REVIEWSetc.

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice follows Mike (James Marsden), a gangster trying to leave that world behind, when he's approached on his final night by Nick (Vince Vaughn) for one final job. Mike is secretly dating Alice (Eiza González), who also happens to be Nick's wife. Tensions rise when Mike realizes the Nick he's working with isn't present day Nick, but a time traveling Nick from six months in the future, trying to save Mike on the night he was originally killed. The film als

We are living in the weirdest timeline: one where there is a whole cinematic universe of action movies based around ballerinas . With two movies in the last few years simply having been called " Ballerina " (okay, I guess the John Wick spin-off had a subtitle) and being about a ballet dancer who goes on a revenge tour against those who have wronged her, you can be excused for thinking there is a lack of originality in the film world. Amazon Prime Video decided to get in on

I love a good fashion documentary. The best ones, like Unzipped  or Valentino: The Last Emperor , understand that fashion is chaos disguised as elegance. There is drama, deadlines, panic, ego, tears, last minute miracles. The camera catches people sweating as much as it catches them styling. That is the fun of it. So Marc by Sofia  arrives with a lot going for it. You have Sofia Coppola behind the camera and Marc Jacobs in front of it. Friends for decades. Creative collaborat

There is a certain kind of studio sci-fi film that feels increasingly endangered. The kind built on scale, curiosity, star power, and emotional payoff. The kind that trusts audiences to engage with ideas while still delivering momentum and spectacle. Project Hail Mary  belongs to that tradition, and it does so with confidence. It is, at least for me, the strongest film I’ve seen so far this year. That may sound like the usual post-screening high talking, the sort of reaction

Redele Riding (Victoria Tait) has been expelled from school and is doing her best to hold things together. She's living with her one-armed mother, Scarlet who is slowly disappearing into her heroin addiction. When Scarlet finally overdoses, Red is left with no money, no plan, and no options. She gets sent to live with her estranged grandmother Penelope (Lynsey Beauchamp), a Scottish aristocrat with a large estate in the Highlands. It's about as far from Red's London flat as y

What happens when a horror film knows exactly how to get under your skin… but maybe doesn’t fully know what to do once it’s there? That was kind of my experience with Undertone , the new A24 horror-thriller directed by Ian Tuason and starring Nina Kiri and Adam DiMarco. This is a movie with atmosphere for days. Genuine dread. Real unease. The kind of film that can make you stare into the darkest corner of your room a little longer than usual after the credits roll. And for a

It's been a rough year so far with catching new release movies for me. After having seen a personal best 117 new release movies in 2025, as of early March, I was only up to nine here in 2026. I've seen loads of late-2025 flicks, sure! But precious few films that have come out this calendar year. It hasn't been for a lack of trying; there just hasn't been a lot of worthwhile stuff released in this part of the year, the part often considered the dregs of the cinematic calendar.

From the very first frame, Scarlet  (2025)  announces itself with confidence. The animation is flat-out gorgeous—bold in its color design, fluid in its motion, and constantly finding new ways to make a familiar kind of story feel freshly haunted. And yes, I’m always going to show up for a good revenge tale. Give me a wronged hero(ine), a righteous target, and a world that keeps twisting the knife. I’m in. What makes Scarlet  work as well as it does—when it’s working at full p

Today's movie offering comes via Amazon Prime, and it stars two of Hollywood's current hottest gets, Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa. I am looking at The Wrecking Crew . The Wrecking Crew is a new direct-to-streaming action-comedy that follows in the buddy cop vein of flicks where two heroic characters are paired together to take down shady ne'er-do-wells. It walks the well-tread path of movies such as Hot Fuzz (my favorite film of all time!), 48 Hour s, Lethal Weapon , and ot

It is sometimes very hard to choose a movie to watch. I have so many streaming services and so varied a taste and so many classic films I still haven't seen. I often think something along the lines of "Okay, it's time to watch a movie", but it will be forty minutes later before I choose anything. I open Prime, for example, and I scroll through their Most Recent Additions, and I scroll through their Most Popular, and I scroll through their various categories. I pick one or two

