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Shadows of Memory Ripple Beneath the Surface

The Currents (Las Corrientes)

THE CURRENTS is a film that thrives on ambiguity. Milagros Mumenthaler’s latest feature resists the urge to explain itself, instead following a woman who is both at the peak of her professional success and at the edge of personal collapse. It’s a film about impulses—small ones that trigger tectonic shifts—and about how the past we try to bury finds its way back to the surface when we least expect it. The film is more a journey through time than a narrative construct; it’s about what life means to someone and the struggles they encounter.

A Teenager, an Ogre, and the Weight of Choice

The Tree of Knowledge (A Árvore do Conhecimento)

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE arrives with the precision of a parable and the weight of a cautionary tale. Directed by Eugène Green, the film is steeped in his signature style — deliberate, poetic, and slightly otherworldly. Still, this time, it is framed around the cultural and social shifts reshaping Lisbon. While his visuals have often used spiritual allegories to comment on fractured societies, here the target is both timely and universal: unchecked tourism, the commodification of culture, and the moral choices left to those who inherit a changing world.

Revenge Wounds That Refuse to Heal

Derelict

DERELICT is the kind of film that thrives on discomfort. Jonathan Zaurin’s sophomore feature plunges into a world of grief, fractured memory, and retribution. Still, it does so with a level of artistry that makes it feel both punishing and magnetic. It opens with a crime that already happened, a life snuffed out, and the ripples of that moment spread outward across two families, each unraveling in different but equally devastating ways. This isn’t just another revenge drama—it’s a slow dissection of what violence leaves behind and how the pursuit of closure often leads to more destruction than healing.

Freedom That Demands Its Own Surrender

Hana Korea

HANA KOREA opens with a question that lingers with you: What happens when the place you fought so hard to reach doesn’t feel like home? Directed by Danish filmmaker Frederik Sølberg, this feature debut blurs the line between fiction and documentary to tell the story of Hyesun, a young woman who defies her North Korean regime only to discover that South Korea is not the promised land she had imagined. It is instead another arena of rules, expectations, and subtle alienations.

Fighting for Belonging in a World That Looks Away

A Place Where I Belong

A PLACE WHERE I BELONG begins in a way that feels both intimate and immense. What unfolds isn’t just another documentary about identity—it’s a feature debut that tells stories often neglected in both queer and disability cinema. Director Rheanna Toy captures the lives of six individuals—Amyn, Alison, Lyle, Noah, Peter, and Brian—as they navigate what it means to be LGBTQIA2S+ and living with intellectual or developmental disabilities. At the center is their participation in Connecting Queer Communities (CQC), a program that offers a sense of belonging, solidarity, and a haven in Vancouver’s Lower Mainland. However, with funding in jeopardy, the program’s delicacy becomes a chilling metaphor for how society treats its most marginalized members.

When Music Becomes a Weapon Against Silence

Starwalker

With STARWALKER, Corey Payette attempts something rarely seen in contemporary cinema: a fully staged, unabashedly queer musical that blends Indigenous storytelling, drag spectacle, and intimate drama. For Payette—already a respected Anishinaabe composer and playwright—this is both a continuation and an expansion of his mission to reimagine musicals as more than escapist entertainment. STARWALKER pushes forward into the present, marrying drag performance with the cultural grounding of a Two-Spirit identity. The result is messy at times, dazzling at others, but always bold.

How a One-Joke Premise Stretches Into Cult Status

The Odd Job [Blu-ray]

At first glance, THE ODD JOB feels like an easy sell. Graham Chapman, just off the height of Monty Python’s success and on the cusp of LIFE OF BRIAN, co-writes and stars in a dark comedy about a man so desperate that he hires someone to kill him. Directed by Peter Medak and featuring David Jason, Diana Quick, Richard O’Brien, and Carolyn Seymour, the film assembles a lineup of British talent that should, by all accounts, have guaranteed success. Yet the result is something stranger: a black comedy that teeters between brilliance and commonness, remembered today as much for its production oddities as for its jokes.

The Birth of the Disaster Film Blueprint

Airport (4KUHD)

AIRPORT arrives with the kind of Hollywood bravado only 1970 could muster: a sprawling ensemble, a bestselling novel as source material, and the promise of spectacle wrapped in a glossy studio production. George Seaton’s adaptation of Arthur Hailey’s hit book doesn’t just chart one perilous night at Lincoln International—it all but invents a genre, laying down the tarmac for a decade of big-budget disaster films to follow. Watching it now, especially in Kino Lorber’s new 4K restoration, is to witness the moment when melodrama, spectacle, and procedural collided at cruising altitude.

