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

Rating: 5 out of 5.

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.

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The Last Showgirl: The Twilight of a Star

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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.

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SINNERS (2025): The Devil’s Blues

Rating: 4 out of 5.

As an art form, cinema has at its core the vocation to entertain the audience. Sinners (2025), by Ryan Coogler, fully embraces both audiovisual artistry and cinematic spectacle. The director and screenwriter crafts a work that invites critical analysis from multiple angles while delighting the audience on a journey reminiscent of those bygone summer blockbusters. Here, substance and style merge to create a genre film that plays with clichés and conventions to uncover its unique essence.

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Warfare (2025): The Horror of War

Rating: 4 out of 5.

War has always been fertile ground for cinema. Warfare (2025), by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, ventures into these paths by telling a specific incident during the Second Battle of Ramadi in 2006. American forces were fighting for control of this key city in central Iraq. But Warfare does not aim to be an action film or a thriller that leans on real events to take the audience on a rollercoaster of visual effects and endless gunfights—no. Warfare seeks to be a testimony, a kind of tribute, and a recounting based purely on memory.

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Captain America: Brave New World

Rating: 2 out of 5.

In 2011, the world saw Chris Evans portray the iconic Captain America for the first time. Steve Rogers became one of the pillars of the Avengers franchise and helped Marvel dominate the box office for more than a decade. When Evans’ journey ended, the studios chose to pass the torch to the Captain’s adventure companion. It was time for Sam Wilson a.k.a. Falcon to put on the Captain America suit and wield the iconic shield.

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