Welcome to CFTCA’s monthly digest for June 2025, a roundup of recent reviews, features, interviews, and more by CTFCA critics.
Film Reviews
The Phoenician Scheme, Vulcanizadora, Materialists | Reviewed by Eric Zhu | Read the Reviews
“In some cases, the episodic narrative relies on characters in a manner incongruent with Anderson’s increasingly spectacular sensibility. This means that the quality of The Phoenician Scheme’s distractingly cameo-defined segments varies wildly depending on the strength of its guest performers.”
Find more of Eric’s work on The Insert.
28 Years Later | Reviewed by Marta Djordjevic | Read the Full Review
“It’s rare for a third entry in a series to feel this tender. Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later is a surprisingly soulful continuation of a story that began with rage — quite literally. Rather than replicate the raw grit of 28 Days Later, this film leans into quiet mythos and the lingering humanity within the infected.”
Find more of Marta’s work on Rewind and Revive.
Caught by the Tides | Reviewed by Dom Sinacola | Read the Full Review
“If you know nothing about Chinese writer-director Jia Zhangke—if this, just maybe, is the first film review you’ve read about the man’s work—know this: He is, in addition to a foundational voice in digital filmmaking and an essential chronicler of China’s transformational 21st century, one of cinema’s truly great Wife Guys.”
Find more of Dom’s work in the Portland Mercury.
Bring Them Down | Reviewed by Taylor Baker | Read the Full Review
“Andrews effectively utilizes the film’s constrained geography. The repetition of locations, coupled with the authenticity of Irish dialect and the particular dynamics of isolated rural communities where a known theft finds no legal recourse, creates an atmosphere of mounting claustrophobia.”
Find more of Taylor’s work on Drink in the Movies.
The Wolf, The Fox, and The Leopard | Reviewed by Elizabeth Mulloy | Read the Full Review
“Is our humanity something we’re born with, encoded in our DNA? Or is it something we acquire. Taught to us through civilization, education, and experience? That question sits at the heart of David Verbeek’s latest film, The Wolf, The Fox, and The Leopard, a years-in-the-making epic that overflows with themes and genres, resisting any easy classification.”
Find more of Elizabeth’s work on The Celluloid Correspondent.
Retrospectives
Bigger Than Life | Reviewed by Michael Clawson | Read the Full Review
“Melodrama gives way to domestic horror in Nicholas Ray’s phenomenal Bigger Than Life, a movie of feverish, boldly menacing visual style. Like Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss, the film points ahead to David Lynch’s surrealist suburban nightmares, exploring the latent violence and psychological tumult beneath the cheery facade of middle-class American family life.”
Find more of Michael’s work on Poetry in an Age of Missiles.
The Illiac Passion, The Death of Louis XIV | Reviewed by Eric Zhu | Read the Reviews
“The film’s final punchline, a scene of literal disembowelment, is the actual nail in the coffin for the body at its gravitational center. The Death of Louis XIV depicts the cruel ravages of time, and a Western society crumbling from the corrosiveness of its own toxicity. It’s a visceral film about living through the end of something, and in many ways, it’s the perfect movie for 2025.”
Find more of Eric’s work on The Insert.
Dead Man | Reviewed by Taylor Beaumont | Read the Full Review
“Ever since reading of Canadian director Chris Nash labelling his In a Violent Nature an ‘ambient slasher’—and ever since watching In a Violent Nature—I’ve recalibrated my thinking around what films can be, what they can achieve, and how we can interact with them. How might a film qualify as ‘ambient’? And are there other films befitting that descriptor?”
Find more of Taylor’s work on ForReel.
Into the Inferno | Reviewed by Dom Sinacola | Read the Full Review
“The more we burrow into Herzog’s past, the more the structure of the film begins to represent an inverted volcano, cone-shaped, with the inferno at the bottom, Herzog’s earliest flirtations with the void when he first went to La Soufrière, recognizing the fire at the core of him—an inexhaustible passion that may kill him, needing to burst forth.”
Find more Herzog analysis from Dom on the Werner Herzblog.
Features
Rick Chung’s Top 10 Films of the 21st Century | See the Full List
“It’s the greatest film I have ever seen every time I see it. In the Mood for Love is sensational filmmaking in its classically universal telling of romantic longing and forbidden love. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking in its melancholic hopefulness all the same.”
Find more of Rick’s work on his website.
Mann’s Sparks from imagineNATIVE 2025 | Reviewed by Dakota Arsenault | Read the Full Review
“Mann’s Sparks is a video essay like no others. The film, directed by Ryland Walker Knight, edits together ten songs from the dream pop band Beach House, each set to footage from nine Michael Mann films (and one TV show). The result is a music video like production where the audio and visuals come together to create something new, transforming both Mann’s filmography and the tracks from Beach House.”
Find more of Dakota’s work on Contra Zoom Pod.
Try a Little Tenderness: Cinema of Softness | By Marta Djordjevic | Read the Full Piece
Hear Marta’s thoughts on a collection of films that give you the space to be gentle with yourself.
Find more of Marta’s work on Rewind and Revive.
Podcasts
Contra Zoom Pod Ep. #307: Mission Impossible Ranked | Listen to the Podcast
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to listen to Dakota and Matthew rank the Mission: Impossible films to celebrate the release of the 8th entry (and possibly last film in the series?), The Final Reckoning. Joining the show is former co-host Rachel Ho, film editor at Exclaim!
Find more episodes on the Contra Zoom Pod website.