When Lee describes the photos that launched her career, she mentions covering an antifa massacre. It's unclear if antifa were the victims of the massacre or its perpetrators. This purposeful vagueness permeates most of Civil War. A film that explicitly doesn't want to “take a side”.. to even represent different sides. But in doing so, it can't muster anything to say, either about the terrors of war, the supposed toxicity of polarisation or the nobility of journalism. The film is…

I did not expect the ethereal, deliberately paced Evil Does Not Exist would resonate for me most profoundly as an allegorical parallel to the biggest news headline of the past month: the tale of Luigi Mangioni, a modern day folk hero who murdered the CEO of a parasitic health insurance company.

I've talked before about my frustration with a pervasive cultural obsession and a leering fascination with the evil actions of individual people, while there is comparable little regard for…

Ah yes exactly what the Final Destination movies needed: a demonic toy monkey sans a clear motivation rooted in (warped) values of justice and guided by a desire to right a perceived wrong (dodging destiny), instead killing at random and with barely a tenth of the creative artistry.

The deaths aren't even consistent - some are freak accidents, others a surprise medical malignancy, or suddenly psycho CG animals. This is real bad. Osgood Perkins is not a good filmmaker. This…

FEMME is a perpetual push and pull. Between masculine and feminine, dom and sub, victim and victimiser, soft and hard, Preston and Jules. But as the film progresses and deepens its two characters, binaries are blurred and burned, breaking the boundary between the two and the absurdity and toxicity of inhabiting just one. Our reaction to the film isn't binary either. We are caught in the fraught feeling of being both repelled and compelled by the actions of Preston, and…