Sara Clements

For Episode 448, Nadia Dalimonte, Sara Clements, Alyssa Christian, Will Mavity, and I are here to discuss our Midyear Oscar Winners and our most anticipated Oscar contenders from the second half of 2025. We tie this conversation into this week’s poll as we ask, “Which Possible Oscar Contenders Are You Most Looking Forward To For The Rest Of 2025?” We also reveal the winner of last week’s poll, where we asked, “Which Is The Best Film Of 2025 So Far?” We also share our reactions to the trailers...

For Episode 447, Lauren LaMagna, Dan Bayer, Katie Johnson, Sara Clements, and I are here to discuss which films are our favorites from the first half of 2025 and which we deem to be realistic Oscar contenders. We tie this conversation into this week’s poll as we ask, “Which Is The Best Film Of 2025 So Far?” We also reveal the winner of last week’s poll for the release of “28 Years Later,” where we asked, “Which Is Your Favorite Danny Boyle Film?” We also give our reactions to the trailer for ...

When 28 Days Later erupted onto screens in 2002, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland didn’t just resurrect the zombie genre – they rewrote its DNA. Gritty digital cinematography, adrenalized pacing, and a hauntingly plausible viral outbreak made their original film feel as if the apocalypse could break out in our backyard. It wasn’t about the undead; it was about rage and what it stripped from humanity. The infected weren’t shuffling corpses – they were sprinting symbols of uncontrol...

In “The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard,” director David Verbeek plunges us into a dying world, one already halfway gone to flame and flood. The film opens not with an image but with disembodied voices: news radio reporting wildfires, unrelenting rain, and rising temperatures — soundscapes not of dystopia but of our own unnervingly real present. From there, Verbeek delivers a jagged fairy tale of survival, exploitation, and reluctant evolution. “The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard” is a startling meditation on what it means to grow up when the future has already burned down....

In a world that hums with the constant buzz of notifications and digital chatter, “The End of Quiet” examines what we lose in all that noise. Set deep in the remote woods of West Virginia’s Green Bank — a town both shielded and stranded by its silence — this hauntingly poetic documentary opens with the crackle of static, the sound of a universe whispering, something normally unheard by the cacophony of modern life. Directors Kasper Bisgaard and Mikael Lypinski transport us into the heart of America’s “Quiet Zone,” where radio silence is necessary, cell towers are outlawed, and time seems to...

Like a vintage typewriter jammed halfway through a psychedelic spiral, “Gonzo Girl” stutters between chaos and coherence; Patricia Arquette’s directorial debut is a place where the air is thick with nostalgia, cocaine, and the fading aura of a mythic man named Walker Reade (Willem Dafoe), a thinly veiled stand-in for Hunter S. Thompson. Through the wide, wary eyes of Alley Russo (Camila Morrone), an aspiring writer drawn into Reade’s orbit as his new assistant, we witness the slow collapse of an icon who once roared with the counterculture but is now a forgotten legend. This isn’t just a....

Two years after Asteroid City, Wes Anderson returns with The Phoenician Scheme, a film that showcases his familiar style but ventures into uncharted emotional and philosophical territory for the director. Set against sun-drenched deserts and aging empires, this is still very much Anderson in style – symmetrical compositions, deadpan humour, meticulous mise-en-scène, and chapter titles abound – but these flourishes are applied with a more subdued brush. It may not be as visually flamboyant as ...

In a culture gripped by true crime, where everyone becomes a detective and podcasts dissect every minor inconsistency, “Re-Creation” is a film that challenges how we decide what we believe. Many may question the film’s purpose, but if you’ve ever watched a true crime documentary, you have probably wondered about the what-ifs: what if the police hadn’t done this, what if they had reexamined that, or what if they hadn’t missed this? This film is born out of those questions. Co-directed by Jim Sheridan (who also stars in the film as the foreman of the jury) and David Merriman, “Re-Creation”...

With “Inside,” first-time feature-film director Charles Williams doesn’t just craft a prison drama — he builds a slow-burning crucible of the soul, where punishment comes not from the walls or the guards but from the echoing question of what makes a man what he is. Anchored by aching performances from newcomer Vincent Miller and Cosmo Jarvis, alongside a quietly devastating Academy Award-nominated Guy Pearce (“The Brutalist“), “Inside” burrows deep into the intergenerational scars of violence, absence, and identity. The result is a film that doesn’t concern itself with jailbreaks or corrupt...

There’s something quietly affecting about “Dragonfly,” the latest from director Paul Andrew Williams. Set in a tightly knit housing block where neighbors live practically on top of one another yet remain largely unaware of each other, the film initially presents a delicate and thoughtful portrait of loneliness, aging, and the small kindnesses that make life worth living. For most of its runtime, it’s a charming, poignant piece that captures something honest and tender about the lives we overlook. Then it all falls apart.

At the center of “Dragonfly” are two women living side by side....

There’s a rare kind of film that doesn’t just tell a coming-of-age story but suspends it in time as if caught between the last glimmer of innocence and the first shiver of knowing. “Cuerpo Celeste,” the achingly beautiful debut from Chilean writer-director Nayra Ilic García, is one such film — a quiet earthquake of emotion set against a backdrop of personal and political transition. The year is 1990, and as Chile emerges from the long shadow of dictatorship, fifteen-year-old Celeste (played with startling maturity by newcomer Helen Mrugalski) faces the collapse of her own world on a....

In “A Bright Future” (“Un futuro brillante”), Uruguayan filmmaker Lucía Garibaldi follows up her Sundance-winning debut “The Sharks” with a film set in a vaguely post-apocalyptic South America. Her second feature doesn’t display the kind of dystopia where the sky is perpetually ablaze or cities crumble under robot insurgency. Instead, this is a world disarmingly close to our present. It’s a dystopia that weaponizes hustle culture to mean opportunity, self-improvement, and a “better life.”

At the film’s center is Elisa (a remarkably intuitive performance from first-time actor Martina...

From the very first frame of “Underland,” it’s clear that this is not just a documentary – it’s a descent, a pilgrimage into the deep unknown. Adapted from Robert Macfarlane’s acclaimed book and brought to life by director Robert Petit, “Underland” doesn’t simply depict underground spaces – it inhabits them. It whispers ancient myths, digs through scientific frontiers, and listens to the heartbeat of the Earth itself.

The film begins not with spectacle but with simplicity, opening with the image of an old ash tree, projected in stunning black and white like a scene from a silent film....

"Inglourious Basterds,” starring an all-star international cast including Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger, Mélanie Laurent, August Diehl, Julie Dreyfus, Sylvester Groth, Jacky Ido, Denis Ménochet, Mike Myers, Rod Taylor, Martin Wuttke & B.J. Novak. Taking us back to WWII and re-writing history in the process through the power of cinema, how does the film hold up all these years later? Please join Sara Clements, Josh Parham, Da...

THE STORY – Aisha is a 26-year-old Sudanese caregiver living in a neighbourhood in the heart of Cairo where she witnesses the tension between her fellow African migrants and local gangs. Stuck between an undefined relationship with a young Egyptian cook, a gangster that blackmails her into an unethical deal in exchange for safety, and a new house she’s assigned to work in, Aisha struggles to cope with her fears and lost battles, causing her dreams to cross with reality and leading her to an i...