Ann Dexter, daughter of an itinerant Haiti waterfront character, Carl Dexter, brings a golden idol, which her father her stolen at a voodoo ceremony, to Bill Buchanan, who is known along the waterfront as a man eternally on a treasure hunt. He agrees to let Ann accompany him in search of the treasure after a native he befriended gives him directions and certain voodoo secret charms. They follow an underwater passage to an island where they find a Pagan tribe. They learn that the golden idol is a burial symbol representing the dead and that hundreds of idols are at the bottom of the sacred burial lake.
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.
Many have interpreted Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon as a dream sequence, but what if the repetitive scenes we are given are not dreams but, a time loop.
It surely isn't for everybody and could certainly offend some folks, but Troll Hunter takes a different approach to representing religion in a film.
“I’m always interested in exploring female fantasy, and the sexy witch is a loaded archetype that is simultaneously about men’s fears and fantasies about women, and women’s feelings of empowerment and agency. So whereas we are used to seeing the sexy witch or the femme fatale from the outside, I wanted to explore her from the inside.” - Anna Biller, on why she made The Love Witch
Who knew a drunken game of truth or dare could launch one of the most chaotic rom-coms of the year? The Threesome takes Connor’s fantasy night with Olivia (Zoey Deutch, in peak queen-of-indie form) and Jenny (Ruby Cruz) and flips it into a deliciously messy nightmare when both women end up pregnant. What follows isn’t cheap comedy—it’s a whip-smart, heartfelt exploration of love, consequence, and the beautiful disasters we call adulthood.
Can a piece of bad representation truly be reclaimed? We Are Pat (2025) attempts to answer this question.
