Reviews

Can the literary art form still survive in this hyperactive, Twitter-operating, modern age? Bookworms venturing through desolated libraries and soon-to-be bankrupt bookstores may find themselves out of time, yearning for a time where a 400-page…

Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms caused quite a stir when it unexpectedly took out the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2019. The film loosely based on Lapid’s own life about an Israeli man who flees…

Under the bright glistening haze of blue and pink lights, Ritwek Pareek’s vibrant debut feature opens on 40-something drunkard Thakur Lal. His internal monologue spouts vague philosophical musings before mounting his motorcycle and going for…

I’ll be honest, I only watched this film to see the underutilized Shea Whigham in a lead role. I’ve been a big fan of him ever since his supporting turn in the glorious HBO crime…

After a number of standout supporting roles over the last half a decade, Riz Ahmed‘s wiry unpredictability and genuine pathos he injects into his performances has seen him evolve into a leading man with an…

Cinema has given us many incarnations and interpretations of the vampire mythos since F.W Murnau’s Nosferatu almost a century ago. We’ve seen them portrayed as everything from baroque aristocrats, mindless parasitic monsters, mysterious outsiders in…

Céline Sciamma has once again made one of the best films of the year with her latest project and follow-up to the brilliant Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Petite Maman. The film follows Nelly (Joséphine Sanz),…

1992’s Candyman is considered a classic of the slasher genre — mythologically inventive, steeped in relevant racial themes, and far more ambitious than contemporary slasher films; which at the time were so verging on self-parody…

In a shocking twist, an anthology movie that has several shorts from some of our best international filmmakers is really good. The Year of the Everlasting Storm is yet another COVID-19-centered production, except it’s one…

A common complaint regarding movies based on plays is that they feel like exactly that: a play made into a movie. Detractors often cite the transition from stage to screen as being too noticeable, remarking…

The romantic comedy is always interesting. As one of the most popular and referenced genres in film, it feels like every avenue has been explored and subverted. Ultimately, this led to a lull in good…

The slang term ‘Karen’ represents the racist, entitled white women of suburbia. A creature from the lagoon of (usually) far-right misinformation. Stereotypically, you can see a ‘Karen’ donning a bob cut with blonde highlights. As…

The world of online fame is a strange one. There are people out there with millions of fans, real fans that are actively subscribed to the output of artists and sometimes literally invested in their…

Agnes slides neatly into the subgenre of ‘nun horror’ with the likes of, you guessed it, The Nun. However, Agnes prides itself on building tension rather than being full of jump scares. When you’re placed…

The Night House opens with Beth (Rebecca Hall) returning home after her husband’s funeral. She lives inside a luxurious lake house, itself designed by her late husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit). Owen’s death was self-inflicted. It…

So many pandemic-set films since the beginning of COVID-19 are about the immediacy of it. The near-instantaneous feeling that everything has changed without the time to possibly reckon with what’s happened. Kelsey Egan’s Glasshouse takes…

The Last Thing Mary Saw is a 19th-century folk story, centered around sin and suspicion. We are introduced to Mary (Stefanie Scott) as she is blindfolded in a dark, candle-lit room. This is at the…

Almost every conceivable trigger warning is in effect for Rob Jabbaz’s pandemic horror movie, The Sadness. Saying the film isn’t afraid to “go there” is probably the biggest understatement of Fantasia 2021 — it’s undoubtedly the…

Matthew Gray Gubler is a modern-day icon in the eyes of many. King Knight has been long-awaited by both fans of his and director Richard Bates Jr. It’s slightly dark, yet reassuringly humorous. It’s everything…

The 2016 horror/thriller Don’t Breathe was a surprise success that not only did well at the box office, but also proved to be a critical hit. The film followed a group of petty thieves who attempt…

A mysterious social experiment brings a group of eccentric strangers together to compete for a prize. It’s the synopsis for many low-budget thrillers and dark comedies. And somehow, Stanleyville feels almost entirely divorced from the subgenre. You’ve…

Despite how much social media is seemingly at the center of our lives, there are still only precious few good movies about the subject. What is it that makes it so hard to capture? Is…

Through extremely stylized Art Deco sets, and cinematography comparable to Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, Tiong Bahru Social Club is an extraordinary watch. Straight from Singapore’s own Bee Thiam Tan, we are thrown into a…

It was November of 1970. Dennis Hopper, hot off the success of his counterculture masterpiece Easy Rider and deep into post-production of his second feature, The Last Movie travels from Taos, New Mexico to Los Angeles…

Biopics have long been a crowd favorite. From the 1985 Best Picture winner Amadeus to the modern classic The Social Network, audiences are enamored by the idea of watching a biographical tale unfold on the…

The PR machine for the film industry can sometimes be a nightmare as directors, actors, and others associated with a project do whatever they can to hype it up. After a while, the insane comparisons…

To say that a two-and-a-half-hour-long film is on the shorter side of a director’s filmography may sound like a deeply confused claim, but for Filipino auteur Lav Diaz — whose works are less like films…

Few snippets of on-screen text in modern foreign cinema have been as intriguing as the opening blurb of Tsai Ming-liang’s latest film, Days — “This film is intentionally unsubtitled.” — not just because it points to a…

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair captures the essence of online culture. Hints of Eighth Grade, Nerve, and Unfriended are all combined to make an anxious 86 minutes. Despite its parallels to those few…

Calling Ryoo Seung-wan one of the most successful South Korean directors of his time is not an incredibly far stretch — even when comparing him to his more acclaimed contemporaries — thanks to just how…