While 2024 will be known as the year the industry struggled to get back on its feet after the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, 2025 was the make-or-break year for the industry, and luckily, I believe it made it. Less defined by polish than by audaciousness, the release calendar was smattered with messy masterpieces, sincere blockbusters, abrasive comedies, and genre films that smuggled in big, uncomfortable ideas under the guise of entertainment. Horror thrived by being both populi

This review contains spoilers for One Battle After Another. TL;DR: I highly recommend it. At the midpoint of Paul Thomas Anderson’s nearly three-hour, sprawling epic neo-western One Battle After Another , Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson exasperatedly apologizes to Benicio del Toro’s Sensei Sergio St. Carlos for all of the trouble he has brought to his door.  Suddenly, a militant police force begins to break through the apartment complex turned “Latino Harriet Tubman situatio

Link to Ciaran's Substack! (@coduffwrites) This series, Film Objects of Interest, is a project I’ve had on the back burner for a very long time. It comes from my difficulty forming opinions on whole films and tendency to focus on particularities. The artistry of numerous films goes unrecognized because popular criticism revolves around the work as a whole, rather than its many parts. Specific moments are what I’m here to write about. Individual scenes, esoteric performances,