Alejandro Amenábar’s debut Thesis fuses horror and thriller to probe our fascination with violence. This essay explores its metafilmic nature, tracing how voyeurism and desire emerge through plot, form, and setting—offering a prophetic reflection on today’s audience.

My first month on Columbia’s campus certainly didn’t see me lost for words. Where conversations about arts and media flow like the runny vanilla milkshakes from JJ’s Place, whimsical debates could be found left and right. Without fail, those to do with film tended to share a common denominator: the gradual progression of “what’s new in theatres” to “what’s your take on Wes Anderson’s films” to “what movie did you grow up on” to Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie .  The Bee Movie  had

We’ve all watched a movie with that pretentious person who insists that every single narrative element is a metaphor for something. You might hear them say “the curtains were blue to symbolize death,” or “the speed limit sign was 55 to symbolize drug abuse,” and other far-reaching, nonsensical comparisons. More often than not, these people's favorite movies are the ones where nothing that is happening is actually happening. Take American Psycho , where every scene can be unde

This review contains spoilers.  Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another  (Anderson) Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another  is his first movie set in the modern era, and incredibly relevant for the time. Anderson proclaims the importance of the undying spirit of revolution, even against the strongest fascist regimes, and how those who have love stand stronger and more resolute than people built around hate. It balances these ideas with thrilling action sequence

Alice Tully Hall  might be the best space that I have ever had the pleasure of watching a film in. The ceiling rises far above, making way for floor and balcony seating as if you were in an opera house. It is not technically IMAX, but it could have been with the size of the screen present in the theater. NYFF also announced that the space had been newly fitted with Dolby Atmos. The whole space feels like a concert hall, finely tuned purely for motion pictures. Every seat, all

This review contains spoilers. Park Chan-wook’s newest feature film No Other Choice is a South Korean capitalist critique through a provocative lens. It follows You Man-soo (Lee Byung-hun), a “paperman” of 25 years who has been fired as a manager from his company after restructuring by the new American owners. This prompts him to plan the murders of the three other men eligible for a job opening at the successful company Moon Paper, taking them out so that he can pass the in

A scene in Luca Guadagnino’s newest feature After the Hunt rehearses a familiar confrontation. Yale professor Hank (Andrew Garfield) has been accused of sexually assaulting a student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri). To his colleague Alma (Julia Roberts), with whom he shares a romantic past, he deploys every well-worn defense: Maggie tried to seduce him; she plagiarized, so she is now lying to discredit him. He even admits it sounds like a cliché.  At this point, a quarter of the way in

In the world of cinema, the concept of “betterment” often coincides with violent themes: narratives of ambition, vindication, or survival. But what happens when two films—one a somber European mystery and the other a cerebral sci-fi epic—approach self-improvement from the perspective of listening to yourself ? Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Double Life of Véronique (1991) and Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 (2024) might seem worlds apart, yet both explore how memory, intuition, and pass

Now that awards season is over, let’s discuss the imposter among a multitude of Oscar-worthy films. I’m talking about none other than Emilia Pérez , Netflix’s biggest flop. Viewers’ collective agreement that the film is garbage says enough; constantly hearing about how bad this movie is causes most people to decide against watching it. With that being said, I decided to take one for the team and watch Emilia Pérez for you. I saved you 2 hours and 12 minutes of your life. You

Cult cinema is fundamentally atypical. During your first viewing of a ‘cult classic,’ you might find it difficult to contain your...

Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016) opens with a colorful explosion of improbability: a traffic jam on a Los Angeles freeway transforms...

A yellow Volkswagen bus driving away into the void of a California sunset. Cut to black.  The final scene of Little Miss Sunshine is...

Following Bong Joon Ho’s masterpiece, Parasite , Mickey 17 is awkward, messy, and moralizing. Parasite ’s social criticism feels like a...

*Spoiler-heavy—not that people are racing to stream this wildly cerebral, game-changing, avant garde-Netflix original. Netflix’s 2021...

Somewhere between a photograph and a dream, La Jetée lives. It doesn’t move like a film, but it feels more alive than most. Chris...

The Brutalist (2024), directed by Brady Corbet, is an ambitious VistaVision epic spanning architecture, immigration, class struggle,...

This fall, fellow Columbia Sophomore, Francesca Carillo, and I excitedly took our seats at the 62nd New York Film Festival to see Luca...

Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist is filled with stunning visuals allegorizing the politics of fascist Italy, as well as precise...

Brooke Berman (Barnard ‘92) is an independent filmmaker, playwright, and author whose debut feature, Ramona at Midlife , released to...

Set in 1990s Cuba, Los Frikis tells the story of reserved 18-year old Gustavo (Eros de la Puente) and his rebellious older brother, Paco...