Mārama (2025) Review: Beautiful Yet Blunt Gothic Reckoning
Taratoa Stappard’s Mārama brings Māori history into a beautifully designed Victorian Gothic manor, but slow pacing and overly obvious symbolism weaken its colonial reckoning.
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Film Reviews
Read Matthew Jones’s reviews of new releases, independent films, cult cinema, and overlooked works from across film history. Each review looks beyond whether a film succeeds or fails to examine what it reveals about identity, morality, politics, society, and the human experience.
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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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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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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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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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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Hamnet (2025), A Film By Any Other Name…
Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet (2025) is made with genuine care for its story; I just never fully understood why it’s about William Shakespeare.
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Obsession (2026), Horrific Love Without Consent
I have a soft spot for horror films that clearly don’t have money to waste. When a filmmaker cannot rely
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Review: Victor/Victoria (1982)
Blake Edwards’ Victor/Victoria is built around a joke that becomes more complicated the longer you think about it. Victoria Grant
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The Last Showgirl (2024), An Interesting Subject in Search of a Film
The Last Showgirl (2024) is not really a story so much as an arrangement of melancholy poses. Pamela Anderson walks
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Review: The Last House (2026) Climate Anxiety Turned Prepper Fantasy
The first half of The Last House (2026) brought back memories of the COVID lockdown for me. I was hunkered down in
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Review: Bugonia (2025), A Disappointing Misadventure From Lanthimos
This review contains major spoilers. You’ve been warned! If you’d like to see the film for yourself, you can stream
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