Within the Miami-Dade County police department is a specialized unit known as the TNT (Tactical Narcotics Team). Before we even get introduced to the members of the TNT, we see the unit lead, Captain Jackie Velez (Line Esco) get murdered in cold blood. It just so happens that there are rumors the TNT is housing dirty cops who, when busting a drug house, will wind up robbing the house and reporting far less cash than what was actually on-site. So it is only natural that Intern

As of this writing, it's January 12th, and I've already watched my second foreign language film of the year! I wonder how long it took me to watch a non-English movie in 2025? (Actually, the answer to that depends on whether Flow counts or not. It's a foreign made picture, sure, but it has no language to speak of) Anyway, today's movie comes to you due to the fact that I have seen a lot of Letterboxd friends log this movie recently--with pretty high scores for it!--and I deci

Bust out your fanciest formalwear because today's movie review is a Dutch offering that was in consideration for Best International Feature for the 2026 Academy Awards! Unfortunately, Reedland was not chosen as a finalist for that category at the 98th edition of the Oscars, but just to be in the picture and chosen as your country's offering is great recognition. So let's talk about a movie that came close to taking home Oscar gold (and had received multiple nominations at th

The Letterboxd video store is live and with it came a handful of festival darlings which, without distribution deals, were destined to fall between the cracks. The only English language film of the bunch, Alexander Ullom’s It Ends  serves as an excellent example of just what this selection of movies stand for. That being the type of movie you watch debut with a hushed audience in South by Southwest’s Paramount Theater or Telluride Colorado’s ice rink: thrilled to dissect with

Roofman was a movie that came out recently, and it was one that I had wanted very much to see in theaters. But I never got around to finding the time to do so; it came and left the cinema pretty quickly without leaving too much sign of its existence. Luckily, it was a short-lived break between its theatrical window and its streaming one, as Roofman debuted on Paramount Plus recently. Magic Mike himself, Channing Tatum, plays the lead here: the titular "Roofman", Jeffrey Ma

Every so often, I am reminded of how little I care for director Todd Phillips. I've written on this before , but it's something I come back to every now and again. If I were to look it up , I would see that Phillips' exact quote was "Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture... There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore—I’ll tell you why, because all the fucking funny guys are like, ‘Fuck this shit, because I don’t want to offend you.’” The pro

(This review originally appeared in its entirety on scenethatreviews.com ) Hey there! Welcome to another review from 29th PÖFF | Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. This time I turn to the "Critics Picks' Competition" category for a film that just had its world premiere at the festival... China Sea (2025). Osvald (Marius Repšys) was a championship fighter who was nearly unstoppable in the ring. Though the television highlights we see of him winning a tournament in Japan is a

(This review originally appeared in its entirety on scenethatreviews.com ) Welcome back to another review from 29th PÖFF | Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival! This time, from the “Official Selection Competition”, we have a political scandal that threatens to upend an election. It doesn’t matter what the story is though. All that matters is time and patience in… No Comment (2025). Prime Minister Alma Solvik (Laila Goody) is locked-in and focused on the upcoming elections. The

( This review originally appeared in its entirety on scenethatreviews.com ) Who's ready for some reviews from the 29th PÖFF | Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival! First up, from the “First Feature Competition”, comes… Interior (2025). As we first meet Kasimir (Daniil Kremkin), he’s climbing out of a couch with a camcorder, while wearing nothing but underwear and socks. As he emerges from the department within the couch, he makes his way upstairs where he takes the camcorder a

(This review originally appeared in its entirety on scenethatreviews.com ) Welcome back to another review from 29th PÖFF | Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival! This time we are looking at a film from the “Baltic Film Competition” that follows a young child trying to process the complexities of a troubled home in… Fränk (2025). After yet another domestic incident at home involving his father, Paul (Derek Leheste) is forced from his home in the city to a small town to stay with