Category: Review

While I couldn’t resist the curiosity of watching Melania on Amazon Prime for free—as anyone might be curious about what a well-shot documentary on the inauguration of an American president looks like—I found myself inevitably comparing it to Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s far more brilliant film about the rise of Adolf Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally. I can hardly recall another feature-length documentary centered on the ascent of a world political figure since Riefenstahl’s artful and controversial propaganda masterpiece—one that won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival before later being widely denounced.

Released in 1977, William Friedkin’s Sorcerer remains a classic thriller that still holds up nearly five decades later. It is a masterclass in filmmaking, proving that true craft is timeless. Cinema is literature in motion—just as a great novel can endure across generations, so can a great film. Well-crafted images, like well-chosen words, do not fade; they stand as lasting testaments to our history and humanity. Released just one month after Star Wars in 1977, Sorcerer faltered at the box office, grossing $9 million worldwide against a $21 million budget. Yet as filmmakers, we cannot control a film’s commercial fate. What we can control is the quality of the work itself—creating something so well made that future generations may rediscover it and recognize its worth.

Reminding me the early brilliance of Wong Kar Wai, Donna Ong’s fresh cinematic debut “Karma’s Meth Nightmare” is an imaginative experimental short dramatic film about a Nepalese teen experiencing a meth induced nightmarish and entertaining hallucination.

This Halloween season, I’ve been binging horror films and discovered some really compelling and genre defining new films. Check them out! #somefilmsforthishalloween

Audrey Rose was one of those films I had read about as a teenager in the 80s but bad never seen. Finally, I sat down, watched it and was surprised to find out that it was directed by the late Robert Wise, master of musical epics. While a compelling movie, Audrey Rose is a very flawed feature film, mostly because of Frank De Felitta’s problematic novel and screenplay. If a movie was flawed at the writing level, there really was no way the film could be great, which is exactly why Audrey Rose is a compelling but broken film.