Having won acclaim for his Oscar-nominated documentary Mind the Gap, director Bing Liu makes his narrative feature debut with an adaptation of Atticus Lish's 2014 novel Preparation for the Next Life. Scripted by the Pulitzer-winning playwright Martyna Majok, it's a story of cross-cultural romance. But though the star-crossed lovers here are from very different worlds, none of their cultural differences matter. They're simply two humans, and what threatens to destroy their relationship are their very human flaws.
With Aliens, his sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien, James Cameron decided to up the ante by pluralising the titular monsters. With Influencers, writer/director Kurtis David Harder's welcome sequel to his entertaining 2022 thriller Influencer, it's the victims rather than the villain who have been multiplied. When you have a villain as fiendish as the murderous identity thief CW (Cassandra Naud), one is all you need.
To say the work of the French filmmaking duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani is divisive is an understatement. Like Tarantino and Eli Roth, Cattet and Forzani are obsessed with 20th century Italian genre cinema, and weave their influences into their work. But while Tarantino is a natural storyteller, the French duo are truer to their Italian influences in displaying nary the slightest interest in spinning a comprehensible narrative.
Two decades after co-directing 2004's Take Out with Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou has made her solo directorial debut with the Taipei-set family drama Left-Handed Girl. In the years since Take Out, Tsou has produced several of Baker's films, and Baker collaborates again here as co-writer and editor. Anyone familiar with Baker's filmography will recognise his influence here. Once again this is a film about working class strivers doing whatever they can to stay afloat; sex work rears its head; and like Tangerine, it was shot on an adapted iPhone.
(LINCROFT, NJ) -- New Jersey Film Academy presents Breaking In Lecture Series with Armand Assante on Wednesday, January 28, 2026 at Brookdale Community College. Join them for an evening with the award-winning actor. The event begins at 6:30pm.
Having won acclaim for his Oscar-nominated documentary Mind the Gap, director Bing Liu makes his narrative feature debut with an adaptation of Atticus Lish's 2014 novel Preparation for the Next Life. Scripted by the Pulitzer-winning playwright Martyna Majok, it's a story of cross-cultural romance. But though the star-crossed lovers here are from very different worlds, none of their cultural differences matter. They're simply two humans, and what threatens to destroy their relationship are their very human flaws.
With Aliens, his sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien, James Cameron decided to up the ante by pluralising the titular monsters. With Influencers, writer/director Kurtis David Harder's welcome sequel to his entertaining 2022 thriller Influencer, it's the victims rather than the villain who have been multiplied. When you have a villain as fiendish as the murderous identity thief CW (Cassandra Naud), one is all you need.
To say the work of the French filmmaking duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani is divisive is an understatement. Like Tarantino and Eli Roth, Cattet and Forzani are obsessed with 20th century Italian genre cinema, and weave their influences into their work. But while Tarantino is a natural storyteller, the French duo are truer to their Italian influences in displaying nary the slightest interest in spinning a comprehensible narrative.
Two decades after co-directing 2004's Take Out with Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou has made her solo directorial debut with the Taipei-set family drama Left-Handed Girl. In the years since Take Out, Tsou has produced several of Baker's films, and Baker collaborates again here as co-writer and editor. Anyone familiar with Baker's filmography will recognise his influence here. Once again this is a film about working class strivers doing whatever they can to stay afloat; sex work rears its head; and like Tangerine, it was shot on an adapted iPhone.
For the past seven decades or so, Nazis and Russians have been western action cinema's two main go-to villains. With Sisu: Road to Revenge, aging Finnish tough guy Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) joins Indiana Jones in becoming the rare action hero that has battled both Nazis and Russians.
