It’s sometimes hard to tell whether Wes Anderson gets more joy from assembling his ensemble casts or meticulously crafting his miniature dreamscapes. But in "The Phoenician Scheme," it’s not just visible — it’s palpable. Every frame hums with intention, with beauty, with a kind of quiet, obsessive passion. This is a deceptively delicate film: a confection dusted in desert sand, perfectly symmetrical and somehow still askew — like a compass caught in an identity crisis. It’s a tale of legacy and deception, of daughters and their shadowy fathers, of monopolies disguised as miracles… and.... bugs. But beneath all the Andersonisms — the ornate props, the ornate prose, the ornate everything — lies something I didn’t quite expect: a bruised and bewildered heart, beating just as loud as his recent works.

For a studio synonymous with spectacle, Thunderbolts* is an anomaly—and, paradoxically, one of its finest achievements. It is neither galaxy-spanning nor multiverse-breaking. There are no portals, no sky lasers, no races to retrieve glowing MacGuffins. Instead, Marvel’s latest swings the pendulum back towards something it seemed to have forgotten: people. Not pawns in a CGI chess game, but messy, wounded, quietly hopeful people trying to make peace with their pasts. And that shift, that defiant act of restraint, is what elevates Thunderbolts* from franchise filler to a genuinely affecting piece of cinema.

I can't remember the last time I finished a film feeling so broken and rage-filled that I wanted to scream at my TV, unplug it from the wall, and bury it. Bring Her Back isn’t just horror. It’s punishment. An unrelenting, claustrophobic descent into domestic trauma, possession, and the psychological rot that festers in the aftermath of unimaginable loss. If Talk to Me was a clever teen horror with emotional undercurrents, then this is its full-grown, emotionally mangled parent—drenched in grief, manic with delusion, and weaponised through the performance of a woman I thought I’d never fear: Sally Hawkins.

There are films that claim to echo with heart, with history, with heritage—and then there is "Sinners," Ryan Coogler’s audacious, transcendent blend of Gothic folklore, musical soulcraft, and cultural reclamation. It doesn’t just echo. It sings. It howls. It bleeds. From its first frame to its devastating final image, Sinners is a full-bodied spiritual experience masquerading as horror—a rare, roaring anomaly that doesn’t fit inside a genre but redefines what cinema can be when it chooses truth over trope.

In a media landscape overflowing with sensationalist ghost hunts and neon-soaked exorcism specials, "A Cursed Man" dares to do something audacious—and far more outlandish. It steps away from spectacle and into something much murkier: the psychological and philosophical weight of belief itself. Liam Le Guillou’s documentary isn't just a flirtation with the occult—it’s a full-on existential gambit, one where the filmmaker becomes both observer and sacrificial subject.

In "Blood Daughter," director Bryan Enk transforms the myth of Dracula into something stranger, more fractured, and more psychologically volatile than we’ve seen before. This is not just a retelling of Bram Stoker’s novel—it’s a self-aware haunting, a fever dream stitched from memory, mythology, and the burdens passed between generations.

Luz Cabrales’ "Shadows of the Past" is a lo-fi, homespun horror anthology that’s as earnest as it is uneven. At just 83 minutes and made on a shoestring budget of $15,000, the film wears its influences proudly—echoes of Tales From the Crypt and The Mortuary Collectionresonate throughout—but its ambitions, while admirable, sometimes outpace its execution.

There’s a thin line between genius and madness—and "Novocaine" misses it by a mile, faceplants through a wall, and just keeps going because pain isn’t really a concern. But... somehow, against all odds and most rules of screenwriting structure, this R-rated action-romance-thriller with a ridiculous premise pulls off something rare: it works. It’s not perfect, not always sharp, and certainly not subtle—but it works.

"Restless" is a quietly electrifying portrait of transformation, cloaked in the everyday. Jed Hart’s debut feature takes the most familiar of British settings—a tired estate, a lonely semi-detached house—and turns it into a psychological pressure cooker where the walls feel as thin as the line between decorum and disorder. 

GAME is the debut feature from INVADA FILMS, the newly launched arm of Bristol-based Invada Records, owned by film composer and Portishead co-founder Geoff Barrow, who also co-wrote and produced the project.

In The Order, director Justin Kurzel plunges us into the murky depths of 1980s America, unearthing a narrative that is as unsettling as it is compelling. This isn't just a film; it's a stark mirror reflecting the darkest corners of societal discontent.

What does it mean to dream when you’re always waking up to a world that demands you fight for every scrap of joy?