review
Another World
It is by all means both narratively ambitious and visually stunning, if not occasionally messy, but for most of its duration this film is just so bleak, I don't think I could actually recommend this to anyone.
2025 + favorite
16 entries tagged 2025 + favorite
review
Erupcja
Nice little character study exploring the immediate surrounding impact of someone that mythologizes their own emotional immaturity and fear of commitment.
review
The President's Cake
Bleak, borderline nihilistic even, the backdrop of the film is more interested in the direct failures of the Saddam regime than offering any substantial critique of the American imperialist structure that had driven the region into desolation and was actively bombing it (presented instead as an always present inevitability); in turn making the film particularly palatable to a western audience that can consume it within the comfort of any ideology without being overly challenged.
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The Legend of Hei II
Maybe I'm reading too much into this but it feels like a metaphor for geopolitical tension and arguments for peaceful co-existence and mutual cooperation between China and the west.
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El Sett
Making a biopic of a pan-Arabic legend, whose rich career spanned over 70 years, while navigating both the personal and the rapid political and socioeconomic developments of Egypt, is no easy feat, and the end result is good; it is touching, entertaining, captivating.
review
The Lost Bus
As a stand alone film it is a classic formulaic natural disaster film, but given that we shape out understanding of reality through the consumption of media, the realistic depiction of the devastating horror of wild fires (an issue only getting worse as we head deeper into the climate crisis) is handled quite well.
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Resurrection
There are plenty of self-congratulatory films about film, but this is truly the one all-time must see.
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It Was Just An Accident
I did enjoy this and given the context of the director think it is a valiant work, but do have some gripes with it.
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Arco
Loved the environmental metaphors, the bumbling trio of loveable up-to-no-goods, the brilliant French comic inspired artwork, the retro future designs, and even made me sympathetic to the working class robots.
review · Berlinale
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
Entertaining and pretty much what I had hoped Mickey 17 would have been, even if it's at times just a modern reimagining of Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys.
review
Kokuho
Narratively doesn't reach uncharted territory and definitely has some flaws in its plot progression but I'm just a sucker for these types of stories and it more or less hit the same notes for me as Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū did. Could have definitely benefited from developing its female characters though.