Nestor Kok 8/12/25 Nestor Kok 8/12/25

MIFF 2025 | ‘The Mastermind’ review: Smart but meandering genre deconstruction

Despite its technical competence, Kelly Reichardt’s parable against upper-class hubris is as aimless as its leading man’s thousand-yard stare.

Nestor Kok 8/21/24 Nestor Kok 8/21/24

MIFF 2024 | ‘Oddity’ review: A monstrously good, multi-hyphenate horror feature

Writer-director Damian Mc Carthy’s second feature film is an intricately-crafted, genre-hopping cabinet of horrific curiosities.

Nestor Kok 8/19/24 Nestor Kok 8/19/24

MIFF 2024 | ‘The Shrouds’ review: David Cronenberg’s confounding exploration of personal grief

The Canadian body-horror maestro returns with a perplexing autobiographical thanatopsis that loses sight of itself within its own half-baked subplots.

Nestor Kok 8/16/24 Nestor Kok 8/16/24

MIFF 2024 | ‘The Girl With the Needle’ review: A bleak look at women’s rights… and women’s wrongs

Magnus von Horn’s Cannes competition debut is a slightly muddled but nonetheless thought-provoking and pertinent arthouse horror hybrid.

Nestor Kok 8/16/24 Nestor Kok 8/16/24

MIFF 2024 | ‘Dying’ review: Shaky family tragicomedy that still sticks its landing

Headed by a revelatory Lars Eidinger, Matthias Glasner’s autopsy of the nuclear family project handles its existentially weighty themes with equal pathos and panache.

Nestor Kok 8/15/24 Nestor Kok 8/15/24

MIFF 2024 | ‘Grand Theft Hamlet’ review: A rip-roaringly funny love letter to the arts

A vibrant, fascinating, and heartfelt look at the human drive to form communities — virtual or otherwise — in times of strife.

Nestor Kok 10/28/22 Nestor Kok 10/28/22

CIFF 2022 | ‘Chile ‘76’ review: A sharp, sensitive reckoning with Chile’s darkest year

Manuela Martelli draws on the fraught history of her family and home country to weave a haunting tale of life during civil wartime.

Nestor Kok 10/27/22 Nestor Kok 10/27/22

CIFF 2022 | ‘Somewhere Over The Chemtrails’ review: Absurd Czech dramedy that falls a little short

Adam Koloman Rybanský and his friends aim for the stars with their debut full-length dramedy, but get lost somewhere in the clouds (and the chemtrails) instead.