comedy Brahman Naman 27 Nov 2020Nov 27, 2020 "What is the colour of colour TV?" ★★★★ Quashiq Mukherjee's English-language Indian sex comedy Brahman Naman (2016) is set in 1980's Bangalore, and illuminates the psyches of four teenage boys…
action Cell 211 25 Nov 2020Nov 25, 2020 "The cure better not be worse than the illness" ★★★★★ After a whole year of conducting research into the realities of prison life by interviewing inmates, their relatives and prison…
thriller The Usual Suspects 23 Nov 2020Nov 23, 2020 "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist" ★★★★ Bryan Singer's (X-Men, Bohemian Rhapsody) neo-noir thriller The Usual Suspects (1995) got its title from…
romance Happy Together 20 Nov 2020Nov 20, 2020 "Turns out lonely people are all the same" ★★★★★ Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong romance Happy Together (1997) stores most of its meaning in its title. The English translation was inspired…
comedy Paulette 18 Nov 2020Nov 18, 2020 "I feel like I'm changing. At my age, that's scary." ★★★ In her last film before passing away, Bernadette Lafont (The Mother and The Whore, 1973) proves her legacy as…
thriller The Girl in the Fog 16 Nov 2020Nov 16, 2020 "The devil's greatest flaw is his vanity" ★★★★★ Donato Carrisi not only penned the 2015 novel that inspired the Italian psychological thriller The Girl in the Fog (Italian: La ragazza…
drama The Wife 13 Nov 2020Nov 14, 2020 "The public can't stomach bold prose from a woman" ★★★★★ The dazzling appeal of Björn L. Runge's drama The Wife (2017) rests in Glenn Close's reflections on her character, which…
animation The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales 11 Nov 2020Nov 11, 2020 "Let it blossom, let it flow. That's life." ★★★★★ Told in a quaint, almost Aesopian way, Benjamin Renner’s The Big Bad Fox (French: Le Grand Méchant Renard et autres contes, 2017)…
sci-fi The Wandering Earth 9 Nov 2020Nov 9, 2020 "It is unreasonable to expect humans to stay reasonable" ★★★★ Frant Gwo's Chinese sci-fi action film The Wandering Earth (2019) is based on Liu Cixin's 2000 novella of the same…
horror The Hole in the Ground 6 Nov 2020Nov 8, 2020 "They swing from monsters to angels and back again in the blink of an eye" ★★ There is something undeniably creepy about the bleak stares of children, whose mothers are…
romance Vita & Virginia 4 Nov 2020Nov 8, 2020 "If you leave me stranded, I will hurt you" ★★★ Chanya Button's biographical romantic drama Vita & Virginia (2018) portrays the love affair between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sachville-West, which…
drama Metamorphoses 2 Nov 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Mouths are gateways to the soul" ★★★ Christophe Honoré's Metamorphoses (2014) is an ambitious project aiming to transform the massive and multifaceted magnum opus of the Roman poet Ovid (comprised of…
animation Blame! 30 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "They say they will do what the humans say. That's a good thing, right?" ★★★★★ Hiroyuki Seshita's Japanese CGI anime Blame! (2017) is based on the ten-volume manga of the…
comedy Toc Toc 28 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "That's why I'm here. To be reprogrammed." ★★★★★ Toc Toc (2017), the Spanish comedy written and directed by Vicente Villanueva, is based on Laurent Baffie's 2005 French play of the…
drama Pity 26 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "And then people stop pitying you. They get tired." ★★★★ After his debut film L in 2011, Greek director Babis Makridis’ second feature film explores the raw emotion of grief…
drama The Emperor of Paris 23 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Serve your country or remain mediocre" ★★★★ Jean-François Richet's 2018 historical drama The Emperor of Paris (French: L'Empereur de Paris) puts a modern spin on the tale of the historical…
sci-fi Cargo 21 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "It's incredibly cold here. You could hardly imagine it." ★★★ Switzerland produced its first dystopian sci-fi film under the direction of Ivan Engler and Ralph Etter in 2009, claiming a place…
thriller Eastern Promises 19 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Anger is dangerous. It makes people do stupid things." ★★★★ Congruent with David Cronenberg's other projects, such as The Fly (1986) or Dead Ringers (1988), the 2007 British-Canadian co-production Eastern…
horror Haze 16 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "A dream of being awake?" ★★★★ Best known for his cyberpunk films Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) and Vital (2004), Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto masterfully switches between different roles in his…
romance Below Her Mouth 14 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "I'm going to starve to death in your bed" ★★★★ April Mullen's Canadian erotic romance Below Her Mouth (2016) is known for its all-female ensemble, with the film being written,…
horror Escape Room 12 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Surviving is a choice. Make yours." ★★★ Following the tragic escape room disaster that claimed the lives of five teenage girls in a blazing fire, it's no wonder that the…
drama Sleeping Beauty 9 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Some people fake their deaths. I'm faking my life." ★★★ Do not let the title of this Australian erotic drama mislead you. Ten seconds into the trailer, you will be…
