u/CandidReflection1936

There is a deep connection that can be made between a mother and daughter. Not everyone in life gets this bond, but for me, I’ll admit it, my mother is my best friend. Those of us who have this relationship with our mothers, we never want them to leave us. That inevitable truth, the fact of life, that we all will one day die still remains. It becomes our worst fear and the thought of it haunts our dreams. So to see what is one of my biggest fears explored through the form of animation, on the big screen, brought me to tears.

Leah Nelson both writes and directs Tangles, her directorial debut, and a perfected one at that. A beautifully crafted script and stunning black and white animated piece that pulls the viewer into its world. In 2010, cartoonist, writer and professor Sarah Leavitt published a graphic memoir titled Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me. Over fifteen years later, her memories have been turned into a feature length film. Exploring moments in Sarah’s life while using the animated form to take our deepest worries and most confusing thoughts and turning them into something visual for everyone to see.

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I discovered the show at two in the morning on a Tuesday, which is the exact hour I usually reserve for reviewing every conversational error I have made since the fourth grade. I was supposed to be answering an email from a teacher that began with the words "Just checking in," a phrase that always makes me feel like a patient who has wandered out of a facility in a hospital gown. To avoid this interaction, I opened Netflix and found something called Baby Reindeer. Given the title, I naturally assumed it was a festive holiday cartoon about a young caribou who overcomes a mild physical deformity through the power of friendship and teamwork.

Instead, it psychologically rearranged my internal organs.

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Guillermo del Toro's Spanish language film Pan’s Labyrinth turns twenty this year. The British Film Institute celebrates this along with the celebration of his Fellowship awarding. With few screenings at the cinema over the month of May, one very special screening occurred on Sunday 10 May, 2026. Del Toro himself proceeded the screening with a Q&A, and followed up with questions from the audience. Not only was Pan’s Labyrinth itself truly wonderful, and traumatizing, listening to the craftsman speak was remarkable, informative and purely entertaining.

Like many pieces of Del Toro’s cinema, you go into them thinking they could be simple children’s stories. Though they are definitely there for children to experience, they are nonetheless filled with strong dark themes. Perhaps you could call them warnings, as he does not shy away from the truth of the world. By keeping the idea that we must all die come through, as well as this foreboding element of obedience and disobedience, Del Toro creates films with more than one meaning. The younger audience may just see magic, horror and fantasy, but the older viewer is given the chance to read between the lines. So much more is hidden within if you just dig a little deeper.

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I went to see The Devil Wears Prada 2, with a trailer for the live-action remake of Moana shown beforehand*.* My roommate and I sat beside one another in the theatre and discussed the ridiculousness of a live-action film of an animation released 10 years ago in 2016, with Dwayne Johnson reprising his role as Maui.

Over the past two decades, there have been several remakes of classical Disney movies. The most notable one is Cinderella, released in 2015 starring Lily James in the titular role, and the original animated film released in 1950. This received much praise from viewers worldwide, with a critic rating of 84%, and an audience rating of 78% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Cinderella was thought to be a well-made movie, with more character complexities, changes to the traditional narrative, and was created at a time when the original animated film was and could be considered technologically ‘outdated’ and not as relatable to young audiences.

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Yes, Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, 2026) may be the world’s biggest film right now, and people are probably pretty tired of hearing about it. However, this film may be one of the best things to have happened to me in a while.

The last “good” film I saw in cinemas, or one that left an impact, was perhaps Iron Lung (Mark Fischbach, 2026). That film was made by an independent filmmaker and was a huge success, so it really says something about what the people actually want these days (also, the huge amount of crossover fanfiction now existing between Fishbach’s Simon and Gosling’s Grace tells us the masses yearn for the doomed spaceman yaoi). Both films take successful, yet relatively unknown media and transform them into something so palpable and heart-wrenching (in different ways).

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I genuinely do not think I have ever had that much of an experience watching a concert film since 1984’s Stop Making Sense with the Talking Heads. Yet somehow legendary filmmaker James Cameron, in choosing to step away from the Avatar franchise for a bit, collaborating with Grammy winner and Academy Award winning singer Billie Eilish, the two created something so lively and performative. So many singers and bands are filming their concerts, sharing their tours with the fans who could not originally attend in person. While yes it allows everyone to have access to the concert, they are not always more than simply a recording. With Cameron and Eilish working together, Eilish clearly with full creative freedom, this 3D experience truly makes you feel like you were there in person — with 100% less anxiety and stress.

