THE ASSESSMENT has enough interesting ideas to bolster the excellent central performances and basic premise. It never quite rises to meet its loftier concerns, but intelligent writing and captivating performances result in something well above a passing grade.
SANTOSH is a patient film, that illustrates how a dysfunctional environment can pervert the meagre empowerment it offers marginalised people.
Over the past decade, there has been an inescapable feeling that the world is on fire. Not just in a literal sense, regarding climate change, but also the sense that society and the social contract are burning down around us. Opposition has become polarisation that has not just merely moved the Overton window but smashed … Continue reading 2073
CONCLAVE is an intelligently constructed film, where embellishments to its surface-level thriller mystery allow for its transubstantiation into an altar for broader themes.
MEGALOPOLIS’s proposed worldview may be naive, sometimes presented immaturely, and have enough minor embellishments and subplots in the narrative to border on the incoherent, but their expression certainly doesn’t lack sincerity and optimism.
FOLIE Á DEUX may mean this iteration of the Joker leaves cinemas with a whimper, but at least it finally had something to say with its dying breath. Jim Ross reviews.
A picturesque chronicle of a young man’s life and the long shadow cast from whence he came, SUJO represents another assured piece of work from the creators of IDENTIFYING FEATURES.
Coralie Fargeat’s THE SUBSTANCE is a delirium-inducing concoction of numerous body horror films and literary influences, further combining an askew glance at fame and a gaudy gore aesthetic to an eye-catching effect.
STARVE ACRE’s distinctive qualities have roots in Daniel Kokotajlo’s eye for unsettling images that build dread and a balance of special effects work and plot developments that toe the line adeptly between unnerving and absurd.
If this franchise has its Romulus in Ridley Scott, and ALIEN is his Rome, Fede Alvarez’s ALIEN: ROMULUS is the fall of the Roman Empire: a scattered jumble of icons and monuments faintly echoing a triumphant past.
