Category Archives: Long Reviews (>400 Words)

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

After School (Straf) — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review

After School is screening as part of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

“We’re men, but we also have a little boy inside of us … a little baby inside.”

After School is something of a comedy of errors, in which the prime error is leaning into all the wrong ideas about masculinity. It is not a satire, per se, but its characters present as exaggerated versions of what the “manosphere’ produces and invites. Edwin (Rutger de Bekker) is a schoolteacher who has no control over his classroom. This is a metaphor for his life in general. His coworkers mostly step over him. His wife left him for a shaman peddling hallucinatory drugs. His daughter is embarrassed of him. His students have made him an internet lolcow, posting classroom pranks to the point where his viral status causes him to lose a promotion. He is the perfect candidate for a midlife identity crisis.

When alcohol, boxing, and male camaraderie combine, Edwin is inspired to stand up for himself in the classroom. The next time his students prank him Continue reading After School (Straf) — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Sci-Fi/Fantasy

You Are the Film — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review

You Are the Film is screening as part of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Madoka (Marika Ito) is going to see a film. It is not a popular title, and it is playing at a tiny theater attended by no one but herself. But it is a film shot locally, so she decides to give it a try. In the film, Kazuma (Kai Inowaki) is going to see a film. What he sees on that cinema screen is Madoka. Madoka is a playwright for a small theatre troupe, Kazuma is the frontman of a fledgling rock band that’s going nowhere. Their lives not only share similarities, but they are seemingly operating in direct parallel—a parallel they are able to physically see through the apparatus of the cinema screen. They see each other through the screen and can communicate to one another, and both want the other to leave the theater so something interesting can happen in their respective film.

Madoka, upset to hear from the synopsis of the “film” in which she is starring that some of her actors want to drop out of her new production, is the first to leave the auditorium. Kazuma watches as, Continue reading You Are the Film — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Dance Freak — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review

Dance Freak is screening as part of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Obie (Robbie Rackleff) wants to build a birdhouse in his birdhouse-building class. Obie’s girlfriend Dorty (Megan Koester), who’s a popular candidate in the mayoral race, just dumped him. The Salad Boys (Allen Cordell, Adam Enders, Sarah Sherman) recently force-fed Obie a concerning amount of salad. Obie has been told that a man dancing freakily out in the parking lot—a Dance Freak, if you will—has made himself “available” to Obie. Obie is being investigated for murder.

Thus is Dance Freak, the debut feature film from Alan Resnick and Robbie Rackleff. It is a surrealist comedy with horrific undertones, although these descriptors do little to describe the feeling and atmosphere of the film.

Rackleff (who also writes and stars) and Resnick were previously members of the Baltimore-based arts collective known as Wham City. Resnick is perhaps best known for Continue reading Dance Freak — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Faces of Death (2026) Movie Review

Have you watched Faces of Death, the cult VHS tape from the late-1970s that purported to show real-life deaths?

This is what I want to ask all of gen Z. I imagine my follow-up question would inevitably be: Have you heard of Faces of Death? We surveyed 100 people, and the top answer on the board is:”Huh?” Survey says, at number two, “I guess, kinda.”

The notion of invoking the IP of Faces of Death in the 2020s immediately intrigued and confused me (I say “invoke,” because this isn’t a remake). As a millennial, the tape existed for me only ever as a curious object from the past, not a scandalous object but a thing to check off the “what’s the most fucked up movie I can watch in my teens” list. Trying to reinvigorate the mythic, video nasty allure of it for the internet generation feels odd, because Faces of Death (1978) feels tame by today’s standards of exposure to violence.

Luckily, this is the exact angle that director Daniel Goldhaber and his scripting collaborator Isa Mazzei take when re-contextualizing the film for the present day. In the world of Faces of Death (2026), Continue reading Faces of Death (2026) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Loath It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Mercy (2026) Movie Review

If Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie was an early contender for funniest comedy of the year, Mercy presents a curious bit of counter-programming: an early contender for the unintentionally funniest comedy of the year.

