Leviticus

It’s very rare for me to see a movie and be like, “Wow, I wish that were longer,” but Leviticus is definitely the exception! A less than 90-minute queer horror film that delves into the internalized homophobia that can develop from the church or from your own household, that is a cool play on It Follows, or Doppleganger folklore, is quite a sick concept that I wish gave us just a bit more! The performances here by Joe Bird and Stacy Clauson, as our destined gay duo of yearning and terror, are excellent. Bird especially captures those tormenting feelings of guilt of being who you really want to be and seeing what you want just out of reach across the hall, and wanting it so bad even if it kills you. Some great weight to his performance, and as someone who grew up as a queer man surrounded by similar challenges, I couldn’t help but be moved at times. That’s wonderful stuff. I don’t think the film takes enough time to build out the world or the rules of this evil, which I think could have brought the film to new heights. Just sucks for the movie that It Follows exists. It’s so similar in terms of the horror that it’s hard to separate the two despite the two being about very different themes. Overall, looked solid, and will be very excited to see what director Adrian Chiarella does next and where these promising young actors go!

Final Score: 7/10

They Will Kill You

If I were 13 years old and saw They Will Kill You in theaters, I would think this is the coolest movie ever made. A lone hero taking down an evil cult of immortal rich people with swords in a creepy hotel to save her sister, hell yeah. I’d love how edgy and sick the violence was, the barrage of cursing, and the endless sprinklers of blood and gore; oh, I would be eating this up hard in middle school. Thankfully, I am not 13 and not having to deal with acne, and finally have somewhat of a frontal cortex developed, I can tell you that They Will Kill You is exhaustingly dumb. Calling it the reheated nachos of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead is insulting to them and to nachos. Those movies aren’t just wild zoom-ins, cursing, and slashing swords with blood spewing out. There’s rich camera movement and intent, and, say what you want about Tarantino the guy, his scripts are incredibly smart and precise, down to the delivery of every line. When I see people rip off Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez, I feel like directors are missing the point: those guys are drawing on cinema's rich history to inspire their work and make it their own. Zazie Beetz is innocent here because she commands the presence of a great action star and carries this awful movie script on her shoulders. Outside of a few flashy action sequences, there’s just not much here. It just feels like we get one of these “Kill the Rich or The Rich are bad” movies with a cult-like following every other week, and Hollywood doesn’t have anything interesting to say in this genre anymore. So please stop.

Final Score: 4/10

I Love Boosters

Comrade Boots Riley! I was so happy to get the opportunity to attend an early premiere of Mr. Riley’s new film at the Philadelphia Film Society a month early and stay for a wonderful Q&A afterward! I mean, the moderator had some fantastic questions and sparked phenomenal dialogue about the film’s themes and great costumes, but, unfortunately, as with most audience Q&As, the audience questions were awful. I mean, I loved that DSA was there supporting the film, but asking Riley what they should be doing to help the cause- like, that’s not his job- and also ASK A QUESTION ABOUT THE MOVIE. Riley was very nice in his response and said, “Looks like you are already making that change.” Love him and his big hats. Anyway, what did I think of his new movie and follow-up to his incredible debut, Sorry To Bother You? I thought it was pretty good! As a leftist who’s tried reading Capital Volume 1 a million times but is reminded that he sucks at math and that Marx loves big graphs and whatnot, I am fully on board with all the themes and messaging he’s pushing here. Workers of the world, unite, of course. The exploitation of black culture, especially in fashion and music, is terribly important to recognize, and seeing Riley’s wildly expressive and surrealist take on it is just cool this movie even exists! The cast is unreal, featuring Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, and Demi Moore, who match the tone and feel Riley is after. Riley’s use of color, classic stop-motion, and a bizarre sense of person and storytelling is something I cherish; it feels like he’s throwing a lot at you in the movie, and the emotional core of this story gets lost in the message he’s trying to convey to his audience. He’s throwing a lot at the wall here, and it feels like it gets a bit lost. If you’re looking for something like Tim Burton developed some class consciousness and also made a good movie in the past two decades (love a shot at Tim Burton anytime I can), then I think you will have some fun with this wild movie. LaKeith Stanfield is also our most underrated actor working, and is the funniest part of the movie by a million.

Final Score: 7.5/10

How To Make a Killing

That Glen Powell sure is charming, isn’t he? I mean, yes, duh, but can he carry a genre movie about killing to move up the social and financial ladder? I’d say kind of. Just as it sucks for Leviticus that It Follows exists, it’s kind of a bummer for director John Patton Ford that No Other Choice came out last year with a similar concept. With all that being said, I would say that this is just a solid genre movie that is a classic ass Hollywood film with a well-rounded cast that I’m happy exists. I’m not the biggest fan of voice-over when it dominates the runtime and feels like a storytelling crutch, but luckily Powell is charismatic enough to pull it off despite my issues with it. I found Powell’s voice-over prowess was better executed in Linklater’s Hit Man, which tapped into the character’s actual psychology in much more interesting and subtle ways. That movie’s humor also hit way harder for me than this one. The film feels like a 90s sexy dark comedy thriller that would have made 100 million on a 10-million-dollar budget for its time. Just feels like the overall juice is missing from How To Make A Killing; it ultimately feels a tad forgettable, and even Margaret Qualley in fantastic suits and Zach Woods being hilarious can’t save it. Shout-out to Ed Harris, still feeling like the most menacing man in Hollywood.

Final Score: 6/10

Hope you enjoyed some ramblings, and hopefully I will catch Olivia Wilde’s The Invite soon as I’m back from the great nation of Ireland and have that review up shortly after!

Written by Kevin J.Pettit

If I had a nickel for every time Hugh Jackman died in the English countryside and left those around him devastated by his loss in a movie this year, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but, weirdly, it happened twice, right? Yeah, we’re doing it: The Death of Robin Hood and The Sheep Detectives double feature review! Two vastly different movies, tonally and thematically, but both offering at least some entertainment, with our man Hugh Jackman presented front and center on the posters. I mean, the past decade for Jackman has been interesting, if I’m being polite. 2017 was a banger year with Logan and The Greatest Showman for him, where he put the perfect cap on his Wolverine legacy and got to do his big Gene Kelly movie he’s always dreamed of, both huge commercial and critical successes. Since then, eh. Brought back his iconic character to jingle the keys in front of our faces with Deadpool and Wolverine, Song Sung Blue, which is fine, and did anyone see Reminiscence? I swear that’s a real movie. Bad Education was solid, but I feel like Jackman has been a bit in the wilderness. Let’s see if these two films featured today are putting him back on track!

The Sheep Detectives

The Sheep Detectives follows the story of a herd of sheep that tries to solve the murder of their beloved shepherd, George Hardy (Hugh Jackman). Jackman is only briefly in the film, but he is so endearingly convincing as someone who loves this herd deeply, and reading mystery novels melts your heart and makes you understand why this sheep will go to the end of the earth to seek justice for his death. An animal whodunit, an all-star voice cast including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Chris O’Dowd, Regina Hall, Patrick Stewart, Bella Ramsey, and Brett Goldstein, who all outshine the human characters with such sweetness and charisma. You have Cousin Greg from Succession (Nicholas Braun) playing a goofy British cop and Molly Gordon batting her eyes in every scene as Jackman’s daughter, who’s our main suspect, but the star of the show here is the sheep, and for good reason. They’re not just adorable to look at on the screen. Still, the distinctiveness of each one with charming personalities had me completely wrapped up in the stakes of this herd if they were going not just to discover the murderer but what happens to their sheep’s lives after.

Kind of like Babe (1995), the movie is a miracle; it works as well as it does. There’s a world where the movie is too cutesy, too dark, or totally fumbles with the tone, but I think it’s fully balanced here. I fully expected a children’s tale that didn’t cross any lines. Still, there’s some serious discussion about the existence of God and what happens after you die, and the way we all handle trauma, whether it’s better to forget or remember so that we can grow! There is some heavy stuff here at times that I think is actually still lovely to bring your children to because it’s something that approaches some of these more adult themes with levity and curiosity that respects the intellect of children as you should. I became fully invested in these cute as hell sheep whose voice work is exceptional, where any time we cut back to the humans of the story, I was like noooo give me the sheep, they’re way more interesting. The script is super witty, and the slapstick works so well at times. You aren’t beaten over the head with sheep puns and given a decent mystery; that’s a delightful film for all ages. I am genuinely shocked by how much I enjoyed it, but I wish the human side of the movie weren’t so annoying.

Final Score: 7.5/10

The Death of Robin Hood

I was a big fan of director Michael Sarnoski’s previous two outings, Pig and the underrated A Quiet Place: Day One, because I think both delivered a subversive take on the genres he was approaching and had so much heart. This time around, with The Death of Robin Hood, he seems to be reaching for the same emotional sticking points he achieved before, but it just seems to have landed a tad flat. Hugh Jackman plays our titular bandit who’s clearly reached the end of his years with his big grey beard and wears the weight of his mythos and death he’s spread across the land on his face and body. Jackman joins up with Little John (Bill Skarsgård) for one last job, but ends up getting injured and stays in the care of a nun (Jodie Comer) in a secluded community where he reflects on his life.

I think I understand what Sarnoski is trying to pull out of this story, and is highly inspired by Eastwood’s Unforgiven here. Trying to look at the mythos built out over time that can fully consume and become blurred between the reality of the atrocities one has committed and coming to peace in a new life. I’m just not sure much is added here. I was a fan of the ultraviolence, bleak outlook, and the visual appeal of the opening 20 minutes, which left me excited and reminded me of Eggers’ The Northman. I was taken aback when the mood shifted from bloody brutality to this meditative tale that subverted the expectations set by the opening. Still, at times, I felt unable to engage with what did not feel like new ground being covered in this tale of regret and myth-making. Jackman’s intensity and the whole cast’s performance are stellar here, outside maybe Skarsgård, who I just need this fucking guy to enunciate his words better, but the material seems overall thin. Comer is doing some heavy lifting here, bringing some levity or empathy into the film with her coconut head ass haircut, and I think without her, the film could have felt really weightless. Robin Hood is a character who explores classism, and having little of that here also feels like a missed opportunity. It’s shot handsomely, and I loved the production design here, along with geeking out about costume storytelling on display with my wife, but it feels like a fine outing that doesn’t tap into anything new. I am pleased to see Jackman back in a serious role, and he is one of our finest actors, whose eye acting is out of this world, where you can feel exactly the type of empathy the film is trying to pull here within you, but maybe needed a bit more interesting take on the character.

