“Other Mommy” and Deuteronomy
This film’s ambition is betrayed by its lack of substance.

Gallagher weaves together an assemblage of films, creating a narrative through repetition. Documenting her experience caught between Athens and her new home in Northumberland, via a period of ‘uncertain waiting’ in the South East of England. Gallagher explores her sense of dislocation by organising footage from her phone into a visual villanelle, a poetic form with a strict rhyming structure and repeating lines. Footage shifts between presence and absence, movement and stasis. Between the sodium glow of the Athens street lights and the iconic bridges of the Tyne punctuated by sunsets and deluges of rain. Gallagher often draws attention to the overlooked, the ‘hidden in plain view’ aspects of life, questioning what we bear witness to and what we choose to ignore. Within the transitional period between lockdown and the easing of restrictions, Gallagher subtly explores emotional connections to home and place, considering what is outside and what we carry within.
This film’s ambition is betrayed by its lack of substance.
Dead Poets Society brilliantly combines defeat and optimism, rejection and love, craziness and daring, fear and freedom.
I Love You Forever, marketed as a “subversive” romantic comedy is in fact a painful horror film about a young woman deep in the throes of an abusive relationship.
'Do Revenge' offers a 2022-relevant sociopolitical commentary that decries virtue signaling while promoting the inclusive virtues the nefarious power structures exploit.
Taika Waititi writes, directs and co-stars in 'Boy', set in 1984 New Zealand. The film does just what Waititi dreamed of — it gave a great coming-of-age story to Māori people without making a story of the Māori people as an exotic other.
Him is visually stunning—all concrete cathedrals and bone-rattling impact shots that look like a nightmare highlight reel. Marlon Wayans is magnetic as this legendary quarterback who's basically selling salvation with a smile that never quite reaches his eyes. But the story keeps running in circles: more tests, more cryptic pep talks, more ritualistic drills. The sports-as-religion metaphor beats you over the head when subtlety would've been more effective. The middle drags, and that finale chooses spectacle over substance. It's undeniably stylish, but left me cold. Also worth noting: despite the Monkeypaw connection, this isn't actually a Jordan Peele film—he didn't write or direct.