire so delightful is the film’s capability to balance thrills with humour. Van Sant isn’t afraid to let the absurd moments breathe, and the film’s funniest beats land due to them feeling earned rather than forced. Whether it’s Skarsgård bluntly telling a priest to f-right off or the situational comedy that materializes from escalating chaos, the film reminds us that laughter can and should coexist with danger. It’s this tonal confidence you only really get from a filmmaker decades into his craft, alongside these timely themes and strong performances, that makes Dead Man’s Wire feel like more than just a January release. It’s a sharp, thoughtful thriller that signals a promising start to the year at the movies.

That’s not to say Safdie’s control of tension is gone. Individual scenes still stretch impressively far as Safdie can take a moment to unexpected emotional or narrative extremes before snapping it shut. But the expectation that something will go wrong is always hovering, and when it inevitably does, it lands not as a surprise but as a confirmation. The film conditions you to anticipate disaster rather than feel or be immersed in it, compared to his films before.

This approach also dilutes what should be one of the film’s greatest strengths: Timothée Chalamet’s performance. Marty Supreme feels so intent on opening multiple plot threads in pursuit of shock value that the charm and specificity of Chalamet’s work are lost in the noise. The character is constantly reacting, rarely evolving, and often overwhelmed by the film’s own formula.

Safdie has explored this territory far more successfully before. Good Time remains the clearest example of this storytelling mode done right, tightly contained, ruthlessly focused, and emotionally exhausting without feeling sloppy or tiresome. Marty Supreme attempts to inflate that formula to a larger scale, $70 million large, but without adding corresponding spectacle or insight. The film wants to feel bigger, yet I felt it rarely looks or feels it.

There’s no denying that Timothée Chalamet is the defining movie star of this generation, and quite possibly the last of his kind. Which makes it all the more puzzling that this is the performance being positioned as his definitive statement throughout its marketing. Yes, he’s the face of the advertisements, on Wheaties boxes, in music videos, seemingly everywhere you look, but I never felt that this was the “all-stops-pulled” performance it’s been sold as.

In fact, I found him stronger in last year’s A Complete Unknown as Bob Dylan than I did here, hurling ping-pong balls or fleeing police through 1940s New York. I fully understand Chalamet’s “pursuit of greatness”. I’ve followed his career closely, but I hope audiences don’t walk into this film expecting the monumental performance he’s been loudly framing it as. It’s a great role in a good film, but it’s nowhere near his best work. While he remains better than most performers this year, I wouldn’t expect awards recognition or long-term legacy comparisons; this isn’t Taxi Driver in De Niro’s career. I really hope audiences are willing to admit that, though right now everyone seems to be lost in the “schwep” memes and Marty Supreme jackets every celebrity has been sporting.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin O’Leary occupy a familiar Safdie space, functioning much like Kevin Garnett did in Uncut Gems. Paltrow’s return to acting after years away, and O’Leary’s presence as a non-actor, feel more like interesting casting ideas than fully realized performances. You can sense the pitch behind them more than the characters themselves.

I want to stress that my disappointment isn’t rooted in hype or expectations. I make a point of leaving those at the door - avoiding spoiler reviews and excessive marketing, because it’s healthier to meet a film on its own terms. Even with that approach, I walked out of the auditorium fairly dissatisfied. I understand exactly why the film didn’t work for me, which somehow makes that disappointment harder to sit with.

Part of that reaction comes from how deeply I admire the Safdie brothers’ work. Their early films feel like a reinvention of Italian neorealism within a contemporary and metropolitan backdrop. Heaven Knows What stays, to me, one of the most important films of the past decade, a brutally honest and visceral examination of homelessness that many cinephiles still refuse to seriously acknowledge, especially in cities like Toronto. So when I criticize Josh Safdie’s reliance on the “everything constantly going wrong” formula, it’s not from unfamiliarity or dislike. It’s one of my favourite storytelling modes… when done right.

Marty Supreme does flirt with an interesting thematic heart: perfection and greatness. Without ever naming it outright, the film explores what striving for greatness can do to a person, and how far that obsession can push them. Marty Mauser’s fixation on a Japanese ping-pong player’s serve, and the way it dismantles him, sets up a compelling arc. Logically, this should lead to a period of discipline, learning, and refinement.