Final Score: 6/10

(If you did enjoy The Death of Robin Hood, I have to recommend Vinland Saga Seasons 1 and 2. It possesses similar themes and the ultra-violence and mediation, but I think it is much more successful.)

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious is a genre-defining action film that had me levitating out of my seat for 113 minutes. It’s the true next milestone in martial arts filmmaking since The Raid. If the Raid was the Russians sending the first man into space in 1961, The Furious is the Moon landing in 69. You are witnessing the Avengers of Hong Kong action cinema come together and deliver the best fight choreography I’ve ever seen on screen. Your jaw will constantly drop as you wonder how the hell they pull this off and how no one dies in the process. The flow state the movie puts you in with its on-screen combat is mesmerizing, and even with its constant barrage of stunts and feats, you never become numb or habituated to it, which is incredible to pull off just as much as the stunts themselves. I think that’s in part due to the unreal direction by Tanigaki and the camera work by Meteor Cheung, who capture all these actors’ movements so seamlessly and fully, keeping that adrenaline-fueled momentum moving in the right direction. Is the dialogue and story rather generic and clunky at times? Shut up, nerd. Take your ass back to Noah Baumbach, we are here to beat in the heads of child traffickers with hammers and have an absolute blast doing so.

The Furious follows Wang Wei (Xie Miao), a tradesman in Southeast Asia whose daughter is kidnapped by a criminal syndicate. Wei teams up with journalist Navin (Joe Taslim) to take down this evil empire and rescue his daughter. The two must go up against some of the most skilled and craziest villains ever put to screen, including a crime lord’s giant henchman son (Brian Le), Tak (Yayan Ruhian), a psychopathic bow-wielding killer, and the son of the syndicate Paklung (Joey Iwanaga), whose sociopathic tendencies are only matched by his skill in martial arts. Can Wei and Nevin take these men down and save Wei’s daughter?

Let’s begin with the major highlight of the film, which is the fight choreography. You know, I never got to see Mozart perform live, but I have to imagine it was like what I was witnessing on screen at times. The level of precision and flow with which all the action set pieces move melts the brain. In a single scene, you may see 20 different moves happen, in which three highly skilled fighters with all very distinct fighting styles all do this furious dance of wits around each other, and you never once feel cheated by the camera or wonder what’s happening. Our lead Miao’s smoothness and precision in his martial arts, Taslim’s brutal jujitsu, Le’s apparently Donkey Kong muscles style that the director created, and Ruhian and Iwanaga’s killer style, especially Iwanaga, what he can do with his legs and kicks, have a mind of their own. Your brain may just not be able to keep up with the level of skill happening, which will lead to slow-motion breakdowns I can’t wait to watch on YouTube for years to come from martial arts experts. The action here is pure dopamine. The level of impact and weight that every punch carries, and the way that force is amplified by the camera’s movement to elevate the performances and capture the art of martial arts, is special.

The way Tanigaki stages a set piece and works in close partnership with Meteor Cheung, the cinematographer, is out of this world. The way they keep so much of the action set in a wide angle. Hence, you are constantly in the know and appreciate all the intricate details of those on-screen; going beast mode is so difficult to pull off without the movie-magic rug being pulled out from under us, but they nailed it. It is so easy to cut this thing into a million pieces, but allowing the action to breathe, having all your actors’ moves mapped out, and knowing where the camera should be when said actor does an insane stunt is what a master of the genre can accomplish. You are fully aware of your surroundings and have a 360 understanding of the space and fights, so when an actor goes flying or picks up a weapon, it doesn’t feel fake or phony in the slightest. From the Hong Kong nightclub that has a UFC ring in the middle, in which Miao plays king of the mountain with the bodies of the men he’s taken down with a hammer, to the 2 on 1 boss fight that Miao and Taslim have with Le, where we get a taste of our heroes going up against a worthy adversary, to what feels like a 300 spartans inspired hold off in a child trafficking apartment, and to the finale which features maybe the greatest showdown between heros and villians ever captured that had me crying tears of joy how good the action was. There’s just so much to love about The Furious from its big heart to its sick guitar riffs to its comedy! Brian Le is a superstar in the making, and to be that intimidating and hilarious on screen was a major highlight. I’ve never seen a big man like that move like that.

The majority of the criticism I could see for The Furious lies in its narrative or dialogue, which is not exactly stellar. Still, we need to examine this genre and the filmmakers’ intentions here. I see the story here simply as a vehicle to carry us to what the movie wants us to take away: the best action you’ve ever damn seen. I think the director Tanigaki also does a phenomenal job of delivering that story through the action, and seeing that rage and tenacity in all our leads here is better delivered in a punch than in a line. There is also nothing wrong with simplicity in a story, and having two hours of beating up evil child trafficker dudes just rips. I recently wrote an article on a Hong Kong Action Cinema Starter Pack, and many of those films have incredible narratives. But so many of them, like Johnnie To’s Throwdown, give us impact through action, not in the words of its lead, which can carry the weight of a film in different ways. It can be important to have a cultural understanding of the genre and to recognize that all the people involved here are masters of their craft who have come together over the last two decades to give us a new dawn in action filmmaking. So please, do yourself a favor and get your butt to a theater and witness greatness on screen, and I promise you’ll come out buzzing as I did.

Final Score: 9.5/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is an artist who draws on 50 years of moviemaking magic to deliver an emotional testament to humanity. Yes, it can feel like Spielberg is throwing his Rolodex of career onto the screen, making the film messy and disjointed at times. An alien sci-fi exposure thriller that has Spielberg wrestling with his whimsical sensibility in a post-9/11 world and coming to terms with the trauma of childhood that shaped him? I mean, it’s a lot. The Kamiński lens flares, the Minority Report-like weird sci-fi surveillance-state technology, and the silly slapstick can be hit-or-miss. Still, at its core, very few filmmakers tug at the heartstrings of empathy as Spielberg does. It’s not only that he can remind us that a camera can, in fact, move in dynamic ways on screen, but that we as a species have a level of pathos that can also be unlocked. Maybe it’s a tad too earnest for 2026, but I want to believe.

Disclosure Day takes place in the present day, when a cybersecurity specialist, Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), has stolen tons of evidence of alien contact with humanity that the Wardex Corporation had kept from the public. Kellner is assisted by a resistance group that plans to reveal all this information to humanity on what they are calling Disclosure Day. As this is happening, a television meteorologist, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), starts developing strange psychic abilities and speaks in an alien language live on air. Kellner and Fairchild are on a collision course to connect while on the run from the Wardex CEO, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). Will the truth be exposed?

Performances are stellar here, especially Emily Blunt. Blunt is given the Richard Dreyfus role from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with this higher calling: being touched by an outside entity and driven to discover its meaning. She has to balance so much with this, like empathy possession, where she can read others’ minds, lock into their inner lives, and pull back out of it. The way she remains so poised throughout this insane journey and carries the film's emotional weight on her shoulders is outstanding, and being so silly on top of it all brings such levity to a character experiencing something so otherworldly. O’Connor is solid as ever as our leading man, whose math-driven traits match the technical aspects of Spielberg’s career, while Blunt is the emotional draw. You see both sides of the brain working overtime with these two, and the two halves of Spielberg: the pragmatic one who pushes the medium forward with its technology, and the other who reminds us of our common bonds between humans. The two performances work together in perfect harmony here. Firth delivers a wonderful villainous performance here, pushing his physical limits as he tries not only to maintain control of the situation but also of the alien technology he does not fully understand or want to understand. Would have loved a bit more Coleman Domingo, but I think he truly shines in the third act, especially his one-on-one with Firth, who serves as our guiding voice in exposing the truth.

The way Spielberg can move a camera around a room is like watching LeBron play basketball at 41. It’s not his best, and you don’t expect either to play defense, but it’s still so exciting to see an all-time great still able to pull off these tricks. From swooshing around newsrooms, to car chases that crash right into our faces, and capturing humans all gathered around their phones in ways that had me on the verge of tears in the final 20 minutes. I think some of the dynamic camera movement feels off and, at times, a bit distracting, and it doesn’t fit the dialogue or scene, but at least it’s interesting to take in. I know cinematographer Janusz Kamiński can be hit-or-miss for some people, and some will be eye-rolling by the millionth lens flare. But hey, I miss interesting backlighting, and I like being able to see what’s happening in night shots. Who cares if I don’t know where the light source is coming from? Does it look gorgeous? Then, cool with me. I really loved the film’s weird sci-fi elements. First, being able to search, possess, and become present around the world in this terrifying new Patriot Act way was awesome. The whole invisible house and firetruck scene had me hooting and hollering like it was an old Buster Keaton flick. The alien exposure on the actual disclosure day, as captured in the found footage, was incredible to watch and to see it through the decades. Big fan of all of it.

As I’ve said previously, Spielberg is throwing a lot at you, and it can feel goofy at times. Some serious tonal issues could be played off as sincere, I suppose, but totally throw off the momentum. The humor can be hit-or-miss, and some of the philosophical questions presented feel like a moot point in 2026. Constantly trying to understand this new age we are in, in governmental control mixed with his love of the olden days of whimsy, it’s hard for him to choose here, and exciting to see him here try to battle it out in a store about finding out about one another. I love a cross-country adventure, but at times it feels as though these questions that Spielberg keeps reaching for don’t lead to anything interesting, and maybe due to screenwriter David Koepp’s leaning into the earnest inhibitions of humanity instead of trying to make any grand statements. I found myself having okay fun for the vast majority of the film, but it was just a rather fine experience. But the last act really pulled it all together, and the way Spielberg shoots the actual Disclosure Day event had me completely shook. To pull humanity together like that, with the anchor’s voice-over, it truly felt like he tapped into something special. It feels like he’s still searching, like all of us, and being curious about the world and where he can take the medium of film. If Steven Spielberg is still interested in finding those answers or coming together, maybe we all should do the same.

