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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

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: 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 […]

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New Release Reviews

New Release: Il buco (The Hole)

We often associate progress with height – look no further than the post-World War II boom in skyscrapers. In a pre-credits scene from Michelangelo Frammartino’s Il buco (The Hole, 2021), a group of Italian villagers, huddled around a staticky television outside a café, watch footage of a newsman touring one such building. “We are climbing up […]

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New Release Reviews

New Release: Listen

Ana Rocha’s Listen (2020) begins quietly, with shots of clotheslines and tree branches swaying in the breeze: a rare moment of solace in an otherwise breathless family drama. Clocking in at under 80 minutes, the writer-director’s feature debut doesn’t waste any time immersing viewers in what must be one of the most gut-wrenching experiences a […]

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New Release Reviews

New Release: The Batman

The Batman (2022) has received something of a mixed reception from critics and film fans, but I’d like to go on record to say it deserves at least Se7en out of zen. It’s reminiscent of the look and feel and general modus operandi of David Fincher’s 1995 serial killer opus – if not quite Zodiac […]