'Pain Hustlers' (2023): An Opioid Crisis
What starts off as a success story for a single mother living below the poverty line, slowly begins to weave itself into a tangled web of greed, guilt, and destruction.

An 8mm film by Isao Yamada.
What starts off as a success story for a single mother living below the poverty line, slowly begins to weave itself into a tangled web of greed, guilt, and destruction.
As this critic continues to look back at some of this Summer's films I have taken in, I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of the most overall unsettling trends in Hollywood over the last several years.....sequels, reboots, and remakes. Look, I am all for seeing more than one film for certain originals that made a splash, ie: "Jurassic Park", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Transformers", etc.
Gretel & Hansel falters due to its razor thin story and lack of characterization. It loses sight of horror’s key rule: In order to create an effective tale, characters and emotions must be emphasized.
'An American Werewolf in London' possesses a possible queer reading in the way it envisions a heterosexual romance being undone by the presence of a creature who embodies self-contentment in the face of social alienation.
From the cinematography to the script to the acting, Sorry, Baby is undoubtedly one of the best films of the year.