Movies

Western horror cinema tends to come in waves: 80s slashers, 90s meta-comedies, 2000s torture porn, 2010s found footage, and most recently an explosion of arty, theme-heavy ​“elevated horror” entries. In 2026, a few new visions from emerging filmmakers (who coincidentally all got their start on YouTube) are giving us glimpses at what the next big movement…

As excited as I was for the Cannes films in the Main Competition, I always look forward to the sidebar sections with just as much, if not more, anticipation. “The Chronology of Water,” “My Father’s Shadow,” “Pillion,” and “Urchin” all premiered in Un Certain Regard last year, while Critics’ Week was the home of “A…

Each night, in a small Nepalese village nestled in a deep forest, the community carries torches between the trees to ward off wild elephants that would otherwise rampage through farmers’ crops. At once a time-honored ritual and a practical responsibility, this custom embodies the complex, often painful collisions between past and present that constitute everyday…

The 79th Cannes Film Festival came to a close this past weekend with numerous writers putting forth the effort to assess its place in the history of the world’s most important cinematic event. Neon continued their incredible Palme d’Or streak, taking home their seventh in a row for Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord,” but the conversation seemed…

A tender, sensitively observed first feature from Norway’s Eivind Landsvik, “Low Expectations” makes its home in the same Oslo where Joachim Trier and Dag Johan Haugerud set their quiet, introspective films. There’s a dreamily diffuse quality to the Nordic capital that befits the strain of empathetic naturalism that’s emanated of late from the country’s cinema….

The end of the war does not produce liberation, but merely transforms one unstable political condition into another. The final film in Wajda’s trilogy, Ashes and Diamonds, would move to the post-war years and the ongoing difficulties of Polish resistance amid an overwhelmingly bleak 1940s Poland. In 1945, Poland was taken over by the communists, who…

Daniel Roher’s breakout documentary “Navalny,” revolving around Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and events related to his poisoning, earned the filmmaker his first Academy Award. But what happens, when you have reached the pinnacle of success right out the gate? What goal do you fly towards next? In Roher’s case, he delved into a unique narrative world…

While we try to divide and conquer a large amount of the Cannes program, including every one of the Competition titles, the scheduling inevitably leads to situations where a writer on this team sees something that was assigned elsewhere. It could be a case of wanting to be a part of the conversation about the…

I’ll cut right to the chase: the Midnighters are usually my most anticipated sidebar of any given festival (from last year’s Cannes alone, they treated us to “Exit 8” and I was higher than most on “Honey Don’t!”), So I come into films premiering in this section with an open mind and eager heart. Save…