Final Score: 8/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

I love the movies. They are always on my mind. I do my best to refrain from making every conversation I have with someone about them. I spend so much time writing about movies, reading other people’s writing on movies, watching the making of movies, and most importantly, just watching movies. With all that said, The Mandalorian and Grogu is not a movie. It is an okay 10-hour Star Wars television show season on Disney+ that has been compressed into a bland two-hour experience. It’s like if you went to Google and asked for a summary of The Mandalorian Season 4 and made a movie of the AI Overview at the top. You hop from planet to planet with our boring armored Mando and his little cute green goblin, hoping for something interesting to happen or some dangerous or emotional stakes to rise. Still, you are greeted with weak action set pieces, NPC-level acting and dialogue, and a feeling of what the point of it all was. A Star Wars movie used to mean something. It was an event! It’s insane, I was in an empty movie theater for a Star Wars movie two weeks after release while living in a major US city. Now it just feels like all the air for the IP has been let out, and the respect for Star Wars is like that of Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development.

The Mandalorian and Grogu are the title characters in a post-Galactic Empire world, working for the New Republic. Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) has been tasked with saving Rotta the Hutt (Jeremy Allen White) to secure information on the whereabouts of a dangerous target. Oh, you bet these missions get messy.

Before we get into the numerous problems with Mando and Grogu, I’d like to share some positives. For starters, Ludwig Göransson, you did not have to go this hard. His score for this is unbelievable. The man knows his way around a million instruments, and the way he mixes the original John Williams score with his own original music, techno, and bass, and just a whimsical nature we’ve all come to know from Star Wars, is a major highlight. He alone almost convinced me that I might be watching something good! The second thing I really liked about the film is the classical puppetry and stop-motion they used for many of the aliens, not just Grogu. The design and Jim Henson feel of some of the creatures did bring a smile amongst the slop they were surrounded by. I believe the two giant droids that Mando defeats at the end of the movie were handcrafted and used classical stop-motion, which was a treat, especially after watching Mad God recently for my clayMAYtion film club month, so I have to hand it to Mando and Grogu there. That’s where the positives end.

The first thing you’ll notice is that no one really gives a shit. The enthusiasm and charisma of any characters have been sucked into a deep black hole, and Sigourney Weaver should get an award for maybe the most checked-out, mailed-in performance I’ve seen this decade. It’s like everyone just woke up from a nap and used the first take like, “Sure, who cares?” The audience needs some exposition or a cheesy line to get them to the next set piece. Seriously, everyone acts like Bethesda NPCs here. “Hey Mando, that got messy. Do better next time. Okay, now please go on this fetch quest. Don’t be messy.” End scene. It doesn’t help that our two leads here are a silent armored guy and a baby that says little to nothing. It’s fine to have silent protagonists or ones who lead by their actions, but you need to surround them with interesting and charismatic characters, which the movie does not do. It’s a problem when your most energetic character in the movie is the alien food truck character played by Martin Scorsese in his 80s. The movie treats you like an idiot as well. All the characters are just saying exactly what’s happening on screen or exactly how they’re feeling or recapping something that just happened, so that’s why I’m like, at times, “Does this movie think I’m on my phone right now? I paid money to come to the theater to see this…” Also, Jeremy Allen Slug is one of the funniest characters ever put to screen, not just in Star Wars. Having a handsome and jacked Hutt character alone is hilarious, but his whole character trait is that he’s the son of Jabba the Hutt, and how hard it was to be his son, which he says over and over again, is pure comedy. “You have no idea how hard it was to live in his shadow, and I’m not going to be anything like him.” We get it, dude, we know it’s all you talk about.

Structurally, the “movie” is stupid. Mando and Grogu set out on this big task to rescue Jeremy Allen Slug and get this information to take down this big bad, and they do that by the middle of the movie, and then Mando is like, I’m tired, I’m going to take a nap. Huh? There’s still an hour left of the movie, can I also take a nap? You can see directly when episodes begin and end here, and it’s so noticeable. In a normal television show, you’d have a nice filler episode where you’d get to have some nice character moments or go a little slice of life moment that emotionally helps bring your characters together, or you meet someone interesting. Nope, not here. Oh, Mando did something bad, okay, here are the immediate consequences, and we are off. Mando is also just so uninteresting at this point, or they’ve made him stupid. He doesn’t make creative plans of action or have any real detective skills; he goes to a place and begins blasting. There’s a scene where Mando and company are scoping out a fortress of a bad guy, and I was like, okay, he’s going to sneak in or create a distraction or something, but NOPE, just walks in the front door and kills hundreds of guys. That’s his whole thing; he’s just invincible until the movie needs baby Grogu to take care of him for 15 minutes in the woods when he’s poisoned later in the movie. Outside of that, this guy is a God. Mando’s final plan at the end of the movie is to crash a giant spaceship into the front door of the base and take on a droid army by himself, and he does! This creates no stakes when our main hero is unstoppable and takes no damage, and we know he’s in zero danger. The action is bland and just whatever is choreographed, just cut to pieces, and you can’t make out anything but tonally, Mando and Grogu feel at odds. Like, some of the violence here is so intense, but the film is clearly marketed for children, with its cute little green goblin at its center and as its major selling point. Like I’m watching Mando light humans on fire in visceral ways, and then it cuts to Grogu just laughing and waving his little hands around, it’s jarring.

It just looks like Television (derogatory). Say what you want about the recent sequel movies, the color grading and shot composition look amazing and feel like real film, despite the other flaws of the recent trilogy. The Rise of Skywalker looks like Lawrence of Arabia compared to Mando and Grogu at times. Everything is so boring and flat to look at, and the characters are, too; the story is all so dull. What do we even take away from it, or what does Mando even learn? What’s his arc? Oh, he needs to rely on Grogu, wants him, and wants to mentor him? Like, yeah, duh, pretty sure they did that in the first season of the show. I feel like an idiot here, seeing this in a theater and not just waiting until it hits Disney+, but how could I miss out on Dave Filoni’s box of characters or be hit with the nostalgic slop of seeing the chess pieces that Chewbacca and C-3PO play with in A New Hope come to life in an arena. Love a good jingling-of-the-keys moment. If you do want to see this, please wait until it hits streaming, or just listen to Ludwig’s score and save yourself the time. Disney, please put Star Wars on ice. You have no idea what you’re doing with the franchise outside of Andor, which feels like a major fluke as of right now and makes Star Wars an event again. You flooded us with way too much, and we’ve become desensitized to what was once special. Seeing Backrooms and Obession kick a Star Wars movie ass at the box office and the general public’s reaction, I feel like Kenobi after Alderaan was destroyed. “I felt a great disturbance in the Force... as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.” Something terrible has happened, and it’s The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Final Score: 4/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

Over the past two months, I’ve been showing my wife Twin Peaks for the first time, and it’s been one of the most rewarding experiences of all time. The smile I had seeing her fall in love with Special Agent Dale Cooper and his earnestness for pie and coffee. Watching her be swept up and moved to tears by Angelo Badalamenti’s score when Twin Peaks townfolk embraced (the waterworks we had together when Major Briggs tells his son Bobby about his dream is now a core memory for me). The way we held each other so close when the otherworldly Bob appeared on screen and horrified us to no end is something I’ll cherish forever. Now, what the hell does all this gushing about wonderful quality time with my wife have to do with a 20-year-old’s debut film for a major studio that knocked off a STAR WARS movie at the box office? Well, who isn’t but the King of liminal spaces but David Lynch? The finale of the original Twin Peaks series is one of the most audacious pieces of network television. Rewatching it now as Special Agent Dale Cooper runs around the nightmare that is the Black Lodge, it’s hard not to see comparisons to other Lynch work that heavily inspired Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, and how that’s maybe one of the best compliments I can ever offer as a critic. If you make me think of my favorite director’s work, you must be doing something right.

(David Lynch, the King of liminal spaces)

Kane Parsons’ Backrooms is incredibly impressive for a debut and makes me feel like a double asshole for having any doubts about YouTubers as filmmakers of the future! (First Obsession, now this!) Parsons’ already having this type of visual language and camera control, which completely transports us to a place and state of dread, is absurd in the best ways and feels like the work of a veteran director. This is way more in the psychological horror vein, where we are made to sit and take in the uncomfortable feelings of the Backrooms as we try to traverse this labyrinth of the uncanny with our characters, and, like the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, it becomes the film’s monumental star. Our real-life stars, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, do wonderful work here, elevating what I believe is a weak script that gets a bit lost in its own world. Still, when we were running around this maze of yellow walls with shitty digital cameras, I was so locked in and swept up by its alien world.

Backrooms follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture store owner who discovers an entrance to a creepy, liminal dimension of hallways and becomes increasingly obsessed with and absorbed by them. His therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), is concerned by his recent absences and finds herself searching for Clark and getting lost in the Backrooms as well. Can the two escape, or will the hallways and creatures that occupy this space consume them?

The major highlight of Backrooms is the feel of it, because very few movies can fully take you to a place this genuinely strange and make it work this effectively. Parson’s has fully crafted an alien world that’s filled with this dread that lingers all over the camera. I love this almost-fishbowl lens he’s using throughout the camera, where the characters’ heads feel so big, especially Clark’s, for thematic reasons, but the world is so wide and far away that it just oozes this uneasiness. As soon as we enter the Backrooms for the first time and see this brilliant silent acting of Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose reactions and the way he soaks in the space fully sell the world. My sequence that sold me completely was when Clark brings his employees into the Backrooms, and we switch into the found-footage digital creepypasta YouTube world that we all expected for most of the film. Still, it’s shot so seamlessly, and the momentum in which the scene moves is so thrilling. The amount of uncanny detail throughout the backrooms, from half-finished doors, people, sizes not matching, everything is just off, and I hate how it makes me feel on the inside, it’s amazing. The practical sets that feel so disturbed to seeing actual color in a horror movie pop off the screen in a way I haven’t seen since maybe Annihilation (2018), which gives us that cosmic horror feel I crave. Outside of the phenomenal direction and production design, you have to shout the sound design here, which may be the best part of the film, that’s so unnatural and taps on the back of your head throughout the film to remind you that you are not in a safe world. The level of dread that the film evokes is something special.