Series Tempted 6 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Running in the rain is just like going through something that is going to happen anyway" ★★★ Kang In's 2018 South Korean series Tempted (original title: Widaehan Yuhokja) is loosely…
drama The Wild Pear Tree 3 Oct 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Who says free will is free? Even if it was, how could you trust it?" ★★★★★ Acclaimed Turkish film director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon A Time in Anatolia, 2011)…
comedy The Commitments 30 Sep 2020Nov 8, 2020 "The Irish are the blacks of Europe, Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, and the North Siders are the blacks of Dublin." ★★★★★ Alan Parker's The Commitments (1991) offers a…
drama Taste of Cherry 27 Sep 2020Nov 19, 2020 "When you're unhappy, you hurt other people, too" ★★★★ Iranian films do not necessarily get the attention they deserve, unless they are featured in renowned international award competitions. Perhaps this…
horror Slaughterhouse Rulez 24 Sep 2020Nov 8, 2020 "This is war. No, this is Sparta." ★★★ Bringing back the comedic duo from Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004) sounds like the greatest idea since sliced bread, enriching…
comedy Heroic Losers 21 Sep 2020Nov 8, 2020 "People that follow the rules end up being synonyms for fool" ★★★★★ Observing the domino effect of world history unfolding, past economic disasters around the world seem to be easily…
romance Palm Trees in the Snow 18 Sep 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Life is a tornado. Peace, fury...and then peace again." ★★★★★ Fernando González Molina's Spanish romantic drama Palm Trees in the Snow (Spanish: Palmeras en la nieve, 2015) is based on…
sci-fi Advantageous 15 Sep 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Humans can only grasp change at a rate they've experienced" ★★★ In an interview with Variety, Jacqueline Kim, who co-wrote the 2015 sci-fi drama Advantageous with the film's director Jennifer…
comedy Blind Date 12 Sep 2020Nov 8, 2020 "We're stuck together by an architectural anomaly" ★★★★ In a promotional interview with Purepeople, the two stars of Clovis Cornillas' 2015 French romantic comedy Blind Date (French: Un peu, beaucoup,…
drama Arctic 9 Sep 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Don't worry, they'll be here tomorrow - or the day after tomorrow - don't worry" ★★★★ It's no surprise that when discussing Joe Penna's Icelandic survival drama Arctic (2018) with…
sci-fi Tenet 6 Sep 2020Nov 1, 2020 "We all believe we’d run into the burning building. But until we feel that heat, we can never know. You do." ★★★ Christopher Nolan is known for exploring the concept…
action The International 3 Sep 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Sometimes a man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it" ★★ Tom Tykwer's 2009 action thriller The International was inspired by the Bank of Credit…
thriller The 9th Precinct 31 Aug 2020Nov 8, 2020 "One gets confused when one has just died" ★★★★ Wandering ghosts, though also present in the Western culture in the form of The Sixth Sense (1999) and Ghost (1990), to…
romance Two of Us 28 Aug 2020Nov 1, 2020 "Have you got a problem with elderly dykes?" ★★★★★ After Céline Sciamma’s masterpiece Portrait of A Lady on Fire (2019), another French female-centric film attempts to approach lesbian love in a…
drama The Devil’s Mistress 24 Aug 2020Nov 8, 2020 "War is the most shameful thing on earth, whichever side one is on" ★★ To dub or not to dub? That is the question for the Czech film industry. Perhaps…
fantasy Okja 21 Aug 2020Nov 14, 2020 "It's all edible. All edible, except the squeal." ★★★★ This South Korean film, aiming to address social issues, managed to serve a “hot potato” instead of mass-produced meat. So, do streaming platforms truly respect the…
thriller Children of Men 18 Aug 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Everything is a cosmic battle between faith and chance" ★★★ Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian thriller Children of Men (2006), based on P. D. James' The Children of Men (1992), presents a…
comedy A Perfect Day 14 Aug 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Many people hate foreigners because they come with war" ★★★★★ The Spanish dark comedy-drama A Perfect Day (Spanish: Un Día Perfecto, 2015), written and directed by Fernando León de Aramoa,…
sci-fi OtherLife 11 Aug 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Fantasy and reality are chemically identical" ★★★★★ Ben C. Lucas' 2017 Australian sci-fi thriller OtherLife is loosely based on the novel Solitaire (2002) by Kelley Eskridge. Deeply influenced by The…
drama Alexandria: Again and Forever 7 Aug 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Suffering has its charms" ★★★★ Youssef Chahine's Egyptian drama Alexandria Again and Forever (1989) is the third and final entry in a trilogy of films, presenting a look-back at the…
romance Jodhaa Akbar 4 Aug 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Water and ambition have one thing in common. They are ever-swelling." ★★★★ Ashutosh Gowariker's epic historical romance Jodhaa Akbar (2008) is not only a production of inconceivable proportions, but it…
drama Attitude Test 1 Aug 2020Nov 8, 2020 "Education is like an erection. When you have it, it shows." ★★ Augusto Matte and Fabrizio Copano's 2016 Chilean drama Attitude Test (Spanish: Prueba de Actitud) seems like the love…
Films Liebster Award Nomination 30 Jul 2020Jul 30, 2020 Thank you, 18cinemalane, for the Liebster Award nomination! I am truly grateful for the time you have taken to read my reviews. The Liebster Award logo can be found at:…
