Christopher Machell

★★★☆☆ Actor Michael A. Goorjian may be best-known as Neve Campbell’s love interest in Party of Five, but he has been directing independent features since 1997. His paternal grandparents survived the Armenian genocide, and so his latest film Amerikatsi is a deeply personal film.

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★★★★★ Jafar Panahi’s sentence of six years in prison this July is the latest instance of harassment that the director has received from Iranian authorities, stretching back as far as 2010. Panahi has made a film about escaping Iran – in which he plays himself making a film about escaping Iran.

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★★★★☆ Julia (It Follows’ Maika Monroe) has moved with husband Francis (Karl Glusman) from New York City for a new marketing job in Bucharest. Spending her days alone and struggling with the language barrier, Julia starts to feel that she is being spied on from the apartment opposite theirs.

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★★★☆☆ Director Zach Cregger’s third feature is a tight, claustrophobic horror that starts strongly but descends into schlock and regrettable cliché in its final third. With surprises, compelling performances and strong visuals across the board, Barbarian warrants recommendation but with serious caveats.

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★★★☆☆ In the post-climate apocalypse, society has reverted to a form of feudalism where most people eke out survival in the wasteland while elites, living in Citadels, control the food supply. Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper’s fourth collaboration is a sci-fi fairytale whose aesthetics and performances aren’t quite matched by a run-of-the mill story.

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★★★★☆ David Gordon Green rounds out his trilogy with a definitive ending for the long-running horror series. An absurd, baroque, and jaw-droppingly ambitious capper to a franchise that has been defined by wild variations in quality, Halloween Ends’ reach may well exceed its grasp, but nevertheless offers a fearless and deranged vision in horror.

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★★☆☆☆ Dutch theatre and television producer Robin de Levita turns his hand to feature filmmaking with Lost Cos. Sadly, despite some cultish potential this aptly-titled debut feature is indeed a lost cause: an incoherent, undisciplined and tedious mess with little about it to truly recommend.

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★★☆☆☆ Best-known as Ryan from The Office: An American Workplace, B.J. Novak makes his feature directorial debut with this passable comedy thriller. Tinged with late-90s neo-noir vibes, Vengeance is an entertaining enough 100 minutes or so that more or less meet their modest if uninspiring ambitions.

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★★★☆☆ In his debut feature, director Chad Murdock explores the ways that memory and selfhood intersect in this enigmatic, personal drama. In its surreal rendering of space and character, Fingers in the Wind offers enough ambition, intelligence and unvarnished authenticity to warrant recommendation.

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★★★☆☆ British director Peter Strickland returns to screens with his fifth feature, a typically bizarre black comedy. Strickland’s signature dish of fetishism, Argento-esque horror, and British idiosyncrasy is served piping hot, even though Flux Gourmet sadly lacks something of the bite of his previous work.

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