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Continue reading →: The Films of 2025: Quarter 1 in Review (Top 5 Best and Bottom 5 Worst, Best Performances)Oscar season has finally passed, clearing the air for new films to introduce themselves to the world and hope to stay alive in the conversation throughout the year and beyond. Typically, three months into the year, you’re lucky to get one major film that stands out, but with studios less…
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Continue reading →: Review: ‘Black Bag’ is the pseudo-60s spy thriller we’ve desperately neededSteven Soderbergh announced retirement nearly a decade ago and ever since, he’s been the most creatively charged he’s been in decades, pumping out interesting idea after interesting idea, sometimes twice a year, and adding a surplus of fresh titles to his gargantuan filmography. His newest, Black Bag, may be the…
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Continue reading →: Final 97th Oscars Winner PredictionsWe’re finally here in the homestretch! Now, I was going to write a whole piece, but truthfully, all of this is going off of gut feeling and prior precursor obviousness. What I’ll say is I spent weeks battling with myself over the categories of Best Actress, Best Documentary Feature, Best…
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Continue reading →: Ranking Every 2025 Oscar-Nominated Feature FilmAfter declaring last year that I would attempt every year to see every single nominee at the Oscars before the ceremony (or as many as possible given the accessibility), two things dismantled my goal: One, Matteo Garrone’s nominated International Feature Io Capitano took months to show up on VOD and…
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Continue reading →: Sundance Review: ‘Bunnylovr”
Lathered in the cold blue glow of laptop screens and sprinkled with a dash of Charlie XCX soundtrack cues, Katarina Zhu’s directorial debut Bunnylovr promises an cool and honest, uncompromising modern look at sexuality in the age of webcam communication. In the last five years, Facetime-style communication has grown to…
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Continue reading →: Sundance Review: ‘Love, Brooklyn’
It’s easy to assume what type of movie you’re getting when you hear a title like Love, Brooklyn. The two main subjects are right there in the name, but while this may come off as a love letter to its city or a series of adorable meet-cutes in the concrete…
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Continue reading →: Sundance Review: ‘Plainclothes’
It’s hard not to think about Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” when discussing the premise of Carmine Emmi’s new dramatic pseudo-thriller Plainclothes. The pressure of feeling under surveillance for just living your true life. Our main character, Lucas, employed as the “watcher”, who slowly unravels under the intense nature of his…
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Continue reading →: Sundance Review: ‘Omaha’
For anyone familiar with Robert Machoian, his first directorial feature The Killing of Two Lovers (2020) is a gorgeously-shot, but ultra-grim, gut-puncher. His follow-up, The Integrity of Joseph Chambers (2022) put critics in the same state of mind. Now, he doesn’t return to direct this new John Magaro-led tearjerker Omaha,…
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Continue reading →: Sundance Review: ‘Bubble & Squeak’
Inspiration from other prestigious filmmakers spilling over into the work of new filmmakers has been a common trend since the start of the previous century. Often, it’s endearing homage or best case, subtle nods that allow these creatives to take what they’ve learned from their elders and form something new.…
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Continue reading →: Sundance Review: ‘Ricky’
Writer-director Rashad Frett’s 2023 short “Ricky” was a Sundance-selected short centered on a young man’s experiences relieved from incarceration, but burdened with parole. Two years later, he returns with a more fully-fleshed out feature-length version of this story, complete with a bigger cast. Expanding from short to feature can be…
FILM AND TELEVISION REVIEWS, AWARDS DISCUSSION, & OTHER GENERAL MUSINGS
EDITOR, SITE WRITER
Jakob Kolness
Minnesota Film Critics Association Member. Graduate of Film Studies, writer, novelist, filmmaker.
CURRENT 2026 OSCAR PREDICTIONS
“Bugonia”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“It Was Just An Accident”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“The Secret Agent”
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”
“Train Dreams”
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