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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
8/10
Stand by Me (1986) Jesse Hassenger Reiner has never been a flashy visual stylist but Stand by Me is strikingly well-composed and, even better, Reiner subtly brings out the movie’s many strengths: the intuitive child performances, the script’s dark edges, and the laughs in between.
Posted Jan 12, 2026  Edit critic review
Stand by Me (1986) Nikki Tranter Reiner’s handling of the identity struggles these kids endure, and the confusion of familial positions and expectations is remarkably subtle.
Posted Jan 12, 2026  Edit critic review
8/10
Out of the Past (1947) Michael Barrett One of Out of the Past‘s treasures is the sleek, graceful, understated movements and beautiful compositions, both in broad daylight and shadowy night.
Posted Jan 07, 2026  Edit critic review
The Secret Agent (2025) Ana Yorke It’s the potency of the real-life inspiration and Filho’s vision that hold The Secret Agent together despite digressions, coupled with Moura’s commanding performance as the man who tries hard but cannot truly comprehend the strange condition of his life.
Posted Dec 22, 2025  Edit critic review
No Other Choice (2025) Ana Yorke What sets the Korean giants apart is their curiously rare understanding that capitalism isn’t a neutral economic framework but a bloodthirsty structure in which the "success" of the few is predicated on the literal torment or death of the many.
Posted Dec 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Hamnet (2025) Ana Yorke At times unbearably sad, it is also that rare unflinching film that doesn’t hold anything back, showing us what a life that must go on looks like – but also proving that life, in fact, does go on, propelled by the force of loving.
Posted Dec 17, 2025  Edit critic review
Good News (2025) Ana Yorke It’s the scathing view of individual and collective self-centeredness that makes Good News a timely story of how it is that everything goes wrong when it shouldn’t.
Posted Dec 17, 2025  Edit critic review
Die My Love (2025) Ana Yorke More than just a story of one mother’s spiraling marriage or mental health, it is a near-paradigmatic account of how society treats women with children vs. how they actually feel as housebound carers.
Posted Dec 17, 2025  Edit critic review
Die My Love (2025) Paul Risker Die My Love is about destruction and the tearing down of things including, sadly, the film itself.
Posted Nov 12, 2025  Edit critic review
6/10
The Running Man (1987) Ben Travers The Running Man is packed with referential one-liners and off-the-wall quips.
Posted Nov 05, 2025  Edit critic review
Köln 75 (2025) Sal Cataldi KÖLN 75 tells the story of a music-obsessed German teenager who overcame many obstacles to produce the most legendary concert by pianist Keith Jarrett.
Posted Oct 28, 2025  Edit critic review
Malpertuis (1972) Matt Mahler In the newly-restored surreal gothic horror film Malpertuis, Orson Welles gives a memorably cantankerous performance as a dying man bequeathing his estate to people he loathes.
Posted Oct 28, 2025  Edit critic review
The Fence (2025) Chris Barsanti Scorching, powerfully mythic.
Posted Oct 19, 2025  Edit critic review
8/10
Re-Animator (1985) Brent McKnight Re-Animator might be ‘80s comic-trash pop-art at its finest.
Posted Oct 15, 2025  Edit critic review
8/10
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 (2024) Matt Mahler Despite its flaws, Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 is a meticulously detailed study of conflict and hauntingly foreshadows the current moment.
Posted Oct 15, 2025  Edit critic review
6/10
Father Mother Sister Brother (2025) Chris Barsanti Jim Jarmusch’s low-key comedy of awkwardness explores the things we can never know about our families.
Posted Oct 15, 2025  Edit critic review
The Librarians (2025) Matt Mahler The Librarians is a vital David and Goliath documentary of the fight against book banning, a harbinger of fascism, in America.
Posted Oct 06, 2025  Edit critic review
8/10
Keep Quiet (2025) Paul Risker Crime drama Keep Quiet may seem abrupt and pared-back, but there’s confidence and depth in its study of inner peace amidst social turmoil.
Posted Sep 30, 2025  Edit critic review
7/10
The Courageous (2024) Paul Risker Similar to British and European social realist cinema Swiss film The Courageous explores the predatory forces of bureaucratic indifference, societal prejudice, and general small-mindedness.
Posted Sep 10, 2025  Edit critic review
7/10
Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass (2024) Matt Mahler With their abstruse but nonetheless mesmeric and remarkably unique film, the Quay Brothers have regenerated Schulz’s myths yet again and with great poetry.
Posted Aug 29, 2025  Edit critic review
8/10
Darkman (1990) Bill Gibron Anchored by excellent performances from Neeson, McDormand, and Larry Drake as a vile villain, it proved that the former genre genius could manage and maintain a big budget action film.
Posted Aug 23, 2025  Edit critic review
The Birthday Party (2025) Paul Risker Miguel Ángel Jiménez’s The Birthday Party is a captivating and beautiful exploration of the ugly side of human beings.
Posted Aug 14, 2025  Edit critic review
Checkpoint Zoo (2024) Matt Mahler Checkpoint Zoo is littered with miniature marvels of heroism. While not without tragedy, the film highlights that elusive epithet which Hollywood believes belongs best in war films – “the human spirit” – in a movingly unalloyed way.
Posted Aug 14, 2025  Edit critic review
9/10
High and Low (1963) Zeth Lundy Arguably one of the greatest genre films ever made (even if Kurosawa never made a genre picture like it before or after).
Posted Aug 13, 2025  Edit critic review
8/10
Eddington (2025) Chris Barsanti No major film since Cord Jefferson’s 'American Fiction' has tackled the culture war fray with the force, specificity, and humor of Ari Aster’s 'Eddington.'
Posted Jul 23, 2025  Edit critic review
7/10
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) Evan Sawdey Though the Zucker’s are never afraid to dip into base humor, their specialty remains witty dialogue and sharp one-liners.