But that process never happens. Instead, Safdie defaults to his chaos toolkit, pulling the film away from sport, mastery, and obsession, and into pure self-destruction. By the time Marty enters the third act, he’s inexplicably transformed, ten times better than before, with little justification beyond narrative convenience. The result feels less like earned growth and more like a rushed, almost “Mary Sue” escalation powered by sheer momentum rather than anything else outside a few late nights where once again, everything goes wrong.

Marty Supreme isn’t a failure, but it is a frustration. It’s a film made by a director I deeply admire, starring an actor I believe in, chasing ideas that genuinely interest me. And yet, it never fully comes together. For a film so obsessed with perfection, its greatest flaw is how little of it feels truly earned.

This isn’t a bad film, but it’s easily the weakest of the franchise. Rian Johnson follows the same playbook as the first two: be meta, be funny, assemble a massive cast, and land an unexpected twist. The trouble is that, three films in, there’s not much left to be meta about that Glass Onion didn’t already execute better. Even compared to Knives Out, the ensemble here feels underused Cailee Spaeny’s five minutes of screen time didn’t go unnoticed.

The humour might be the sharpest yet, but it leans so heavily into slapstick you half-expect Charlie Chaplin to wander onto the screen. And the “big reveal”? Far from shocking.. The only genuine surprises are pieces of background information we don’t even get until the third act, which blunts the impact. There’s not much to unravel as you go; the key difference I felt here was the film thinking for you. It’s almost as if Netflix gave Johnson a note that he needs to “dumb it down”.

Tonally, the first film was an “eat the rich” satire; the second tore apart tech-bro billionaires (fuck you, Elon). This third flick, centred on the Catholic Church, feels far less focused. Without spoiling anything, it plays more like Johnson’s own internal dialogue with his religion than a commentary that resonates broadly for its audience. Maybe that reading will change on a rewatch, but for now, it felt flat.

That being said, there’s plenty to appreciate. Josh O’Connor, who seemingly came out of nowhere a year ago, leads this cast with a strong, youthful performance. I’d only just started watching his work, yet he delivers a fun-to-watch mix of vulnerability and both emotional and physical presence that makes this character stand out.

Wake Up Dead Man has moments of charm and flashes of Johnson’s usual quickness, but compared to the razor-sharp energy of its predecessors, the lack of Benoit Blanc’s screen time feels more like a bargain-bin sequel than a must-see mystery.

It’s getting rarer when we see Brendan Fraser in a leading role as of late, but he absolutely shines in the bright lights as this feels like a character tailor-made for him at this exact point in his career. Fraser has an authentic quality to what he’s doing here, tapping into his own career struggles and that whole comeback arc we all watched happen with The Whale and his Oscar win. The blur between actor and character gives both the film and Fraser some surprisingly powerful emotional beats, the kind you don’t really expect going in, but ends up being the most resonant and memorable part of the film.

What works best is how the supporting cast actually adds to that emotional side of the film. Made up of a mostly Japanese supporting cast, every character feels like they’re giving Fraser something different to bounce off, which helps the film avoid feeling like a one-note comedy. There’s a warmth in the interactions-awkward, funny, sweet-which makes the whole found-family notion really work.

Rental Family takes the moral question of whether it’s okay to pretend or lie for the right or wrong reasons, and actually does something special with it. What could’ve just been another run-of-the-mill 90-minute comedy about an isolated foreigner turns into a two-hour, joyful, funny, and emotionally resonant experience. The humour works, the quieter moments work, and somehow the whole thing just feels… honest. Even when the characters are literally pretending in the film, you can’t help but believe them.

Beyond the unique plot, Fraser gets to explore imposter syndrome in such a wholesome, human way. He doesn’t just show its side effects, he actually represents that feeling of masking his insecurity, and how those same masks can weirdly push him, and in turn us, forward. It hits harder than you’d think for a movie that also makes you laugh as much as this one does.

Visually, the movie has this warm, gentle vibe to it. Nothing flashy or over-the-top, just clean, simple choices that match the story’s heart. The pacing feels right, too-the two-hour runtime is fully justified. It gives writer-director Hikari enough room to let her warmth and energy flow through everything without rushing the emotional stuff.

By the end, what starts as a lighthearted comedy blossoms into a full-on heartfelt celebration of self-acceptance and the joy of simply being. It’s sweet, it’s funny, it’s surprisingly deep, and honestly just a really good time.

