film festivals | The Last Movie Guy

Tornado (2025): When East Meets West in a Slow-Burning Duel

The longstanding romance between westerns and samurai films has yielded some of cinema’s most iconic hybrids from The Magnificent Seven to A Fistful of Dollars. Tornado (2025), the second feature from Scottish director John Maclean, joins this lineage with quiet confidence and striking visual precision. Known for Slow West (2015), Maclean once again proves his deep understanding of the western form, only this time, with the philosophical touch of the Japanese jidaigeki.

Hands Over the City: The Power of Corruption

Posted on July 22 by Hugo Pagan Soto

Few films achieve the narrative force that Francesco Rosi accomplishes in Hands Over the City (1963). In Venice, it would win the Golden Lion, and in Italian cinema, it would mark a turning point within the Neorealism movement. The film maintains the essence of Neorealism with its settings in real locations and its commitment to social reality, but it opens a new avenue with a more political, analytical discourse, committed to denouncing power structures. This would become Rosi’s trademark.

The Kingdom (2024): A Brutal Coming-of-Age in the Corsican Underworld

Posted on July 4 by Hugo Pagan Soto

The opening sequence of The Kingdom (2024) by Julien Colonna has a magical aura. Mystery surrounds the ceremony that introduces us to Lesia (Ghjuvanna Benedetti). There is an unusual beauty in the cadence with which the director portrays the ritual, contrasting Lesia’s innocence with the ferocity of the men butchering a freshly hunted animal. It’s a foreshadowing of what’s to come and the beginning of a circle that will inevitably have to close.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig: A Bold Act of Political Cinema

Posted on May 27 by Hugo Pagan Soto

In September 2022, the young Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini died while in the custody of the morality police in Tehran. Amini was visiting the city with her family and was arrested for allegedly not wearing the hijab correctly. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) by Mohammad Rasoulof weaves a fictional story rooted in the death of Mahsa Amini and the protests that erupted across Iran, which led to further violence and fatalities.

The Last Showgirl: The Twilight of a Star

Posted on April 29 by Hugo Pagan Soto

In February 1990, Pamela Anderson was Playboy magazine’s Playmate of the Month, and from that moment on, her world changed. Anderson became a sex symbol, and her image completely dominated the 1990s and the early 2000s. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the model lived rent-free in the minds of much of the male population. In The Last Showgirl (2024), she plays a Las Vegas dancer at the twilight of her career. In many ways, this role serves as an analogy for Anderson’s own career.