Now, the film looks and feels great, for sure, but it falls short because of its generic script, which results in wildly thin characters. I believe Ejiofor and Reinsve do a fantastic job of being completely petrified and taken aback by the world,d for sure. Still, I really never get a grasp of them as people. The dialogue is usually flat, and the therapy confrontation felt so forced and like it was just out of a first draft, but these are two great actors, elevating what is simple material. This weak script also seems to lead to misinterpretations of the film’s themes, which are supposed to be about trauma or grief of some sort, when the focus is on people’s memories, such as Mary’s memory of her mother or Clark’s memory of his wife. Memories that can become a maze you yourself can get lost in. Clark is a fucking loser who lives in his failing furniture store, in which he degrades himself by dressing in a pirate outfit and drinking alone each night. His egotism and inability to handle the real world have led his sorry ass to believe that living in the most horrible and terrifying Backrooms is a good alternative to handling his problems, which is a wonderful allegory for the internet. So many people would rather dive into the underbelly of the internet than self-reflect, confront their faults, or deal with memories that haunt them or that they’re unable to process, and that’s where I think the movie shines the brightest. I think, with a stronger script for Parsons next time around, we’ll be able to get something that truly blows us all away.

The Philadelphia Film Society redid its lobby, so the Center City theater was closed for a few months. When it reopened this year, it presented a 35mm screening of David Lynch’s Eraserhead. Seeing Jack Nance navigate an overbearing, dreadful world in Eraserhead, unable to cope with the stress of parenthood, in some of the most otherworldly horror you can imagine, was quite the treat on the big screen. I thought a lot about Eraserhead while watching Backrooms. A protagonist unable to handle the world, the overbearing atmosphere and sound design, and these liminal uncomfortable spaces that transcend writing or feeling that you can only watch to experience. A young director with a vision in his debut, able to execute it so finely, is so heartwarming to see realized. Good stuff!

Final Score: 7.5/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

If you loved Backrooms, please, this is your chance to watch Inland Empire (seen below), the greatest Liminal Space movie of all time, maybe next to Stalker. My friend Sam recently described it as "The Dark Souls of movies," and I can’t get it out of my head.

I feel like I’ve been in the wilderness when it comes to horror the past year. I loved Sinners and Weapons, but they felt more like mainstream genre movies with horror elements. Why does it feel like every other horror movie is someone stuck on an island being killed by an evil, wealthy cult? The crop of YouTubers-turned-filmmakers has been rather disappointing to me, especially recently, with Undertone, which I thought was quite awful. Almost a year ago to this date, I wrote this about the horror movie Bring Her Back:

“The Philippou brothers are back with a brand new horror film, following up on the success of their debut feature film, Talk to Me, to deliver something so weightless and lacking any feeling and mystery that I am genuinely concerned if this is what the future of horror looks like. Bring Her Back is taking major inspiration from the films Hereditary and Speak No Evil (2022) while missing the point of what makes those movies special. It’s trying its best to be “elevated” horror or whatever. Still, its supernatural and family drama threads are written so thin that the film becomes a forgettable mess outside of some shocking, gory scenes. You will endure and feel the bleak atmosphere that the Philippou brothers are trying to convey at times, but at the end of the day if I am being choked out by someone I don’t have a connection with, am I truly feeling anything?”

A year later, I am so happy to declare that our great national crisis of empty horror movies is finally over, and Curry Barker’s Obsession delivers the disgusting goods. Obsession is mean. A thrilling and unsettling dissection of the way “nice guys” perceive women and what evil can lie in the hearts of those who don’t recognize them as humans. It’s a hard look in the mirror for friends who don’t communicate. The film doesn’t hold back in the slightest and makes you sit with the discomfort, and you’ll be begging for awkward or horrifying scenes to end, which I couldn’t get enough of. Please choke me out, Mr. Barker. I’ve been begging for this. Obsession isn’t just good because it taps into disturbing subject matter about men’s dating and their outlook on a woman’s personhood. Still, it’s also just a fabulous-looking movie, with especially sublime lighting, especially in the darkness. Sound design is out of this world, so that even a shower handle turning abruptly will have you jumping out of your seat. Most importantly, Inde Navarrette delivers a brilliantly terrifying, physical performance that horror fans will be gushing over for years to come! God, nothing better than a great Monkey’s Paw movie, am I right?

Obsession follows Baron AKA Bear (Michael Johnston), who has a crush on one of his childhood friends and coworkers, Nikki (Inde Navarrette). Bear, unable to confess his feelings one night after driving her home from trivia, uses a novelty toy called “One Wish Willow” in which he wishes that Nikki loves him more than anything in this world. Nikki snaps and immediately falls in love with Bear. Bear is taken back, but he gets what he wants, so he begins having what he believes is a blissful relationship with Nikki. Nikki’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic and unsettling, to the point that Bear starts regretting he even made the wish in the first place.

Inde Navarrette is a revelation as Nikki. Going from the girl next door into this Evil Dead/Possession form that’s like the crazy, obsessive girlfriend of your nightmare is quite the transformation. The way she shapes her movements and contorts her face is seriously so unnerving. Navarrette, while under this spell, becomes this demon of affection that will stop at nothing to make a point to express her deathly devotion to Bear. She kills the whole vibe at parties, watches you while you sleep, and will scream and pout until she gets the love she deserves. While this is all horrifying stuff, what’s most impressive is that under the surface, you can clearly see she is the victim under those eyes, screaming to be let out of this torture in which Bear has trapped her. Michael Johnston as Bear matches this manic energy that Navarette brings with this almost “oh shucks woe is me” nice guy persona that’s almost as off-putting as what’s happening to Navarrette. Johnston does something so interesting that we’re able to fully sympathize with someone who may be unable to understand that this wish he made was real, but be deeply unsettled by his cowardice and exploitation of Navarrette here. He’s constantly questioning if Navarette’s love is real and if he’s hurting her, and friends are even calling him out for taking advantage of her current condition. Still, in the end, he’s a selfish man who can’t see her as anything more than a piece of flesh or an idea, not a real person, which is a haunting look at the “nice guy” persona. He can’t accept that someone wouldn’t want to be him, and how bad could it really be? It comes to a head when the real Nikki speaks to him in a dream state one night, begging to end this, but he can only think about what he wants.

Did I mention that this film is funny? Barker, coming from a YouTube sketch background and bringing along his long-time buddy Cooper Tomlinson, who plays Bear’s best friend and coworker Ian, the film doesn’t shy away from the awkward or cringe laughs, which are balanced perfectly here with the horror. The scene where Bear calls the “One Wish Willow” 1-800 number to find out if he can reverse this wish-turned-nightmare starts as a great bit, with the guy on the other end of the line couldn’t give a shit what happens to Bear. This is his own mess, of his own doing, and ultimately ends with some cosmically dark horror at the end of the phone. Navarette brings some wonderful comedy here, especially with her expressions, a frown in particular that’s so pronounced it seems drawn on! The entire friend dynamic feels like a great introspection into modern friendship, its hollowness, how well we all get each other’s feelings, and how we live in our own bubbles even amongst our trivia friends. Like a lot of horror as well, I think the trapped feeling of capitalism in a small town, unable to escape and be stuck in a situation where you are being taken advantage of by someone you trusted, is interesting. Still, I’m not sure if I’ve fully formed my thoughts on the material aspects of Nikki’s victimhood—lots to chew on here, though.

If you were a fan of the look and lighting of Barbarian, then I think you are in for a treat because the darkness and shadows here are amazing. The way Nikki is cast into the shadows, only seeing her silhouette, is so terrifying, and the way your eyes dart around a bedroom trying to find her at times will have your skin crawling and pulling that shirt right over your face. Those warm amber lights throughout the film make you just a tad uneasy, wishing it were just a tad brighter for your own safety. Barker’s direction here is phenomenal, as well as the way he slowly moves the camera forward as you try to pull away from the insanity and thrills. I think some of his best work is in Bear’s apartment, where we are in this hell of Bear’s own making, and Barker makes you sit with it. Every awkward conversation, everything that Nikki is about to do, and every encounter you are stuck in, and I think Barker’s patience here to trust the audience to hang on to every second to a satisfying end should be noted. Sitting in a car has never been scarier, and the tension he builds in every scene, knowing it’s going to explode, is my type of bomb.

Barker has gifted us one of the finest horror movies of the 2020s. A cruel and bleak insight into some of the harsh social truths that I don’t believe have been fully tapped into by the recent crop of horror filmmakers. May we see the ones we love as people and call out those around us for their abhorrent, dissonant behavior, disguised as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I can feel the weight in this one. All Killer No Filler. Obsession rips.

Final Score: 9/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

I have seen some very good movies so far in 2026, but I have been waiting for something special to really knock me off my feet and remind me of the power of film. Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron is that. A film that left me completely shattered and in a pool of my own tears when the final needle drop hit and the credits rolled. Confronting those fractured memories of your childhood and how it all could have been so different is heart-wrenching and so cathartic. Blending the intimacy of a slice of life with the rawness of documentarian filmmaking, we are presented with the closeness of family and time that’s so hard to even write about. Still, you feel in that instance that only the medium of film can pull off. Romvari has now etched so many beautiful moments into my memory, and I feel almost honored to be privy to this personal story. I hope you all take the time to have these scenes etched into your memories and see one of the best films of 2026 ASAP.

Blue Heron begins through the eyes of 8-year-old Sasha (Eylul Guven), whose immigrant Hungarian parents move their family to Vancouver Island in the late 90s. Sasha watches as her parents try to handle her brother, Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), who’s acting out and exhibiting some antisocial behavior in this new home. The film then jumps to the near present, where adult Sasha is gathering documentary materials about her brother, trying to understand what went wrong and who her brother really was at that time.