The Slow Bloom Under Snow

My Sunshine (Boku no Ohisama)

The film opens in winter and lingers there—not for elegance, but for the way snow transforms a place and how people move through it. That choice tells you a lot about how MY SUNSHINE operates. Hiroshi Okuyama favors small gestures and unforced moments, letting the season become a quiet metronome for emotional time. The story tracks a boy written off as the worst on his hockey team, the girl whose figure skating seems to promise escape, and a coach who recognizes something familiar (and faintly wounded) in both of them. What starts as mentorship gradually reshapes itself into a delicate triangle—supportive, protective, and then, inevitably, strained.

A Life Lived Louder Than Headlines

Queen of Manhattan

The movie begins where myth and rumor often intersect: a cramped apartment, a hungry city, and a young woman seeking a way out. QUEEN OF MANHATTAN isn’t just recreating a time and place; it’s arguing that 1970s–80s Times Square functioned like an engine—one that chewed people up, spit them out, and occasionally turned someone into a legend. In centering Vanessa Del Rio’s rise, the film threads a needle biopics often miss: it treats the adult industry as labor, not a punchline, and it respects the performer’s intelligence about her own image. The result is a pulpy, neon-drenched portrait with moments of tension, even when it leans a bit too hard on familiar rags-to-riches cliches.

A Daughter’s Journey Through Chaos and Love

Brownsville Bred

BROWNSVILLE BRED anchors us firmly in the lived-in reality of memory, community, and survival. Elaine Del Valle’s debut feature feels less like a conventional movie and more like an act of reclamation — the reshaping of pain, resilience, and cultural identity into a narrative that refuses to compromise its truth. Adapted from Del Valle’s acclaimed stage play and autobiographical novel, and expanded from her SXSW Audience Award-winning short, the film emerges as a raw yet vibrant testament to the power of storytelling born from personal experience.

The Film That Keeps Cutting Into Culture

Chain Reactions

CHAIN REACTIONS isn’t a “making-of.” It’s a meditation on why a scrappy 1970s horror film keeps rattling around in our collective headspace, and how it continues to shape artists five decades later. Alexandre O. Philippe treats the subject with the same introspective rigor that has become his signature: isolating a foundational text, assembling an eclectic group of icons, and asking not what happened on set, but what the film did—and still does—to our senses, our anxieties, and our art. The result is a confident, idea-forward documentary that’s equal parts criticism, confession, and cinematic séance.

Where Mindfulness Meets Mayhem

The White Lotus - Season 3

I had heard about this series for years, but this was my first time diving in, so, of course, I had to binge it all! The return trip to Mike White’s luxury pressure cooker trades cabanas for kombucha, repositioning the show’s signature social X-ray inside a Thai wellness resort that promises transcendence while serving the same old human mess. Season 3 doesn’t try to reinvent the series so much as refine its favorite maneuver: assemble combustible personalities, apply the slightest pressure, and watch entitlement dress itself up as enlightenment. The setting may sell serenity, but the show understands that people who book “transformational experiences” tend to arrive pre-transformed into exactly who they will remain.

Leela and Fry’s Romance Gets Another Twist

Futurama - Season 13

Few animated shows have survived as many cancellations, revivals, and resurrections as FUTURAMA. After more than two decades, the series continues to prove that it thrives on unpredictability. Season 13 is a confident continuation of the show’s ability to merge science fiction satire with absurd, although mostly family-friendly comedy. It’s a season that dares to be both silly and smart, sometimes struggling, but still delivering a nostalgic yet fresh experience that feels like exactly what fans signed up for.

Buddy Comedy With an Old-School Kick

London Calling

When the crime world collides with mentorship, the results can be both explosive and surprisingly tender. LONDON CALLING leans into that contradiction with gusto, offering an action-comedy that’s equal parts shootouts, road movie, and unlikely bonding. Directed by Allan Ungar, who previously collaborated with Josh Duhamel, the film aims to deliver entertainment that recalls the buddy movies of the 1980s and 1990s while carving out a contemporary spin.