Few filmmakers have done a better job capturing the texture of our present moment than Radu Jude. In films like I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, he surveys a landscape of conspiratorial thinking, historical grievance, and internet-poisoned discourse, as well as the market logic running relentlessly beneath it all. Kontinental ‘25, however, confirms a suspicion I’ve…

Languishing in obscurity for years, Sliding Doors found a strange afterlife as a cultural shorthand for fate’s forking paths — references to it now surface in conversation, on feeds, in podcasts. Too lazy to trace when it re-emerged among the pop culture commentariat (a Ringer podcast?), but curious enough to give it a second look.

The only surprise, revisiting it, was structural. I half-remembered Sliding Doors as running two complete timelines back-to-back — no doubt conflating it with Kieślowski’s Blind…

Pea Brain: You call this noir? It’s a dopey police procedural, lacking in tension and style, with a last-second revelation that makes absolutely no sense. For my money, this is the weakest entry in Criterion Channel’s Columbia Noir series.

Normal Brain: Look, the whodunnit is a let down, but it’s a fascinating historical document on representation. How many movies of that era feature an Asian-American co-lead? How many explore the “just how American are you” question at the root of…