In a year overflowing with films that use sentimentality to reveal something honest about the creative process, this one does nearly everything wrong. An existential crisis can be a compelling, picturesque vehicle, but here it becomes an excuse for Jay to simply be a bad person, and the film expects us to care. There’s a difference between crafting an intentionally unlikeable character and writing a poorly conceived one who hides behind unlikeability as a shortcut to depth. And coming from Noah Baumbach, whose career has been defined by intimate, human studies of everyday people, it’s especially strange. It feels like he’s grown so disconnected from real life that he now only writes characters in bizarre, self-inflicted emotional ruts who need to “learn to be human again.” It’s exhausting. Some of these revelations belong in a therapy session, not a screenplay. When Jay mutters, “I can’t remember the last time I took the subway,” the line accidentally or deliberately reveals more about the filmmakers than the character.

The film also struggles under the weight of too many conflicting ideas. It wants to be about art as a profession, the meaning of life in the arts, the emotional toll of fame, and George Clooney’s own personal battles, but none of these threads ever mesh. Instead of exploring the actor’s experience in a grounded way (a sub-genre we rarely see outside of stuff like Babylon or this year’s Sentimental Value), Jay Kelly gets lost in its own self-absorption. I’ll give it this: at least it’s not another film about a failing young writer trying to “find their voice.” But watching another privileged, uninteresting character complain about his problems, while ignoring everyone else’s, is hardly an improvement or entertaining to watch, and don’t give me that “not all art needs to be enjoyable”.

Then there’s Clooney himself. The biggest question I left with is simple: Is this even a good performance? Everyone seems eager to praise him for “pouring his personal life” into the role, but that alone does not make it awards-worthy. He doesn’t deliver the performance of a lifetime, and he’s certainly not operating at the dramatic level some people are pretending he is. For Adam Sandler, calling everyone “puppy” doesn’t help either. I wouldn’t have this anywhere near my top ten of the year.

By the time the credits roll, Jay Kelly feels like a film in search of something profound, made by people too far removed from the world they’re trying to comment on. Baumbach’s trademark honesty and emotional precision get buried under indulgent choices and half-formed ideas. The result is a movie that stretches itself in too many directions, trying to say too much and ending up saying nothing at all.

It’s a film about reconnecting with humanity made by artists who no longer seem connected to it.

This is the first Predator film in years that leans unapologetically into pure sci-fi, pushing past the grounded tension of Prey or even the accessible world-building of Alien. It’s bigger, weirder, more alien-and oddly committed to that choice.

To be clear, Predator: Badlands isn’t aiming to be grander than Prey, and it doesn’t aim for that in the slightest. But to its credit, it also isn’t trying to mimic it either. Instead, it fully embraces the franchise’s more Hollywood heritage, stepping into that grey area between franchise rehash and reinvention-something most Hollywood legacy horror films fail spectacularly at.

One of my biggest concerns going in was the PG-13 rating. Historically, that’s been a warning sign that the film is sure to fail. When you come into a film like this, you expect blood, gore, humour, and a sense of danger. I walked in assuming this would be the watered-down studio version of that film I’d come to expect, something that would be safe and marketable to a wider audience. I was completely wrong. Predator: Badlands is insane, gross, and surprisingly vibrant in all the right ways. It might not be R-rated brutal, but it pushes PG-13 to its absolute limits, and the film is better for it.

Elle Fanning, who’s been on a generational run this year between Sentimental Value and now this, continues to be one of the most trustworthy performers of our generation. Predator: Badlands doesn’t demand an Oscar-worthy performance, this is a franchise film at the end of the day, but it does demand someone who can nail comedic timing, emotion, and believability in a world full of green screens and mocap monsters. Fanning grounds this chaos with ease, even when playing an android. Paired with Dan Trachtenberg, who has now fully established himself as the most consistent filmmaker to ever touch this franchise, her performance keeps the movie from tipping into pure absurdity.

Long-time fans will find plenty to bite into. The film hides in enough easter eggs, references, and nods to past Predator and Alien films and lore that you can’t help but think that another AvP crossover is being teased. Whether “the studio” (the company… haha) actually pulls the trigger is a different question, especially with Godzilla vs. Kong stealing their thunder, but at the very least the seeds are definitely there.