I would love to begin with Romvari’s direction here because of her ability to choose where to place the camera in a scene, a striking skill. The angles in which we take in this family and how it slowly pulls and pushes us out of this world emotionally, I haven’t felt since seeing Edward Yang’s Yi Yi for the first time a few years ago. Yi YI, considered one of the best slice-of-life and just films of all time, has this special ability to know precisely where we need to feel what we feel, either from a distance or by focusing in. Blue Heron does with the fragmented memories of a little girl and how fallible they all really can be. Glancing through a bedroom window, seeing your brother and father lash out at each other as though they are two aliens from different planets with different emotions. Watching your brother’s joy as she tosses sugar all over you and your little brothers, like it’s snowing, seeing that slight smile. Focusing slowly on your mother’s hands as she prepares dinner and having her explain the crisis you are all in are these little details and moments that I can’t help but feel as though I’m a fly on the wall that’s watching heartbreak. Romvari then takes a turn into the documentarian side later in the film to confront these feelings head-on and does something magical with film with its conclusion that combines the two altogether, where we are face to face with the closure that left me completely shaken, that we can truly reach down deep into our hearts and maybe come to peace with the trauma bonds we’ve made along the way. Mixing anything like digital camcorders into memories will work 10/10 times, and in the 2020s, I haven’t felt those big feelings since Aftersun, which I also cry my eyes out to every time. The way Romvacan seamlessly interweaves the past and present in this exposure therapy is nothing short of master fillmmaking and should be appreciated in its time.

The cast is unreal here. Edik Beddoes, as our troubled youth, Jeremy had me on the edge of my seat and not in a jumpy way, like what is he going to do next, but more just seeing in those eyes so much pain and wanting to give him a big hug. Having so few lines yet conveying so much thought and the dangerous ideas behind those eyes, while still exuding this gentleness, is wildly difficult and falls flat on its face if not for his portrayal of someone lost and isolated, screaming for help on the inside. Sasha’s immigrant parents, played by Iringó Réti and Ádám Tompa, are so compelling as they both try to navigate the frustrations of trying to love a son who’s clearly suffering but unable to get either the help they need from the psychological professionals of the time or their own patience with each other running thin on the situation. The two play off each other so well, and it’s clear Romvari put so much of her own family and frustration into how her parents might have acted and handled these situations, without maybe showing the love and care they deserved. Réti playing the mother, especially her intimate moments with either Sasha or Jeremy on the roof, acting out for help while the smoke goes off in the house, or speaking with the social worker, shows someone at wits’ end, even though their love remains so strong for her son. Loved Adult Sasha’s (Amy Zimmer) performance, who’s taking on a more pragmatic look at her brother’s life through her work, but still seemingly lost as anyone as she tries to pick up the pieces and see her and her brother again together at the end, had me bawling my eyes out as she finds her own closure.

Memories are a fickle thing. The way we choose to remember a moment, how we’ve been told an event went down, and what we felt can all change our recollection in powerful ways. The dreaminess of the first half of the film, as we spend time with the family and see the world through their eyes, is so beautiful and tragic, and we wish we could all reach out and help. Maya Bankovic’s cinematography does a fantastic job not just of pulling us deeper into this world, but also of letting the setting of the sun and the overall malaise of the situation creep in over this family and us. It’s stunning to look at, but it brings a wave of unearthed feelings that swallow you as well. It’s not always that you get something this special and insightful look into someone’s life and what could have been, but Blue Heron does just exactly that and takes the formula of cinema and twists it around, twisting my heart around in wondrous ways that I won’t soon forget. Now get out there and support one of Canada’s finest directors!

Final Score: 10/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

(Spoiler for Final Needle Drop) As someone with a Daniel Johnston tattoo, I want to state that I was already crying before “Some Things Last a Long Time” started playing, so I swear I am not biased.

Damian McCarthy’s Hokum is an Irish haunted house of terrors, regrets, and mystery that I couldn’t get enough of. McCarthy has once again delivered a tightly contained tale whose simple plot is brooding with atmosphere and jump scares that are more than earned. As someone who’s a massive horror video game player, feeling as though I was tossed directly into anything reminiscent of Silent Hill had me smiling like an idiot. Adam Scott gives this standoffish but beaten-down emotional performance that intensifies this whole Tale from the Crypt Irish folklore experience to new heights. Crisp editing, a fantastic supporting cast, and a wonderful tongue-in-cheek silliness that brings some nice levity to the horror, we are gifted another chamberpot dread-inducing and entertaining banger from the great country of Ireland.

Hokum tells the story of Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), a writer struggling to finish his latest novel, who travels to Ireland to scatter his parents’ ashes at a hotel where they honeymooned. Bauman becomes acquainted with several members of the community, including those working at the Bilberry Woods Hotel, until tragedy strikes: one of the staff members, Fiona (Florence Ordesh), goes missing. Bauman feels connected to Fiona and seeks them out only to discover that a witch may haunt the hotel. Can Bauman save Fiona and survive the otherworldly nature of the Bilberry Woods Hotel?

Adam Scott gives us a real, mean look at what grief can do to a person. His performance as Bauman can feel at times like he’s being a real prick, and why do I even care for this protagonist at all, but I couldn’t help but feel his hurt underneath the surface throughout the runtime. The way we see him evolve emotionally throughout Hokum and come to grips with his parents' deaths, and how beautifully this is realized in the closing sections of his final novel, is touching. We must go on living and can’t let the hate pull us down into hell. I think something is interesting. McCarthy is pulling this style of protagonist from something like The Shining, Misery, or Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, especially as a struggling writer trying to handle the pressures of their own life as darkness falls upon them, but with a cathartic, sympathetic grip on it while keeping the terrors flowing. It’s also great that Scott is playing the perfect Silent Hill protagonist in terms of simple puzzle solving, inventory management, and defenseless without a weapon or gun of sorts, which just made me want to boot up the Silent Hill 2 remake ASAP. Silent Hill 2 and Hokum, featuring protagonists who come in with some heavy baggage and use the horrors and creatures they face to process them, are just the stuff I feast on.

Atmosphere and direction here are top-notch. The foggy Irish landscape, mixed with the amber glow of hotel lamps, gives this thing a cozy whodunnit feel. McCarthy does an excellent job, just like he did in Oddity, in making us, the audience, fully aware of the space we are occupying and allowing us to be comfortable with the spooky hotel we are hanging out in with Scott. In one of the most horrifying sequences in the film, when Scott is being chased by a witch who follows him out of the hotel’s basement, it was so rewarding to understand how he moved through the hotel room. As the chase continued, I was yelling in my head, “Scott, that way, you know, over the tub, get to the bedroom,” and the way the camera perfectly follows this while cutting back to the witch’s creepy movements was all just so masterful in horror and tension-building filmmaking. The editing has to be a major highlight here, as so many contemporary horror films fall into the trap of relying too heavily on jump scares that don’t feel earned. Still, here, the buildup and reward are so satisfying. It wasn’t scary for scary’s sake. Some gorgeous, just-terrifying shots featured here of carvings and faces around the hotel that kept me up all night. So handsomely shot. The Irish folklore mystique slowly grows throughout the film, and that’s helped mightily by a supporting Irish cast that has Scott both endeared to and curious about the strange land he’s in. It also helps that the film has solid humor to complement the terror, where it’s more flat Irish humor, which feels perfect for the setting. Love that there are rules here for how the Irish folklore and that they pay off in th end.

I had season tickets to whatever McCarthy did after Oddity, and I was so happy I was seated for Hokum. A finely tuned story that gives us chills, laughs, and heart. We can explore the darkness within us and finally find peace that’s not at the end of a bottle. Scott gives a stubborn but still emotionally deep performance while surrounded by the dreadfulness of a hotel whose secrets are more interesting than the human drama that’s the true evil that may not have landed as well as I hoped. Despite that, I think this is a wonderful little spooky tale that will satisfy most audiences and surprise them with just how creepy it turns out to be, even with its silly tone at times. God bless the Irish.

Final Score: 7.5/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

David Lowery’s Mother Mary taps into these deep-seated, unruly feelings that are almost impossible to portray accurately on screen. That unbearable tension that can build up inside you over time because of either regret or longing for a life you never had. Mother Mary is an exorcism of those feelings, pulling you out of fame and stardom to see what they truly mean, even though they can feel symbiotic with love and an artist. Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel have this cutting-edge quality to their relationship that had me completely locked in and devastated by the end. A visually inspiring film that I’ve not been so interested in since Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, and a banging soundtrack makes this fable of desire and craft something to admire and appreciate in 2026.

Plot Summary: Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) is a pop icon mounting a comeback tour after a serious incident that put her career on pause. Three days before her first show on the tour, she runs off to the English countryside to reconnect with her original fashion designer, Sam Anslem (Michaela Coel). Mother Mary shows up a mess and asks Sam to design her a new dress in over a decade to kick off her tour. Sam reluctantly agrees, and the two begin to unpack their long history together while both discover that ghostly forces may be at work in the background. Will the two reconcile their past, and will Mother Mary be wearing a brand-new dress made by Sam by the end?

I absolutely adored the connection between Hathaway and Coel, and I think their bond, which feels so weighty and moving, will draw the eyes of many audiences. Hathaway, with this almost-defeated yet intense energy around Coal, who seems to have complete control of the situation, is just melting at their center the whole time. I think their banter between the two is written with such wit and cuts right through you when Coal says she doesn’t listen to Hathaway’s music or the way Hathaway describes moving on without her and using other fashion designers. I think any easy read of the film is to see this as friendship that’s been fractured as a whole from fame or time but from the sexual language of the on stage performances and lyrics of the song and how devestated Coel is when she see’s her perform for the last time it seems clear that these two are deeply in love and have so much resentment and regret from a relationship that never blossomed. The film is mostly them in rooms, recounting and jabbing at each other with memories of the past, so these two bring the heaviness of this connection, making the film so compelling, and you take notice of every subtle eye or lip movement they share.

Mother Mary is just a visual treat. The haunting imagery of darkness, with the bloody rep tapestry filling the entire screen, and the desires and regrets of our protagonists left me completely shaken in my seat. Colors reminding me of Suspiria (1977), or the lonely darkness or isolation felt only in Under the Skin. Lowery’s direction here has stepped up. I was very much impressed: the seamless transitions from memories to performances that felt stage-play-esque kept the momentum going and never made anything feel stagnant. The lighting and flash of the big performances felt momentous, and Hathaway brought this physicality to all of them, especially in the scene she performs in front of Coel with no music in her fashion studio, where you could hear a pin drop in the theater on how locked in the two were, and us, the audience. Phenomenal nightmare sequences and bloody symbolism cut deep into my own heart. The soundtrack here is all bangers, and I have to shout out Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff, and FKA Twigs for coming through and selling why Mother Mary is the moment and pop icon of her time. The costumes are also stunning, and I think Coel does an even better job at showing the passion and what you must pour into not just the fabric but the person wearing them, especially if you want them. What does that bond feel like between artist and designer, and if they are eternally linked, unable ever to break what made them together so special?

