The Best NR Movies to Watch (+Mood: Discussion-sparking)

For the longest time, land was where people formed strength in community, where people were born, lived, died, and was buried in, but it was also how empires grew in power, often at the expense of the people that came before. Exhuma is centered in a haunted burial site of a Korean family that migrated […]

Are connections truly fated, completely chosen, or purely circumstantial? The slow tragedy of Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle hangs entirely on the question, which captivated readers and filmmakers with the concept, including Bertrand Bonello, which forms the foundations of 2023’s The Beast. Bonello lets loose The Beast in the Jungle into an AI […]

Just based off its title, Mutt is already a film that tackles a state of in-between, and perhaps what makes it already precious is how honest and personal it can get, while remaining a good fictional story. This striking debut took Chilean-Serbian filmmaker Vuk Lungulov-Klotz more than six years to make, at least from the […]

While the market for animation is mostly dominated by American 3D and Japanese anime, once in a while, a film outside the two industries comes up with an entirely new style of its own, with the design inspired by their respective countries. European animation has garnered some interest with Loving Vincent, but Chicken with Linda! […]

Formally speaking, 20 Days in Mariupol is little more than a compilation of footage bravely collected by Mstyslav Chernov in Ukraine, excerpts of which may seem familiar from when they were broadcast by major news stations. Unsure of whether or not Chernov would survive long enough to pass on his footage, he shot as much […]

For a short while in the ‘80s, the pop scene benefited from the sheer musical joy created by George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, known together as Wham! With confectionary hits like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and “Last Christmas,” the  British duo sang about the escapism that a generation desperately sought out. Their songs […]

Huesera: The Bone Woman might not be the scariest film horror fans would see, but it does strike at the heart of the scary experience of motherhood. Through eerie sounds of breaking bones and weirdly contorted hands at the edge of beds, the film depicts new mother Valeria being haunted by the titular spirit, despite […]

While named as a “how-to”, How to Have Sex is less of an instruction manual, and more of a collection of summer break moments presented as is. At the start, when Tara, Em, and Skye run to the freezing ocean water, the film seemed like it would have all the nostalgic coming-of-age moments that they […]

Sophie Compton and Reubyn Hamlyn’s British-American documentary about the harm of deepfakes won the SXSW Special Jury Award for its innovative storytelling and deservingly so. The two filmmakers use a clever and considerate way to let a young woman fictitiously named Taylor share her story of how she found deepfake pornography of herself online. With […]

Horse riding. Gunslinging. Revenge and protection. These are notable elements in a Western, Spaghetti or otherwise. But rarely do these movies contemplate the indigenous tribes that originally lived in these desert towns, right before they were chased away and killed by white colonizers. Writer-director Felipe Gálvez Haberle takes these elements to showcase a new perspective […]

Initially, A Revolution on Canvas is about the Nodjoumi family’s quest to retrieve the patriarch’s missing paintings in post-Islamic Revolution Iran. Necessarily, it goes through Nodjoumi’s troubled childhood and shocking life as a resilient revolutionary. But the documentary eventually evolves into a knotty and heartbreaking tale about family, specifically about the sacrifices the partner of […]

If you’re hard working and well-situated enough, you get to chase and achieve and live out your dreams for your whole life. But if you’re lucky enough, you get to choose how you’ll leave. Swan Song is the journey Canadian ballet icon Karen Kain took to direct one last production of Swan Lake just before […]

It’s easy to identify what Bone Cold is trying to be, which is a psychological thriller that explores the traumatized psyches of military personnel. And initially, the film achieves this goal. The inhuman creature that creeps from behind genuinely startles, and the movie is able to effectively connect the monster to lead sniper Jon Bryant’s […]

It’s a bold move, centering a drama around a creature as docile as a donkey, but EO pulls it off without ever leaning on the crutch of CGI. Instead, the film makes ingenious use of a hundred-year-old film technique: the Kuleshov effect. By splicing the image of the titular donkey’s placid, expressionless face against visual […]

As a story, Bruiser isn’t the most tightly written thing in the world, with a somewhat long-winded first half and a conclusion that feels too easy given the complicated things we learn about each character. But at its core, it remains impressively perceptive about how men perform their masculinity as a game of aggression and […]

It’s not easy to abandon the past. Even if you want to shed your new identity, the memory of what you’ve done still linger in other people’s minds, especially if guns and violence are involved. Old Henry is one of the few Westerns that actually examines that. Of course, it holds some of the classic […]

Rather than talking about what it takes to get to the other side of the border, Identifying Features instead focuses its attention back home. It’s part of the reason why the film actually highlights how difficult this actually is– Before even reaching it, people hoping to enter America go through a dangerous journey, many of […]

When striving towards your life goal, some concessions have to be made in order to get there, e.g. you would forgo some wants in order to fulfill that higher purpose. But how much are you willing to sacrifice? Mario is a sports drama about an aspiring football player that wants to make it higher up […]