In the end, Predator: Badlands is a strange film that shouldn’t work as well as it does-and yet, somehow, it still does. It’s not groundbreaking by any means, but it’s entertaining, confident, and a marked improvement over most of the franchise’s outings. If you have even the slightest curiosity, it’s worth your time. Just loosen your expectations: this isn’t Prey, and it’s not trying to be. It’s another chapter in a long-running saga that’s still figuring out what it wants to become.

I received an invite and attended this press screening merely out of convenience rather than expectation. I had already missed this film at TIFF due to scheduling issues, and in all honesty, didn’t have much desire to see it with the less-than-appealing word of mouth which had floated around the film. “What could they possibly have to say about World War 2 that hasn’t been said, and takes 2 hours and 28 minutes to say?” turns out, a lot.

Directed by James Vanderbilt - best known as the writer of Zodiac and the co-architect behind Paramount’s recent Scream trilogy - Nuremberg plays to its audience like an award-bait gone right. This film has all the makings of an Oscar powerhouse, and maybe with an older voting body (I’m talking pre-2016, when films like The King’s Speech or The Artist would win Best Picture), this would have been a no-brainer.

Just in its cast, you have a sense of gravitas and prestige, Russell Crowe and Malek both co-lead the film, both being past Academy Award nominees and winners. Yet what makes this film more interesting than big names is that it’s only Vanderbilt’s second feature. Knowing this, I admittedly expected some speed bumps, but beyond some pacing issues I felt in its second act, the film is shockingly assured. And more than anything else, it has something urgent to say, which is the last thing to say from a seemingly “studio head”.

Circling back, that urgency is carried throughout the film on the backs of this masterclass in acting by such a great ensemble. Raimi Malek, for one, confidently turned in his best performance of his career since his Oscar-winning Freddie Mercury. As someone who went through all 4 seasons of Mr. Robot and must’ve watched Bohemian Rhapsody a good 25+ times, I’ve fallen off the Malick train. In this very role, he delivers such a controlled, curious performance that in maybe a less competitive year, he could’ve been a frontrunner for Best Lead Actor once more.

Then comes Russell Crowe, who blew me away 10 times over. It sounds shameful to say I completely doubted that Maximus still had a performance like this in him. He is absolutely the film’s core: haunting, unpredictable, capable of turning from raw vulnerability to chilling command without hesitation. It’s important to this film that Göring isn’t a one-note villain. Crowe peels back layers I never expected from this film to explore. I honestly believe that when this film works, it’s to the credit of this cast, who explore the emotional and moral weight of every scene.

Richard E. Grant and Michael Shannon are two actors whose involvement in a film can only enrich and elevate the material. That said, there is one moment during a crucial moment where Shannon’s character, Robert H. Jackson, is listing off occupations of the war’s victims, “doctors, lawyers, teachers, FILMMAKERS”, I think every person in that theatre rolled their eyes so hard you could feel the collective audience groan.

What ultimately stuck with me the most is Nuremberg’s backbone. There are multiple themes and uncomfortable questions that are explicitly explored in the film, to the extent that I feel it may actually deter audiences from buying tickets. The question that lingers through this film is clear: “Why give these monsters a platform? Why not simply execute them and move on?” Vanderbilt, to his credit, takes these conflicts on without hesitation, and in doing so, he brings up the very same question of why this should exist or be made? This film isn’t just another excuse to rehash the horrors of the Second World War; we all know how bad it was, but this film does something else: it exists as a warning. A reminder. A flare shot into the dark.

This warning becomes very clear in the words of Douglas Kelley (Malick), whose novel the film adapts. I’m paraphrasing since I couldn’t get the exact quote, but it goes along the lines of: “This very evil is in America. And if you’re waiting for them to put on a uniform, you’ve lost your mind.” It’s chilling. Thinking about this year at the movies, and the amount of cautionary films we’ve seen about the state of America and the world, Nuremberg still finds a way to hit harder than most.

Vanderbilt doesn’t only bring these horrors to the screen through dialogue; the brutal imagery shown in the film is explicit enough to turn your stomach inside out. Some frames feel almost too cruel to show to an audience; multiple people throughout the auditorium covered their eyes due to the discomfort. Whether audiences feel Nuremberg goes too far in humanizing the war criminals, or too far in showing the atrocities, or not far enough in either direction… that tension is part of the experience.

