Review: The Maid (La Nana, 2009) ★★★★
It is not easy to infuse comedy into a story revolving around class differences, especially without succumbing to crass jokes
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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.
Review: Victoria and Abdul (2017) ★½
Over the last few years, studios have been practically tripping over themselves to release new, pseudo-progressive “feel-good” movies, generally focusing
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Review: Time of the Wolf (Le Temps Du Loup, 2003) ★★★½
Anyone who has seen a Michael Haneke film has a pretty good understanding of his style. His camera always takes
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Review: What Happened to Monday? (2017) ★★
Dystopian science fiction is a genre that requires full commitment from the director, the actors, and perhaps most importantly, the
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Butterfly on a Wheel (2007) Review: Why Its Revenge Twist Fails
Updated October 9, 2026 Thrillers are not generally my favorite kind of film, but I can enjoy an elaborate revenge
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Review: The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) ★★★★
Whenever a film addresses sex in a way that is neither prudish nor sensationalized, it should be lauded as something
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Review: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) ★
As petty as it may seem, I get a sense of vindictive pleasure when a huge, exorbitantly expensive blockbuster like
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Review: Silent Hill (2006) ★½
It is apparently very difficult to make a quality film that is based on a video game franchise. Uwe Boll
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Review: Tale of Tales (2015) ★★★★
Anthologies have a very unsteady place in the history of cinema and film criticism. More often than not, films that
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Review: Brigsby Bear (2017) ★★★
Having watched Kyle Mooney’s Youtube channel and subsequent success on Saturday Night Live, I can say without reservation that he
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Review: The Wailing (곡성, 2016) ★★
The Wailing is one of those horror films that reels you in with a moody atmosphere and a promising story,
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Review: Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) ★★★½
I am generally not a fan of sentimental films. That is not to say that I think films should lack
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Review: The Room (2003) ★
The upcoming release of James Franco’s The Disaster Artist (2017) has breathed new life into the mystique surrounding Tommy Wiseau’s
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Review: Villa Amalia (2009) ★★★★
One of the great things about watching a film starring Isabelle Huppert is that we, as audience members, never fully
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Review: The Holy Mountain (1973) ★★★★
There are few films that embody the rejection of traditional artistic methods and Western moral presuppositions more than Alejandro Jodorowsky’s
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Review: The Beguiled (2017) ★★
I try not to judge films too much by their trailers. In fact, while I do like watching trailers before
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Review: Blade Runner 2049 (2017) ★★★½
Though I’m not a diehard fan of the original Blade Runner (1982), there’s no denying that it has developed a
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