This film will be very divisive, but I hope you take from my words that it feels like a fable as old as time. That it’s not too late. That weight that hangs heavy on your heart or that loneliness is not the end. Could it be your crush, could it be saying sorry to someone you love, or could it be your queerness? Don’t become haunted by these feelings that may manifest themselves into some ghostly red fabric, but instead confront those feelings and feel. Embrace them and don’t let the darkness win. Exorcise them and don’t let yourself wake up with that regret 10 years down the line that a world of stardom wasn’t ready to handle, or what could have been. Mother Mary wants us to examine the pressures and hardships that come with that pop-like god status, but more importantly, the connections you let fall to the wayside and the desires of others you should have pursued and worn on your body the whole time. Feeling your heart choke in your chest no more.

Final Score: 8/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

Over this past year, I’ve completely dived into Hong Kong Action Cinema, and it’s been one of the greatest decisions of my life. The way I’ve become completely immersed in the neon lights, the bullet hell, the melancholy, and the brotherhood at the heart of so many of their stories has been so special during a time in my life when I’ve felt a lot of stress and hardship. Every bloody squib, every insane stunt, and every camera movement that spins my head like a clock have all become so romantic to me, and I have come to appreciate the craft of moviemaking to a degree I never could have imagined. So, with this passion I have recently found, I’d love to share it with others and give you what I believe is a great starter pack to get you into the genre and, hopefully, unlock that love for it I discovered.

Disclaimer: I am a 31-year-old white guy doing this list and have only seen a little over 50 Hong Kong Action Classics, and I know there’s way more out there for me to discover, which is so exciting. This also isn’t a best-of list, but what I believe could excite someone into fully throwing themselves down the rabbit hole like me. So let’s Throw Down!!!

1. Throw Down (2004) director: Johnnie To

A story about three degenerates trying to pick themselves up together and discover redemption through friendship and fighting: I knew I wanted to have a To on this list, and it came down between this and Exiled. There’s going to be enough guns on this list to make an NRA convention look like a kindergarten class, so I thought I would put at least one genuine martial arts film on here that really encompasses some of the coolest things about Hong Kong cinema. For starters, Hong Kong looks gorgeously slick here; the neon reflecting off the rain and puddles gives that perfect atmosphere you’d want. To’s direction is out of this world. A scene that I can never get out of my head is when all of our leads are switching between tables in the bar, and the way the camera is swooshing is electric and magnetic without ever feeling like you’re confused where anyone is or developing a migraine; it’s so smooth. A whimsical and melancholical journey with sick martial arts that will tear you down and build you back up in the best ways. The power of friendship!

(If you love To, I’d say go to Breaking News or PTU for some great action and commentary on policing and the media, save Election for a bit)

2. Eastern Condors (1987) director: Sammo Hung

A band of commandos must go into Vietnam to destroy a secret arsenal to be pardoned by the US: A suicide squad, if you will. The Hong Kong dirty dozen is filled with insane stunts, explosions, and humor. A true hell yeah from me every 5 minutes. Sammo Hung, who stars in the film as well, brings this tone that’s so hard to balance of intensity and levity, where one moment I’m laughing from the satirical and ridiculous nature of the action, to truly locked in, wondering if all these distinct and memorable members of this wild crew will make it out alive. If you are craving any Vietnam-era action, like a Rambo 2 or 3 of sorts, this will satisfy that hunger, I promise. There’s a martial arts fight to the death in a missile silo at the end; it rules.

3. A Better Tomorrow (1986) director: John Woo

An ex-gangster tries to work things out with his cop brother, but his past as a criminal keeps catching up with him. You were all waiting for which John Woo to pick, and I think A Better Tomorrow is the perfect gateway into the master director’s work. You get Chow Yun-fat being the coolest ever on screen, you get insane shootouts, and brothers forever no matter what as a major theme, come on now. A film so cool but emotionally devastating that you understood Woo and the vision he would bring to such all-time action classics like The Killer (my favorite) and Hard Boiled. Seeing this on the big screen recently at the Philadelphia Film Center brought tears to my eyes. Definitely check out the sequels because I’d say Tsui Hark’s A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon is the best in the trilogy. Also, take the time and binge all of Hark’s Once Upon A Time in China films: martial arts at their finest.

4. Police Story (1985) director: Jackie Chan

A badass cop puts away a huge drug dealer, but now must protect his secretary so she can testify against him. Jackie Chan, who goes absolutely beast mode for 100 minutes with stunts that would kill most mortal men. For most Western audiences, their introduction to Chan came from Rush Hour in the late 90s, but Chan had been grinding and almost killing himself for years trying to make a name for himself in Hong Kong. This movie showcases Chan’s unreal physical abilities, from jumping and running on moving buses to sliding down an entire mall’s pole from 3 stories up like he’s some superhero. It also shows Chan’s physical humor and timing are unlike any star we’ve ever seen, and you can see the early seeds of what would make him a mega star in the States later on. Also stars young Maggie Cheung, ugh, she’s so amazing.

(If you want more early Chan, please check The Drunken Master and Miracles! Oh, and of course, Police Story 2 and Supercop, which has Michelle Yeoh doing an insane motorcycle stunt onto a moving train)

5. City on Fire (1987) director: Ringo Lam

Do you love The Departed, Infernal Affairs, Heat, Thief, or Reservoir Dogs? If you checked any of the above, you’ll love City on Fire, and most of those movies take massive inspiration from Lam’s undercover cop epic. Combining this with A Better Tomorrow in two years put Chow Yun-fat on the map, and the film includes intense heists, brothers until the end, kind of a Christmas movie (If Die Hard is a Christmas movie, so is this), and just stunning emotional betrayals and bosses who won’t get off your back. I’ve come to love Lam’s other On Fire films, but I always return to City on Fire because it has all the juice I could ever want.

Honorable Weird and Fantastical mentions: If you want weird, absurd, and over-the-top Hong Kong cinema, I gotta go with The Heroic Trio, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, and A Chinese Ghost Story.

There’s my list, and I’ve included a bunch of others I think you should check out! If you have any Hong Kong Action Cinema recommendations, please leave them down in the comments, or if you want to geek out about these films, please go ahead!

Written by: Kevin J. Pettit

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Can we ever truly know the one we love? Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama poses this question amidst the complexities of modern romance. What darkness lies in the heart of man during the superficial internet age? There is a wonderful exploration of our relationship with mass tragedy and how American culture either fetishizes these horrible acts or uses them to gain power over others. Whoa. Heavy stuff. That said, The Drama is one of the funniest movies of the year and handles these sober topics with wildly tasteful satire that nearly cracked my ribs. Sublime performances from leads Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, whose hilarious nervous energy carries us right through to their wedding day. A memorable supporting cast keeps the story at the right pace, along with crisp editing and a script to die for, making this one of the best films of 2026 so far. So happy I saw this after getting married.

SPOILER WARNING: There is no way to discuss this film without spoilers. If you don’t want anything spoiled, scroll down to my score or final paragraph and come back after seeing The Drama. I can’t recommend seeing it in a packed theater enough. It was one of the best audience experiences I’ve had in a while, with the whole crowd gasping and laughing the whole time, having a blast.

The Drama follows Emma Harwood (Zendaya) and Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson), a happy couple living in Boston, a week before their wedding, when things take a turn. During a casual wedding tasting night with their friends, where everyone is admitting the worst things they’ve ever done in their lives, Emma reveals that she planned a mass shooting when she was in high school, but never carried it out. This throws Charlie into a spiral, leaving him wondering whether he’s about to marry a monster, and Emma struggles to reconcile with her dark past. Can this whacky couple keep it together and find love?

In terms of performance, Zendaya and Pattinson are outstanding. While the script is strong, Zendaya’s character sometimes feels underwritten, perhaps because it’s seen through the lens of a white writer/director who may not fully grasp the subject’s nuances. However, Zendaya compensates for these shortcomings with exceptional facial expressions. In several scenes after the major reveal, her face conveys the terror of her life unraveling. Zendaya’s way of navigating her world and staying steady despite her past is notable. The dark humor used to manage the chaos resonates throughout the film, helping balance the seriousness of the subject. Pattinson is as charming as ever, and watching his character unravel as he tries to understand whom he’s marrying is both compelling and entertaining. His inner turmoil and pacing are palpable as the film tackles the philosophical question of loving someone who didn’t commit a terrible act, but whose intent lingers. Zendaya’s and Pattinson’s relationship appears more like a superficial facade, focused on aesthetics rather than love, which adds complexity to the moral dilemmas and may explain why the ending felt anticlimactic. However, a darker interpretation is more thought-provoking. They share a romantic scene in which Pattinson confesses his greatest fear to Zendaya’s deaf ear, a moment that is particularly moving and grounds the relationship. Overall, watching these two navigate and resolve their issues with humor and chaos is thoroughly entertaining.

What I loved most about The Drama was the editing, which drew me in like a moth to a flame. It was crisp and moved at breakneck speed, never feeling overwhelming or like a Safdie panic attack. The film seamlessly showcases the intrusive thoughts of our characters, so you are totally immersed in the heads of the stressed-out couple. Zendaya imagining Charlie flying back to England, Charlie imagining Zendaya as the young adult planning the shooting, wrapping his arms around her, or Zendaya modeling with guns that turn Charlie on in perverse and uncomfortable ways is interesting and funny in a disturbing way. Some audiences may be taken aback, wondering what’s real and questioning the intentions of several parties in this wild love story. The movie hums from an editing standpoint. The direction is impressive, especially the reveal dinner scene where the camera pushes in on feelings as Zendaya’s secret becomes more real, and the tension at the wedding with some of the craziest and gasping moments, including speeches after the ceremony, keeps you on edge. It also features a stupendous jump scare I won’t spoil, but it is well-earned. I’m just obsessed with the look and feel of The Drama, mostly the momentum and the way it flies.

