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Feature New Release Reviews

New Release: Night of the Hunted (Franck Khalfoun, 2023)

Even after sitting through its underwhelming trailer, I held out hope for Franck Khalfoun’s Night of the Hunted (2023). After all, the French writer-director is responsible for 2012’s Maniac remake, which – through its brutal melding of the arthouse with the grindhouse – may be this century’s best slasher. But his latest is a far […]

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Feature New Release Reviews

New Release: Godland (Hlynur Pálmason, 2022)

“It’s terribly beautiful here,” the priest tells a local woman, describing the landscape of his remote outpost. She agrees, but with an important caveat: “Yes, it’s terrible. And beautiful.” This conversation occurs late in Hlynur Pálmason’s remarkable Godland (2022) and encapsulates the writer-director’s cinematic worldview, one in which horror and grace coexist in unforgiving natural […]

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New Release Reviews

Blu-Ray Review: Smooth Talk (Criterion)

The sad news of Treat Williams’s recent death seems particularly poignant ahead of the Criterion Blu-ray release of Smooth Talk, which saw the actor play one of his more menacing roles as Arnold Friend opposite Laura Dern’s teen-tearaway Connie Wyatt.   The film, directed by Joyce Chopra and based on Joyce Carol Oates’s short story […]

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New Release Reviews

New Release: Beau Is Afraid (Ari Aster, 2023)

In the closing moments of Ari Aster’s latest ‘elevated horror film’, our beleaguered hero Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix) is sat in a small motorboat – forcefully moored in a giant pool within a darkened stadium full of all the people he has ever known – having to defend his life against none other than his […]

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New Release Reviews

New Release: Pamfir

Leonid was once a legendary smuggler. He could run for miles – supplies strapped to his back – to deliver goods from his Ukrainian town to nearby Romania. But those days are over. He’s just returned home from a work stint in Poland and is now digging a well for the local church. He wants […]

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New Release Reviews

New Release: The Menu

Director Mark Mylod is best known for drama series such as Succession and Game of Thrones, but he breaks out of TV dramas with the horror comedy The Menu (2022). This Golden Globe nominee follows a group of esteemed guests and their haunting experience at one of the world’s most exclusive restaurants. Last minute edition […]

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New Release Reviews

New Release: Bones and All

BONES: Any of the pieces of hard whitish tissue making up the skeleton in humans and other vertebrates. AND: Conjunction, used to connect words of the same part of speech, clauses, or sentences, that are to be taken jointly. ALL: Everything – everything under the sun, and, indeed, above and/or beyond the sun, including your […]

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New Release Reviews

New Release: The Banshees of Inisherin

I believe in reading as a creative experience. The Reader comes to the work with their intellect, imagination, expectations, wants and needs, and sets out, consciously or not, to forge their very own “version” of the original text, however sacred. And that “version” will be different from yours, mine or anyone else’s. As with The […]

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New Release Reviews

New Release: Prey

Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey (2022) simultaneously pays respect to and gently subverts the 1987 Arnie vehicle to which it is a loose prequel. On the one hand, it grounds the franchise in the simple premise that made John McTiernan’s Predator so effective to begin with: two creatures – one human, one extraterrestrial – going head-to-head in […]