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Mortal Kombat II is all at once a spectacularily stupid and extremely fun and entertaining flick; delivering high flying ultra violence, laughs and a surprisingly cogent plot. Tournament of fighters, save the universe, blah blah blah. I went in expecting for it to be a solid two hours of, hopefully, skillfull action choreography with some semblance to the video game's design and tone and it entirely exceeded my expectations.

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The Devils is a 1971 Warner Bros. movie, directed, written and produced by Ken Russell. Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave star, with support from Dudley Sutton. It is an adaptation of The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley and John Whiting’s 1960 play, The Devils. The movie was mainly shot at Pinewood Studios, London. It received an X rating in the U.K. and U.S. Several countries banned the movie or extensively edited it prior to release. The Vatican condemned the picture. Among the contemporary, negative reviews, Roger Ebert gave it zero stars. It won best director at the Venice International Film Festival and from the National Board of Review. It made $11-million in rentals.

Set during the plague, Reed plays Urbain Grandier, a Catholic priest and romancer in Loudun, France. Grandier gets a woman pregnant and leaves her, starting his myriad of troubles. He is also the obsession of Redgrave’s Sister Jeanne, a mother-superior nun who catches one glimpse of Grandier from her convent and begins having sexually charged visions involving the priest. Meanwhile, a baron, played by Sutton, comes to Loudun and begins tearing down its fortifications on orders from King Louis XIII (played by Graham Armitage) and Cardinal Richeleau (played by Christopher Logue). When Reed’s character puts a stop to the destruction of Loudun’s fortifications, the baron makes it his duty to ruin Grandier.

The Devils is based on a true story. I had never heard of the Loudun possessions before. Based on my preliminary research, it seems that The Devils sticks mostly to the facts of the 1634 witchcraft trial. History is often a lot darker than we like to imagine.

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20 years after its release, it is easier to understand exactly why James Gunn’s Slither has gained such a cult following. It is films like these that always do better years after their initial release. The film might have found its target audience in 2006, but what makes it better is that now, in 2026, it has grown enough to warrant a 4K restoration and anniversary re-release in cinemas.

Written and directed by Gunn, Slither takes on elements clearly inspired by horror and thriller films of the 1980s and 90s. Even as early on as the beginning of the film, viewers can sense and feel those elements that are recognizable and reminiscent of prior cinema. Before the film itself, you can tell that even back when he first began directing, Gunn took his passion for cinema and implemented it into his works.

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During my early teenage years in Latin America, I spent hours watching TV shows that depicted a life nothing like mine: six friends in New York, a man narrating his love life to his future kids, two vampire brothers fighting over a girl.

And somehow, as a boy growing up in the northeast of Brazil, I still found pieces of myself in them - just always from a safe distance.

Until I watched the first episode of Girls.

Hannah (Lena Dunham’s character on Girls) was also experiencing life from a very different lens compared to mine: I was not in New York, I didn’t have HPV, and I was not in love with a borderline crazy guy. However, both Hannah and I had something in common: We had no idea what the hell we were doing with our lives. We just knew we needed to do something with it.

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Now, before I start with my article-essay-rant, I must admit a few things. I love Marvel. Not just the comics, I love the movies. I grew up with a father who was a fan of the classic franchises like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones and most of all, Star Wars. I know it's easy to sequel shame, but I love the fact that they explored worldbuilding over various stories. The MCU scratched that itch for me, for a long, long time. It still does, just not to the same degree. I don't think it's as dead as folks say. Thunderbolts was fun, Spiderman broke a trailer record a month ago, and Doomsday will make a boatload of money. But it's not as culturally dominant as it used to be. Now, when I talk to my friends, all folks in their 20's, and I ask what they are excited for, I don't hear any MCU projects, I don't even really hear the massively popular Dune Movies. I have been hearing about Chris Nolan's new film, The Odyssey, a likely 3-hour mythological epic based on the book by Homer.

I'm not surprised by my fellow “Cinefile” friends, but I am confused to all ends why people who watch maybe 10 movies a year and would normally say something with a more prevalent cultural basis are choosing that. I am even more confused how not a soul is talking about the second largest franchise of all time releasing a film in less than a month, so much so, I forgot about it until now. Why has there been such a change from even 5 years ago?

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