Weirdly enough, The Drama reminded me of an excerpt I wrote for my review of The Zone of Interest. -

“During college, my abnormal and forensic psychology professor presented us with a strong take on the world. In this class, we covered mass murderers, serial killers, and other violent actors to determine causes or preventative measures that we, as a society, could take to protect us from these “monsters.” My professor suggested that not much separates us from these harmful people. The media chooses to cast these actors as demons or boogeymen to create the narrative that these people are anomalies and that the average person could never do such vile acts-- to make us feel secure that this could never happen to us or someone we know. -’ He would say, “We are closer to these ‘monsters’ than we let on.”

This is the moral quandary Pattinson has to grapple with: how close are any of us to committing something so awful? If they didn’t do it, does it matter, and at what age do we become ourselves? I think The Drama tries not just to ask personal questions about what we can truly understand about another person, but also about our understanding of gun violence, which is so prevalent in our country. Our obsession with it. The power it has over us. The way we fetishize guns and violence here. Some flashbacks to young Zendaya, showing the Myspace era, are among the darkest, funniest, and most accurate representations of internet isolation at the time. When young Zendaya’s screen restarts as she tries to give her full confession on the shooting they planned, I cackled—just good stuff. I haven’t even mentioned the incredible supporting cast, starting with Alana Haim, who’s fantastic as the maid of honor who takes such personal offense to Zendaya’s secret. The way she’s able to weaponize this secret as an edge over her friend, making it all about them, is just delicious to watch and makes for a wonderful villainous performance. Mamoudou Athie as Pattinson’s Best Man brings some wonderful levity to the film and has a wonderful sense of riffing amid this insanity. Major shout-out to Zoë Winters, the wedding photographer, whose scene about “shooting” all the family members and trying to get Pattinson’s character to act normal and smile during the photo shoot had me and our whole theater bursting into laughter.

For such a sobering movie, I’m not sure I sold The Drama enough on how funny it is, but it’s something to be experienced in a big theater with a good crowd, strapped into this messy ride to marriage. Zendaya and Pattinson give some of their very best work as they try to navigate the superficial world of dating and the insane culture of gun violence that’s wrapped into the very fiber of this country, unfortunately. If you are about to get married, maybe wait a minute, though.

Final Score: 8.5/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

Julia Ducournau pours her heart out for the misbegotten in Alpha. It’s a film that, weirdly, recalls Easy A (2010) for its irreverent, genre-blending energy and Philadelphia (1993) for its emotional intensity and exploration of social suffering. This strange combination results in an experience that’s surreal, confusing, and emotionally all over the place, where you can feel the rage and passion that went into its making. Despite its intensity and the out-of-body experience it wants you to have while enduring the suffering of those on screen, it’s easily Ducournau’s least subtle and grounded work to date, and I can’t help but appreciate the restraint given the subject matter she is covering. Taking body horror through the lens of the AIDS epidemic is incredibly bold. It is a massive swing here that I don’t think completely works, as I think the screenplay can feel a bit disjointed. Thankfully, the performances here by the family at the center, who are taken aback by this paranoia, fear, and grief of the moment, turn this into something that, at times, is powerful. Sometimes, to understand the instantiated horror that has befallen those you find so beautiful and innocent, we will do our best to create art out of it, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not. In every case, I can at least appreciate the love that is so clearly here in Alpha.

The film follows a 14-year-old girl named Alpha (Mélissa Boros), who’s your typical rebellious teenager, and her overprotective mother (Golshifteh Farahani) in France during the spread of a deadly virus. Alpha’s mother is a doctor, and the film alternates between the past, when she treated patients during the outbreak when Alpha was a child, and the present day. Fears grow strong when Alpha goes to a party and gets a giant A tattoo with a dirty needle, and Alpha’s mother freaks out that she may have caught this plague. As Alpha deals with being isolated and degraded by her classmates for possibly having this, Alpha’s uncle Amin (Tahar Rahim) moves in with them, and clearly has had a life of long-term drug use. Will Alpha come back positive? Can her mother handle the pressure? Can Amin finally become part of this family?

If you are to take anything away from Alpha, I think it’s the three lead performances at the center of this heartwrenching story. Amin, the uncle, steals the show, whose physical presence alone will shake many to the core, where you see and feel the anguish that drugs have done to his body over time. You can tell this is a man who’s simply passing through life with love in his heart, but knows their demise is imminent, that the tracks on those arms can’t be healed, but maybe I can spread some joy for my niece before I go. The way they feel like a rush of wind through us at times, and can’t help but feel empathy for someone who’s clearly gone despite having the love of their family. Our titular character, Alpha, is a scarlet-letter-wearing high school heathen who’s trying to lash out against the overbearing authority and walls her mother has wrapped herself in. She imbues that teenage angst and the feeling of invincibility that throws caution to the wind, not understanding culture or family, but just wanting that high of the next moment, as many of us had at that time in our lives. Finally, Alpha’s mother carries the weight of the film on her shoulders. Like Amin, you can see the wear and tear under her eyes, but not from drugs, but from the horror she’s experienced in the hospital, seeing those she cared for be discarded by society and left to rot. Feeling that grief over her patients and the life she wished her brother had is something special to see on screen, and how it all translates to the overprotective parent over Alpha. These three performances sing together in harmony, which I think can alleviate some of the issues I have with the film as a whole.

Alpha is a very dirty, gritty movie that’s harsh, with reds and close-ups on blood and holes that can wear on you, the audience, at times. It’s visually stunning in moments, and personally, late in the film, seeing Amin and Alpha hit the club together, and the way Ducournau turns the film into an After Hours (1985) spinning, visual sensation, was one of my major highlights. A fight in a swimming pool where Alpha is essentially fighting for her life against these girls, like sharks in the water, is thrilling, and the final shot of blood enveloping her in the pool and those fleeing all around, the colors starkly contrasting, is striking. The scene where Alpha feels the ceiling slowly close in on her in bed, and the weight and pressure around her start to collapse, made for an exciting sequence. The horrors of the disease being made to look like disgusting stone or scales taking over the body, where it was almost reminiscent of scenes from the show Chernobyl (2019), left the audience with some harrowing and devastating feelings in the theater to see how grim it was. The problems I do have with Alpha seem to come from the hammer being smashed over your head of the AIDS allegory at play. Ducournau is not subtle in the slightest and trying to navigate an epidemic in which margenlized people were essentially sent to their death in the 80s and treated like leppers, a family story, a drug story, a grief story, a coming of age story, and so much more it can all come off a bit messy and disjointed without throwing in all the surealness and body horror on top of it. Ducournau is trying to do a lot here, and I sympathize with someone who has so much anger toward a time that treated people so awfully, but I wish the timelines, twists, and family dynamics were a bit more focused.

I feel like I’m in the minority of people who enjoyed Alpha, and that’s okay. I can understand the vitriol and divisiveness surrounding a film that’s this bold and tackles such a hard subject matter. I have to hand it to Ducournau and the cast for sticking with something so hard and making something special out of tragedy that I think one day we shall look back fondly on. Some risks are worth taking, and I, for one, can at least understand where the heart was with Alpha—a really good place.

Final Score: 7.5/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

Project Hail Mary is an endearing space odyssey that aims to inspire the best in humanity. The film reminds us that, no matter what burdens we carry each day, we are capable of brave and sweet acts as a species. Did the sweetness of Project Hail Mary start to fade for me as the story dragged on? Absolutely. Still, I was impressed by its practical and striking visual effects. The cosmos comes alive with code oranges and ghastly greens, filling our screens and hearts with wonder about what’s possible in the universe. This sense of wonder makes me more generous when I encounter the film’s Marvel Universesque humor— in the vein of, “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?” Ryan Gosling is charming and convincing as ever as he continues his streak as the most liked guy in Hollywood, and his palling up with some cute little rock creature for the majority of the film will make for a delightful outing with the family. What feels like a bit of a slog at times and a movie that doesn’t know when to end, it’s all redeemed by the budding relationship between Gosling and his fellow Rocky Spider Scientist, whose purity in wanting to save the universe is heartwarming enough to keep this from becoming forgettable.

Project Hail Mary follows Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), who awakens on a spaceship light-years from Earth and has amnesia. He begins to remember that he was a disgraced scientist who became a middle school teacher, chosen by the world’s governments to help save the planet from its dying sun. Grace realizes that there is a bacteria that’s eating away at the sun. Still, there’s a sun in a solar system far away that’s unaffected by these bacteria, so he’s sent out on a mission to discover why, called Project Hail Mary. While out in space, he runs into a wonderful rock alien that he names Rocky, with whom he teams up to save both their planets from going dark. Grace and Rocky must first understand each other before they can get to the bottom of what’s happening to their universe, but once they do, they set out on an adventure that includes intense space walks, diving down into the atmosphere to grab samples, and a rescue of a lifetime. Can Grace save the universe and save himself?

The major takeaway that I think most people will walk away with is that the camaraderie between Gosling and Rocky is incredibly cute. Gosling totally sells the affection for this alien, and the wondrous practical effects of the moving Rocky make you feel the space between them grow closer and closer as the film progresses. There is some good fun in the way they slowly learn to communicate, and the candor they build for one another feels special to experience with a group of friends. From the thumbs down they give each other because Rocky can’t give a thumbs up to the corny joke after corny joke that Gosling throws out there, it’s all so earnest that you can’t help but crack a smile. I do think at a certain point, I wanted to shout at the screen, “HEY UNIVERSE ON THE LINE PLEASE LOCK IN,” as the cuteness between the two felt either repetitive or just not sticking after what felt like a drawn-out point on the mission. Would also want to give a major shout-out to Sandra Huller, who’s phenomenal here as our lead mission operative who recruits Gosling to this mission, who you can feel the weight of the world on her shoulders with Project Hail Mary. She’s a grounding presence, and when she gives into her humanity with an amazing karaoke scene, that’s where I could feel the tear ducts start to kick in.

Project Hail Mary is a stunning movie to look at. From the practical set of the spaceship, and seeing Rocky roll around it so seamlessly. The shots of Gosling out in space overlooking this alien planet on the big screen are jaw-dropping, and the way the monumental feeling of that scene seems to pour over you is why we go to the movies! The fishing-for-bacteria scene on the planet's surface is a well-executed sci-fi action sequence that culminates in what I felt should have been the heart and ending of the film: Rocky’s sacrifice for Gosling. The film faults in several areas, but the way it can’t decide what to end on is frustrating, to say the least, where it felt like a real sigh after sigh, seeing an entirely new emotional ending that felt worse by the end. I can deal with some light-hearted quippy comedy nonsense, but I can’t endure filmmakers who don’t have it in them to know when to stop.

