Growing Pains: Why ‘Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender’ Struggles to Capture the Original Magic
When "Avatar: The Last Airbender" premiered in 2005, it didn’t just introduce a generation to a meticulously crafted fantasy world; it redefined the potential of Western animation. Through its blend of East-Asian-inspired world-building,…
The Death of Style: Why Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Her Private Hell’ Is a Cinematic Catastrophe
Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Neon releases “Her Private Hell” in select theaters on July 24. “Her Private Hell”? More like our public misery. If, for David Lynch, ideas are like fish in a…
The Unraveling of the Family Unit: A Critical Analysis of Mads Mengel’s ‘The Guest’
By Alex Billington July 19, 2026 The trope of the fractured family attempting to bridge years of silence is as old as the medium of cinema itself. We have seen it in countless iterations: the long-awaited dinner, the forced holiday reunion, or the…
The Architecture of Memory: Ross McElwee’s ‘Remake’ and the Ethics of the First-Person Lens
Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2025 Venice Film Festival. Music Box Films releases “Remake” in U.S. theaters starting Friday, July 10. Long before the video diary became the en vogue format of personal expression on…
The Literary Lens: Assessing the Cinematic Adaptation of ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’
The impulse to categorize a film centered on the systemic oppression of women in 20th-century Iran as a "feel-good" story is, perhaps, a symptom of a modern media landscape saturated with reductive analysis. Yet, as one sits through Eran…
A High-Stakes Chase That Never Quite Finds Its Footing: A Review of Apple TV+’s Lucky
In the landscape of modern streaming, the "chase thriller" has become a standardized commodity—a genre defined by rapid-fire pacing, high-concept premises, and the promise of adrenaline-soaked escapism. Jonathan Tropper’s latest seven-episode…
The High-Stakes Chemistry of "Ride or Die": Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer Take Aim at Prime Video
In the evolving landscape of streaming television, where the "buddy comedy" has often been relegated to derivative tropes, Amazon Prime Video’s latest offering, Ride or Die, attempts a high-wire act: balancing the lethality of an international…
The Mythic Architect: Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Reimagines the Ancient Epic for the Modern Age
Christopher Nolan has built a career upon the architecture of time, manipulating the linear progression of human experience to explore the mechanics of regret, ambition, and the inexorable pull of home. With his latest feature, The Odyssey—a raw,…
Fairway to Nowhere: Deconstructing Will Ferrell’s Ambiguous Netflix Comedy, ‘The Hawk’
In the pantheon of Will Ferrell’s career, the comedian has carved a singular niche: the loud, obnoxious, yet strangely magnetic man-child who refuses to acknowledge his own incompetence. From the high-octane absurdity of Talladega Nights to the…
The Absurdist Alchemy of The Kidnapping of Arabella: A Cinematic Oddity for the Ages
In the landscape of contemporary independent cinema, few filmmakers possess the singular, idiosyncratic voice of Carolina Cavalli. With her latest feature, The Kidnapping of Arabella, Cavalli cements her reputation as a chronicler of the beautifully…
