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
29 entries tagged 2025
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.
review
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.
review
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
Eagles of the Republic
In his first film in the Arabic-language Cairo trilogy, Swedish-Egyptian director Tarek criticizes pre-revolution political corruption; in his second, the Muslim Brotherhood; with his latest release, the neo-noir political thriller Eagles of the Republic, Tarek is more daring, taking aim at the active ruling Egyptian government. Except, due to sloppy writing and historical inaccuracies, it is not very effective at doing so.
review
Mārama
I really wanted to like this both as an anti-colonial critique and as a 'good for her cinematic universe' revenge story but unfortunately the more I think about it the more it comes apart at the seams.
review
Tuner
What began as a formulaic yet charming Rain Man meets Drive crime thriller unfortunately collapses under its own clumsy writing in the last act.
review
Obsession
As a horror film, it is a decent debut for such a young director on a shoestring budget, but did leave me wanting for more given the promising Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Wishmaster meets social critique premise.
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.
essay
Films to Die For
A documentary exploring, to my understanding, the death of cinema and (metaphoric) death of the director, while, through interviews with four different filmmakers, also touching on several different layers of global cinema.
review
Resurrection
There are plenty of self-congratulatory films about film, but this is truly the one all-time must see.