Leaning on the utterly toothless performance of Chris Pratt, who spends the majority of the movie strapped to a chair, Mercy serves the terrible reputation of January new releases well. In the film, Pratt plays the hero, Chris Raven: a sad-sack homicide detective who has relapsed into alcoholism and is abusive to his wife. After a night he can’t remember, Raven awakes to an experimental AI (which takes on the image of a steely Rebecca Ferguson) being used to adjudicate crime, a literal judge, jury, and execution with unilateral power to kill the accused if the defendant cannot prove reasonable doubt.

In this near future, accused criminals are guilty until proven innocent, and have been stripped of the constitutional right to a jury of one’s peers. Raven, who ironically helped send people to this AI execution chair, now finds himself Continue reading Mercy (2026) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Project Hail Mary (2026) Movie Review

We’ve heard it all before. The isolated, industrious, possibly roguish single man left to his own devices in the depths of space. It’s a familiar tale. Author Andy Weir himself has already strung a similar yarn before this one, with the potato farming celestial castaway of The Martian (who would later be portrayed by Matt Damon in Ridley Scott’s 2015 adaptation). Project Hail Mary has a premise that shares a resemblance, but the end results are far different (and, I would argue, more compelling).

In this iteration, our stranded hero is Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a loner middle school science teacher whose controversial PhD dissertation and academic antics got him blacklisted from the scientific community. Luckily for Grace, his theory that water is not necessary for life lands him a spot on the global team that is working desperately to stop a mysterious molecular life form, dubbed Astrophage, from Continue reading Project Hail Mary (2026) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

Cloud (2025) Movie Review

The Internet is filled with scams. Scalpers have been around as long as there have been tickets to sell, presumably. Snake oil salesmen before that. So long as there is a way to make a quick buck on a rube, people have tried.

The anonymity of these individuals is part of their strength. Shadowy individuals scoop up as many hot-item concert tickets as possible and mark them up by many multiples. Who are these people? Conventional wisdom would suggest: apathetic scumbag, opportunistic scumbag, scummy scumbag.

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa only challenges this conventional wisdom enough so that we understand Continue reading Cloud (2025) Movie Review →

Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Best Movies of 2025

I usually start these year-end lists with some perfunctory and entirely unnecessary recap of my feelings of the previous year. Not this year. Let’s move on. Our tomorrow must be better than our yesterday.

(The movies were OK).

Honorable Mentions: Sorry, Baby; The Secret Agent; Black Bag; Souleymane’s Story; The Ugly Stepsister; Marty Supreme; On Becoming a Guinea Fowl; Wake Up Dead Man; Eephus; The Mastermind; Hamnet; Caught by the Tides; Weapons; The Naked Gun; Left-Handed Girl

10. KPop Demon Hunters

I arrived very late to Kpop Demon Hunters, the surprise cultural sensation of 2025. And the film lives up to its reputation. Watching it, I couldn’t help but Continue reading The Best Movies of 2025 →

Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Worst Movies of 2025

2025 certainly was not a bad year in cinema, but I also found many films did not move the needle. Some films were major disappointments. And then, as always, there were the dregs. These five films were, save for one exceptional case, the least enjoyment I got out of film-watching this year.

The Electric State

Many hands have already been wrung over the supposed price tag of this little ditty from the brothers Russo. It is an exacerbating factor in the film’s already negative reception (How could it be this bad and this expensive?) It is a blemish that is difficult to Continue reading The Worst Movies of 2025 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Sugar Rot — Fantasia Festival 2025

Sugar Rot had its Quebec premiere on Aug 1 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Sugar Rot is billed as a feminist, punk rock, body horror film. It does involve the horrific transformation of a body, that of the protagonist fittingly named Candy (Chloe Macleod). One location in the film presents a few punk rock bands performing. And the John Waters-esque story world produced by director Becca Kozak is obsessed with female body standards and the normalization of the exploitation of women’s bodies. So, check, check, and check on the billing. At face value, at least.

There is a cruel contradiction at the sugary core of Sugar Rot. As Candy’s body becomes candy (literally), every character wants to Continue reading Review: Sugar Rot — Fantasia Festival 2025 →