Posted Jul 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Day of the Dead (1985) Nicholas Thomson Day of the Dead feels like a film whose makers were aware of the possibility nascent in schlock horror, but didn’t have the vision or the wherewithal to put enough effort into it.
Posted Jun 24, 2025  Edit critic review
5/10
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) Chris Barsanti There is too much passion and too little cynicism here to dismiss it entirely.
Posted May 16, 2025  Edit critic review
Sacramento (2024) Marlenee Heath It isn’t a typical buddy road trip promising adventure and comical mishap. It’s a disaster story.
Posted May 07, 2025  Edit critic review
Girl With a Suitcase (1961) Imran Khan Zurlini manages a disciplined balance that turns Girl With a Suitcase into a cohesive work, exploiting styles to deliver a truly emotional and sincere portrait of socio-economic clashes.
Posted May 07, 2025  Edit critic review
Drop Dead City (2024) Chris Barsanti Yet Drop Dead City succeeds superbly by embracing the abstruse density of its economic subject, yoking those numbers to real-world impacts, and using that connection to present a sincere paean to the ideal of what a modern progressive city can be.
Posted Apr 29, 2025  Edit critic review
8/10
Warfare (2025) Chris Barsanti Tells a brutally universal story through a narrow lens.
Posted Apr 17, 2025  Edit critic review
5/10
Death of a Unicorn (2025) Chris Barsanti One thing this fitfully fun but often pandering splatter of a film keeps its focus tightly pinned on is the importance of comeuppance for the baddies.
Posted Apr 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) (2025) Paul Risker Falconer perfectly threads together these stories and bookends them with characters coming and going.
Posted Mar 25, 2025  Edit critic review
9/10
Tommy (1975) Bill Gibron The Who’s enigmatic frontman really holds the film together, keeping things grounded whenever Russell wants to wander off the rails for a while.
Posted Mar 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Kontinental '25 (2025) Ana Yorke Slow but powerfully intimate, Kontinental ‘25 has lots to say about the current state of affairs in much of the modern world, most of all how individualism threatens to erase us all – physically and emotionally.
Posted Mar 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Blue Moon (2025) Ana Yorke Here’s a simple one: Blue Moon is as close as it gets to a perfect work of art. Exceptionally written, superbly acted, and wonderfully moving, it’s a sucker punch little gem of a film, gripping as it is entertaining.
Posted Mar 18, 2025  Edit critic review
8/10
Trilogy of Terror (1975) Michael Barrett The trilogy works as a whole because its contrasts complement its consistencies, thanks to Black and the writers, and because producer-director Curtis is good at his job.
Posted Mar 13, 2025  Edit critic review
6/10
Report to the Commissioner (1975) Imran Khan This is strictly a performance film, a showcase for some interestingly-written characters performed by actors who deliver the story with some intriguing touches.
Posted Mar 12, 2025  Edit critic review
The Thing with Feathers (2025) Ana Yorke Cumberbatch is flawless in his portrayal of Dad, conveying with his expressions and posture the delicate nature of hurt the screenplay couldn’t, but it’s unfair to rely on his talents alone to deliver a story this multifaceted.
Posted Mar 06, 2025  Edit critic review
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025) Ana Yorke At turns prosaic and A24 “quirky”, the plot is elevated to storytelling greatness by Byrne and Bronstein, whose go-for-broke commitment to the protagonist’s distress ensures we never lose sight of her humanity or relatability.
Posted Mar 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Mickey 17 (2025) Ana Yorke Blessed be the nuance and the enormity of heart that comes from Bong Joon-ho’s (and most Koreans’) rightful rage toward the debauched, parasitic, colonizing, and murderous “elites”.
Posted Mar 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Hot Milk (2025) Ana Yorke Despite a stellar cast and one of the most mind-blowingly abrupt, ruthless ends in recent memory, Hot Milk comes across as a missed opportunity.
Posted Feb 25, 2025  Edit critic review
A Complete Unknown (2024) Ana Yorke A Complete Unknown succeeds in a way that most formulaic biopics don’t: it celebrates the cultural significance of its protagonist without idealizing him in the slightest.
Posted Feb 25, 2025  Edit critic review
A Complete Unknown (2024) Chris Barsanti Mangold threads the needle by delivering a compact and finely etched origin story rather than a broadly sketched greatest hits biopic.
Posted Feb 05, 2025  Edit critic review
The Birds (1963) Chris Barsanti A frustratingly slow build that could provide grist for a 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' episode. However, once Hitchcock shows his hand, 'The Birds' turns into maybe the most terrifying entry in his filmography.
Posted Jan 08, 2025  Edit critic review
North by Northwest (1959) Chris Barsanti The last time Alfred Hitchcock delivered a big success of a film with stars on the marquee and an A-lister behind the typewriter.
Posted Jan 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Psycho (1960) Chris Barsanti Murder might have been rife in Hitchcock's earlier work, but the gutting sense of random mortality in 'Psycho' is as far as one can get from the semi-jocular bloodless deaths of 'Strangers on a Train' and 'The Trouble with Harry.'
Posted Jan 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Vertigo (1958) Chris Barsanti Viewed by many at the time as a departure for Alfred Hitchcock, 'Vertigo' can be seen as a return to form ... redolent of spookier works like 'Rebecca' or 'Spellbound,' with a psychoanalytic frame instead of gothic romanticism.
Posted Jan 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Rear Window (1954) Chris Barsanti Tightly scripted with clockwork precision and garlanded with bon mots: “She’s too perfect, she’s too talented, she’s too beautiful, she’s too sophisticated, she’s too everything but what I want.”
Posted Jan 08, 2025  Edit critic review
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