By the time the final bow is tied, Nuremberg reveals itself as an unsettling but essential watch. Not a Friday-night date movie, not something to casually stroll into at 7:00 p.m. on a whim. This is a film that demands preparedness, attention, and a strong stomach. But it’s also a film that matters-and one that may linger with you after the lights come up and credits roll.

There’s something interesting happening in the contemporary film space right now. Audiences seem to be interested in American paranoia, the death of humanity in this current time, and the grand theme of conspiracy theories! (which has never been seen before). If you look at the big films which tackle these ideas, Bugonia, Eddington, Kinds of Kindness, and Beau is Afraid, two people are behind the birth of this new, post-covid exploration, and their names are, of course, Ari Aster and Yorgos Lanthimos.

I mention Yorgos and Ari since, in a few ways, Bugonia is essentially just doing Eddington, but in a wonky, psycho genre-more than that film already is. I’m not going to sit here and tell you about the little complexities between the two films; if you watch both-they are overwhelmingly self-explanatory.

To the point of Bugonia, we all get that conspiracy rabbit holes aren’t good for anyone involved. You don’t need another mindless review about how contemporary cinema is repetitive, or another discussion about whether Aster is a master of cinema or a fraud (he’s a master) - truth is, we’ve been going through these sorts of genres since the ‘40s. Look at the Reagan-era of film for one.

One thing I do want to highlight about Bugonia is how it flips the big pharma principles onto itself. There are actually very few films that do this. Maybe the not-so-successful Spiderhead a few years back? What those films show is that nobody is really right in anything they do, no matter if you’re a regular Joe or a CEO.

You can get lost in these somewhat academic ways of looking at film’s themes, but the bottom line is nobody has a fucking clue what’s happening. The middle and lower classes think billionaires are trying to kill us through food and medicine. The billionaires either are or don’t give the slightest shit about regular people and are only motivated by power. Truth is, the world is messy. We know that. Yorgos knows that. So let’s have fun making fun of everyone at the theatre. And that we do.

There’s almost a feeling of making art under oppression feel to Bugonia in the way it is completely uninterested in censoring anything, or near the end of the film, doesn’t care to pull its punches and really goes for it visually, thematically and in a funny way - Lanthamosian way. That’s all spoiler territory through. It’s also funny how the film just gets drowned out in corporate talk at a certain point, “let’s have a dialogue”...

I have no idea if I’ve actually said anything useful to this point - or just rambled on. Anyways:

Dear Jesse Plemons:

I’d like to apologize for how ignorantly wrong I was about you. I was writing you off as an actor who could easily be forgotten about-maybe due to your Cannes win getting ignored at the Academy Awards for last year’s Kinds of Kindness, but this performance is pure gold.

Plemons recreates the feeling of paranoid desperation better than anyone working right now, and watching him unravel is genuinely thrilling, worth the price of admission alone.

Emily Stone (is it Emily or Emma now?) is here too, making me wonder many times how we went from Easy A to this Lanthamos trilogy. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography makes this exact rural suburban paranoia look both gorgeous and deeply unsettling. Honestly, this might be my favourite shot film of the year.

It’s boring to purely speak about films for their box office value or awards potential, but I can’t help but question people writing this one off already:

• Jessie Plemons for Best Lead Actor is a no-brainer

• Emily (Emma???) Stone for Supporting Actress feels possible, though it’s tightly contested

• Robbie Ryan for Cinematography is what I’m most confident in

• For Yorgos, I don’t see much chance-Director seems unlikely, Adapted Screenplay probably not

• I’d like to put this in for Picture. Right now it’s in for me, though I haven’t seen a lot of this season’s big hitters like Jay Kelly, Wicked, Avatar or Marty Supreme, which I all suspect getting in, but not entirely sure yet. I just can’t see Yorgos getting Best Picture without Director or Screenplay nods

It’s been referenced and said that Bugonia is a partial adaptation of Save the Green Planet, the 2003 South Korean film of a similar genre, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Neon Genesis, and in particular End of Evangelion, after seeing this film. I’ve never read or seen anything that’s said if Yorgos has ever watched Neon Genesis, but I can’t help but notice similarities, although once again, that’s deep spoiler territory for Bugonia.

The bottom line is that Bugonia is messy, fun, and way smarter than it has any right to be. If you’re on Yorgos’s wavelength, this is essential. If you’re not, this is probably his most accessible and easiest to get on board with film from his entire filmography.