If we could get way more delightful popcorn flicks like this a year, I’d be quite the happy camper. Does it lack some organality in the sci-fi genre, playing some of its greatest hits? For sure, but the heart behind it pushes you through that, and Gosling’s ability to make any situation seem approachable is commendable, and his love for life is felt through his doubts and pain of this mission. Rocky the alien will fill many theatergoers’ hearts with joy, and those who love big sci-fi effects will have their pupils dilated in the best ways. Glad I took the day off to see this with my family.

Final Score: 7/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

If you are currently writing a screenplay about podcasters or have podcasting as a major part of your story, I need you to stop what you are doing immediately. Close Final Draft, crumple up that piece of paper, or wipe that idea from your mind because I’m telling you right now it sucks. Director Ian Tuason’s Undertone feels like a student short film STRETCHEDDD across 90 minutes, lamented not by evil demons or spirits but by bad podcasting. A script that’s so terrible it’s almost hilarious, as the scariest thing modern horror filmmakers can think of is either an old person moving in the background or some nursery rhyme slowed down and reversed. I think there is something in the last 5 minutes where the synthesis of sound design and shadows comes together that the film was marketed on, but the squeeze is not worth the juice. Undertone is a frank reminder that podcast equipment needs to be banned from movies. Keep those mics far away from sets because it’s truly so fucking boring.

Undertone follows Evy (Nina Kiri), who hosts a paranormal podcast with her friend Justin (Adam DiMarco). Evy is a caregiver for her mother (Michèle Duquet), who is in a coma/dying state for the majority of the film. Things get crazy when Evy and Justin receive creepy audio files about a married couple experiencing demonic events, causing Evy to freak out in her own life. Will these two podcasters make it to the last audio files and discover the truth?

The major problem with Undertone is the writing, and you can clearly tell there’s not enough meat on this bone to make it last over a full feature. You spend most of the time watching Evy and just listening to Justin, since the only two characters you see are Evy and her mother, hearing what essentially feels like the audio version of the first Paranormal Activity movie with noise-cancelling headphones. I’m not sure if the film is more of a horror movie, an advertisement, or a reminder of how noise-cancelling headphones work. You weirdly watch these two “podcasters” podcast for just 10 minutes at a time, talk about a long recording session, while they get freaked out by nursery rhymes and Google that they are actually about kids being killed. Riveting stuff. I love watching two people with zero chemistry do the shtick of the skeptic vs. believer when Evy can’t even handle more than 10 minutes of creepy audio without having a meltdown. Evy and Justin sound like actors having a job to do instead of friends, and I truly can’t imagine two people with less juice starting a show together. Why would you even do a podcast about the paranormal if you can’t handle the paranormal? Listen, I have podcasting experience. I did a moderately popular soccer (football for the ball knowers) for almost a decade, and let me tell you, the intricacies of podcasting are not interesting on screen. At least, how it is filmed here: we stare at someone with headphones, mildly react to spooky sounds, while maybe something’s happening in the background, or pan around a dark, empty room to pad the runtime.

The film is clearly pulling in tons of inspiration from modern horror, but taking what feels like the wrong lessons. It’s trying to riff on The Ring but saving the reveal until the end, losing all the tension that makes The Ring so effective as a film. It’s trying to pull off Sinister with its kids being murdered angle, but instead of old film of tragedies, we are gifted with Google images of nursery rhymes EXPLAINED images. Toss in some Hereditary about family guilt, and possibly a pro-life message about not murdering babies, I don’t know. I don’t think the film is smart enough to try to convey any message that extreme, because at least it would be interesting to write about the underlying, subliminal conservative messaging. Instead, I am treated to an empty-calorie horror film that does all it can to redeem itself in the final moments, a true Hail Mary of sound. When we reach the climax of the film and all hell breaks loose with demonic sounds and audio clips mixing, I can’t help but feel scared, seated in my Dolby screening. The audio overstimulation with some decent horror imagery worked on me briefly. I’m not sure if the Dolby sound was carrying the film too much. Still, the combination of direction and the culmination, I think, was effective enough that it will be enough for teenagers to recommend it for sleepovers for years to come. “Dude, it’s good, just wait for the ending, it’s so worth it,” you will hear coming from teenage Dorito’s smeared mouth and Mountain Dew breath. I am telling you as an adult man, it’s not worth it.

As harsh as I’ve been, I think the people working together on this should at least be proud of what they’ve done, given the low budget and how effective the final moments of the film are, which might be what most remember from it and nothing else. I can’t forgive bad podcasting and enduring another moment of “banter” between the two. Maybe if you are a fan of The Last Podcast on the Left or Lore podcasts, there might be something here for you. Still, for horror fans, I think this is another “Best Horror Movie Ever” marketing ploy to get butts into seats and make a buck from a distribution company whose horror track record is not great!

Final Score: 3/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

Music is as essential to me as air. When I’m writing these reviews on Substack, I’m usually listening to one of the soothing and swelling scores by Joe Hisaishi from one of the Studio Ghibli movies he’s done. Mostly The Boy and the Heron lately. I’ve been training with my wife for a marathon in April (humble brag), and I’ve needed to blast as loud as I can my favorite pop, shoegaze, or hardcore music like Charlie XCX, Molchat Doma, Cold World, or Nothing to survive mile after mile. I’ve had personal strife in my life, and the way that artists like Elliot Smith, High Vis, or The Stone Roses can help me keep moving means the world to me, so I am well aware of the impact music can have on the body and the soul. With all that being said, I find Óliver Laxe’s Sirāt to be an emotionally hollow representation of the use of music to deal with the world around us. A film that’s being marketed as this harrowing Mad Max or The Wages of Fear adventure across the desert that will instill hope in you from this unconventional family composed of a father and son and a raver crew, but ultimately left me feeling as though this group of idiots had all the unfortunate events coming to them. This band of EU losers is invading this beautiful African Country just to feel something as the world burns around them, I mean, go back to fucking Ibiza or something. Stay out of Africa and take your loud bass with ya. The film’s shocks feel for shock’s sake, and any cathartic payoff in a character’s development is empty. I don’t get the hype around this one at all, and the worst part is that it’s frankly boring.

Sirāt follows a father, Luis (Sergi López), and his son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona), who travel to a desert rave in Morocco in search of his missing daughter. He meets a group of ravers who tell him that his daughter might be at another rave that’s deep across the desert. Luis decides to join his son and the ravers on a treacherous desert journey to find his daughter and, along the way, maybe find themselves.

I’ve been rather harsh so far, so, to give the film credit for what it’s been lauded for, the sound is incredible and booming at times, tricking me into believing this was a good movie. The way the bass shook my entire seat in the theater and the way the group reacts to this music in an almost transcendent religious awakening felt like I was experiencing a special moment unfolding on screen. The wondrous desert cinematography, combined with the bombastic bass that at times came together in perfect harmony, allows me to fully understand the love and passion behind this movie. It’s easy to get lost in the movie, and the wide landscapes are breathtaking. Still, it became repetitive after we saw the 4th scene of a caravan charging across the desert to the same beat. Finally, I found the final mine field sequence to be incredibly thrilling, and maybe this existential question of fate that the film has been pursuing soon came into frame for me as I see this group of morons take a walk of faith to continue living amongst a world that wants to kill you.

The issues with Sirāt can start with the journey itself being wildly uninteresting. So many times I was begging for something compelling to happen, and it would be let’s slowly cross this river or oh, let’s take this piece of the car off. This movie does not have 1/100th the juice of the movie it’s being compared to, like Mad Max: Fury Road, The Wages of Fear, and especially Sorcerer. The one true set piece where they build tension properly, where they are stuck on the side of the mountain and all hell breaks loose with the young son and dog, didn’t feel earned because it felt way more negligible by the crew as a whole and not an earned accident. Essentially, any decision this crew makes feels like the common-sense wrong one, and it’s difficult for me to empathize with the grief and suffering when you’ve put yourself in that position. Not to say I don’t enjoy idiots or bad people on screen. I loved Marty Supreme from last year, and Chalamet is a total shithead, but at least he’s charismatic and interesting when he’s consistently fucking up. I just watched The Big Lebowski again, which features a lovable crew of losers who are at least funny, or at least when they put themselves in situations that ultimately feel aimless, I am at least entertained by the ridiculousness or performance on display. I got nothing like that from Sirāt.

Alright, I’m not trying to get too woke here (also, everyone, please get more woke now!!!), but like, aren’t these European ravers just a bunch of colonisers coming to this beautiful African country to trash it with their parties and music? That’s probably a big leap or exaggeration to make, but I don’t like these guys. The scene that made me really not like them is when the father and the son’s dog gets sick, and one of the ravers is like oh the dog probably ate someone’s poop that had LSD in it and they start making jokes about it and how that happens all the time. HAPPENS ALL THE TIME? You dirty fucks are consistently poisoning dogs and not cleaning up after yourselves? I’m just out on you guys as people. Crossing the desert, looking at the war and turmoil that’s ravaging across Africa, and being like “Wow, the world is already gone and burned up and gone to hell or whatever,” isn’t deep or insightful, it’s a 5 year olds understanding of politics. You just blasting music to deal with the existential crisis of the world ending around you is also loser behavior. So when I see this crew make dumb decisions after dumb decisions that lead to so many deaths, I’m kind of like oh okay, yeah, it seems rather deserved. It’s fine to have an existential crisis and use the power of music to help deal with it, but completely blocking out the world and not being present with it does not interest me, in real life or in art.

I may be completely off my rocker, and I am excited to read positive reviews on Sirāt and what people loved about it! I could have a completely off reading of the film, but I can’t help but speak my truth. An adventure and heart that lacks any pulse despite the music trying to pump any life back into this. A crew that feels vapid, that I don’t feel like I get any good reading on who they were and what’s going through their heads besides bass goes loud. The Bass is really loud, so there’s that.

Final Score: 4/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit

PS, please share your thoughts in the comments, along with any good playlists or artists for my upcoming long runs! I need them!