Shoplifters (2018) Review: A Family Made From Stolen Time
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters finds beauty, love, and lasting memories inside a makeshift family whose reckless and sometimes criminal life together was always destined to end.
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Black Box (2026) Review: Aliens on a Plane Can’t Escape the Formula
Black Box has a convincing airplane set and one energetic alien attack, but its stock passengers, awkward writing, inconsistent creature rules, and overreaching effects leave the high-concept premise grounded.
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It’s Pat (1994) Review: Androgyny and the Need to Categorize
A terrible but occasionally funny SNL film, It’s Pat reveals how gender anxiety and the need to categorize can turn curiosity into obsession.
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Hysteria (2025) Review: Representation, Suspense, and Self-Interest
Hysteria is at its best when everyone has a defensible version of the truth and a selfish reason for insisting
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12 Dystopian Films About Power and Social Control
This article contains major spoilers. Dystopian films are often treated as a collection of recognizable images: surveillance cameras, brutalist architecture,
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Shutter Island Ending Explained: Guilt, Self-Deception, and the Choice to Forget
This essay contains major spoilers for Shutter Island (2010). I remember the first time I saw Shutter Island vividly. My
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Sweetheart (2019) Review: A Lean, Mean Island Monster
Sweetheart (2019) gets a lot of mileage out of a simple fear: the ocean is scary as hell. J. D.
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Opus (2025) Review: Celebrity Worship as Religion
Opus works best before it explains anything. For much of writer-director Mark Anthony Green’s feature debut, the film traps its
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13 Cosmic Horror Films About Humanity’s Insignificance
Most horror films give fear a recognizable shape. The killer wants revenge. The ghost remains attached to a particular place.
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Oddity (2024) Review: Grief as a Spooky Weapon
There is something deeply unpleasant about watching an inanimate “object” suddenly appearing in a different spot. Oddity works with this kind
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Never Let Go (2024): When Abuse Becomes a Monster
There is a compelling idea at the center of Alexandre Aja’s Never Let Go (2024): abuse reproduces itself. Trauma doesn’t remain sealed
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Donnie Darko: Does Sacrifice Mean Anything Without Free Will?
Donnie Darko (2001) ends by killing the young man it has spent most of its running time keeping alive. A jet
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Concrete Utopia (2023): Housing, Class, and the Ethics of Exclusion
This essay contains major spoilers. In Concrete Utopia, an earthquake destroys Seoul but leaves one piece of the old world remarkably
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13 Films About the Meaning of Life
What makes a life worth living? Is it happiness, love, useful work, spiritual belief, artistic achievement, or simply the experience
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The Scandalous Lady W (2015), A Beautiful but Shallow Scandal
I’m surprised that The Scandalous Lady W didn’t attract more attention. It has Natalie Dormer at the height of her Game
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Blink Twice (2024), When Power Depends on Forgetting
This review contains major spoilers. Blink Twice (2024) is one of those films where I could feel the director enjoying how
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Review: Talk to Me (2022), When Grief Becomes an Addiction
Talk to Me (2022) understands that the most dangerous supernatural object isn’t necessarily one that forces itself on people. Sometimes it’s
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