January 29, 2024. Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A five-year old girl is trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her. Her name was Hind Rajab.
In Arabic with English Subtitles.
Rated R21 for Mature Content.
If you’ve spent any time on the weirder corners of the internet, you’ve probably heard of the "liminal space" Backrooms phenomenon. For the film adaptation, A24 handed the keys to 20 year old YouTube prodigy Kane Parsons, and he delivered an indie hit that is currently leveling the US box office with a genre piece that skips cheap gimmicks in favor of high art psychological horror.
Struggling furniture store owner Clark discovers a bizarre, glowing doorway in his basement that leads directly into the Backrooms—a seemingly infinite, yellow-walled maze that defies all laws of physics. When Clark vanishes into this reality-bending labyrinth, his therapist, Mary, goes in looking for him, only to get trapped in the exact same surreal, mind-warping nightmare.
In English
Rated NC16 for Coarse Language.
The film contains an utterance of religious profanity that exceeds IMDA guidelines. The line has been muted to be kept in line with guidelines.
TW: contains scenes with flashing lights, photosensitive audiences are to be advised
Every now and then, a genre film arrives out of nowhere to completely rewrite the theatrical rulebook, and this year, that lightning strike is Curry Barker’s Obsession.
The story kicks off when hopeless romantic Bear uses a eerie "One Wish Willow" to make his long time crush, Nikki, fall for him. It works, but with a massive catch: her newfound "love" instantly mutates into a blood soaked, obsessive situationship.
Produced on a shoestring budget of under a million dollars, this relentless piece of supernatural terror has exploded into an absolute box office success in the US. At the center of the madness is breakout star Inde Navarrette, delivering an incredibly unhinged and nuanced performance, cleverly using the horror framework to look at deeper anxieties surrounding control, consent, and women's bodily autonomy. Judging by the squirming and collective nervous laughter from our team during our preview screening, you are going to want to witness this instant cult classic in a packed theater full of gasping, screaming filmhomies.
In English.
Rated M18 for Violence and Sexual Scene.
Director Bruce Weber stitches together the life of charming jazz musician Chet Baker through archival footage, interviews, and his time filming with Chet himself a year before his death. Tracing Baker’s early days as a charismatic young trumpeter, his post-accident comeback, and a series of turbulent relationships, this Oscar-nominated documentary is at once a tender act of remembering and a deconstruction of the romanticised myth of Chet.
Ratings TBA.
When retired yakuza gunman Tetsuya “Phoenix Tetsu” Hondo refuses rival leader Otsuka’s offer to join him and abandon his old boss Kurata, plans to make their business respectable go awry and Tetsu finds himself in the crosshairs of Otsuka. Resolving to protect both Kurata and his lover Chiharu, Tetsu flees Tokyo, drifting across Japan with hired killers on his tail until whispers of betrayal begin to call for his return.
Across mesmerising avant-garde sets and the snowy landscapes of Japan, this stylish yakuza film is a 4K restoration of a cult classic by Seijun Suzuki with a jazzy score by Hajime Kaburagi.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
Rated PG.