Most sports biopics are centered around winners– their drive, their spirit, and their determination to beat the competition, and maybe win some glory for their respective teams, hometowns, or countries. The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki instead focuses on a Finnish boxer that lost a match. Shot in 16mm black and white […]

While initially commissioned to be an atomic bomb documentary, Hiroshima Mon Amour became something entirely different. For starters, it’s not a documentary, with director Alain Resnais recruiting author Marguerite Duras to write the screenplay, but it was pretty unusual for a narrative film at the time. It’s a love story, yes, but with such a […]

You know how many films depict the magic and wonder of cinema in such gorgeous, magnificent scenes? Peeping Tom does the opposite. Sure, it has director Michael Powell’s signature flair, with excellently framed and colored shots, but he takes a much more violent route here, swapping spectacular fantasy with the psychological terror of how the […]

Nearly a decade after the Hays Code, the time for glorified gangsters was over. However, before Hollywood shifted their gaze to the European-inspired, shadowy film noir, the gangster bid one last adieu in High Sierra. It was this very concept that was the foundation of the story– bringing back a robber for one more heist– […]

Long before his battles with King Kong, this sci-fi classic set the foundations of what was to become the world’s longest running film franchise. It’s an interesting rewatch, decades later. That’s not because the monster in the title is huge and awesome, though it certainly helped when it finally emerged from the water. No, what […]

What would you do if your parents were Nazis? Based on the second novella of Rachel Seiffert’s The Dark Room, Lore tells the story of a Nazi officer’s children travelling together after the Allied victory. It’s a harrowing journey, of course, given the end of the war. But writer-director Cate Shortland takes that journey even […]

While zombies weren’t new in film, it wasn’t until writer-director George A. Romero’s Living Dead saga that the zombie as we know it today was created. Day of the Dead is the third in the franchise, and like Night and Dawn, Romero was more interested in the way humans were the threat, more so than […]

In a few seconds, a mistake can change your life forever. Insomnia is centered on a Swedish detective trying to solve a murder while trying desperately to cover a mistake made from the difficult mix of the fog and human exhaustion, but in doing so, his guilt, shame, and suspicion that no one would believe […]

For better or worse, death strikes us all, fast and unexpectedly. It’s tough enough if the death is caused by ill health or accidents, but when premeditated by another person– it can be easy to lose faith in a higher power. Secret Sunshine depicts a grieving mother trying to start a new life in the […]

Anthology films aren’t for everyone, but it’s a fitting choice for 4 Moons. With each moon phase representing the stage in the couples’ respective relationships, the film gets to explore gay relationships in such a comprehensive way, creating a bird’s eye view of how lovers like the couples in the film live and love. It’s […]

Gilda is Rita Hayworth’s film. She didn’t direct it, but it feels like it’s hers. It’s hers in the sense that she’s probably the first thing that comes to mind when recalling the movie. Part of that recall could be because the whole film is named after her character, but it mostly makes sense because […]

After humanity has inflicted horrendous atrocities to each other during the world wars, it’s no wonder that there was a lingering distrust that led to the current state of politics today. It’s this suspicion that drives the mystery of Pickup on South Street, the city-sleek crime film that bridged the 40s noir with Cold War-era […]

Bad Boy Bubby is not an easy watch. Within the first ten minutes, the indie drama seemed to be one of those films created only to provoke the viewer, and not much else. We won’t deny that the intro is provocative– in fact, we’re warning you outright that it includes domestic violence, abuse towards the […]

Something about falling in love in an exotic place makes it feel much more romantic, leading to plenty of classic black and white films centered on the idea, with a visual language and a set of aesthetics meticulously enacted in 2012’s Tabu. These classic films, however, rarely contemplate the actual reality behind these films– the […]

Holiday marked Katharine Hepburn’s Hollywood comeback, and for good reason– she’s the best out of the cast, she’s downright magnetic, and her dynamic with Cary Grant is effortlessly compelling. All of these elements would have made a standard romcom work. However, there’s more to Holiday than what meets the eye. Underneath this droll comedy of […]

In response to violence, some people consider aggression as the only solution, especially in a place that cannot rely on institutions– fighting fire with fire, but fighting for the good. Tyrannosaur depicts a British town with men that only operate on a mix of this idea, but this rage becomes relentless, unceasing, and never lies […]

War Witch is depressing to watch. Having to choose between killing your parents yourself versus having them killed in a worse fashion by someone else is a cruel selection no child deserves to make, and War Witch poses that selection literally within the first five minutes, inspired by the real life recruitment mechanisms of child […]

Most people aspire to have families, deciding to form their own by marrying, bearing children, and if fertility makes that impossible, adopting one. The Official Story is centered on upper middle class Alicia, who’s already made the idyllic family life, with the last piece completed with her adoption of Gaby, but there are secrets held […]

The Cuban bolero, not to be confused with the Spanish dance, is a Latin ballad form that spread all throughout the Americas, and even the whole world, that mixed and mingled with and influenced jazz in the 1940s and 50s. Chico & Rita celebrates this music, as well as the nightlife that made these sounds […]