The Phoenician Scam
Wes Anderson's Worst Movie / Peak Everything / Wild Foxes
Every year I look forward to a new Wes Anderson film and every year I get more and more disappointed. The Phoenician Scheme (2025) has to be his worst work yet, a convoluted mess with almost nothing interesting to say. People said it was a pure comedy, but the laughs are thin. The more I think about it, the less I like it. You can read our full review here as well as check out our video review here!
Thankfully, there is more to life than American movies. From tales of toxic masculinity to Gazan martyrdom to a good old-fashioned romantic comedy to perhaps one of the worst films I’ve ever seen, check out the rest of our reviews below!
Peak Everything. Love and Climate Change.
By Redmond Bacon
The 45-year-old Adam (Patrick Hivon) should be the happiest man in the world. He owns a dog kennel, meaning that he is surrounded by animals showering him with constant unconditional love and attention. But he suffers from solastalgia, defined as a deep and sustained anxiety about the future of the planet in the face of an increasingly unpredictable climate.
In a conversation with his therapist, he talks about the multi-level collapse of the planet. As he puts it, There Is No Alternative. But those initials also stand for Tina (Piper Perabo), with whom he falls madly in love. Perhaps love is the bulwark we need against total devastation. Perhaps you will find out more if you also watch the Quebecois romantic comedy Peak Everything (Anne Émond, 2025), a small yet utterly charming oddball story set in a world on the brink of collapse.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema
Once Upon A Time in Gaza Lacks A Coherent Viewpoint
By Redmond Bacon
Once Upon a Time in Gaza (Tarzan Nasser, Arab Nasser, 2025) starts five times. Firstly, with audio footage of Trump threatening to turn Gaza into the Arab Riviera; secondly, with members of Hamas carrying the body of a dead martyr and firing their guns into the air; thirdly, with footage of Gaza being levelled from the sky by Isreali rockets; fourthly, with the trailer from a fiction movie touting itself as the first action movie made in Gaza; before fifthly, finally, taking us to Gaza, 2007, and starting with the actual characters that comprise the film.
This uneven, insecure beginning, while undoubtedly highlighting that the current issues Gaza faces are rooted in conflict and occupation dating back almost two decades already — perhaps stemming from Hamas taking over the area all the way back in June 2007 — is characteristic of the inherent messiness of the Nassar brothers’ approach, with their latest work failing on both a narrative and thematic level, unable to settle on a consistent and meaningful tone.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!
Of Mice and Meteors
By Redmond Bacon
The pitfalls of life in rural France are haphazardly examined in Meteors (Hubert Charuel, 2025), a kitchen sink drama that promises a heartfelt character exploration but quickly deteriorates due to its sentimental view of friendship, repetitive storyline beats and a nuclear metaphor that initially suggests something profound but ends up going nowhere. It’s a miracle that a film this messy found its way into Un Certain Regard.
The film begins, in its mismatched way, with the soaring sounds of Pamela’s French electro bop “Focused”, matched with sequences of Upper Marne, a region to the east of Paris. Mika (Paul Kircher), Dan (Idir Azougli) and Tony (Salif Cissé) are out in a bowling alley, drinking beers, doing shots, enjoying life. Things quickly go downhill, however, when Mika and Dan drive home and the latter attempts to steal someone’s cat, resulting in their arrest, an impending court trial and the revelation that Dan will die of liver failure if he doesn’t stop drinking.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!
Wild Foxes Bobs and Weaves Through the Minefields of Toxic Masculinity
By Redmond Bacon
Boxing is a very malleable sport, as it can be a metaphor for both healthy masculinity (Rocky [John G. Avildsen, 1976]) and toxic masculinity (Raging Bull [Martin Scorsese, 1980]) at the same time. The purest expression of male rage, literally taking their emotions and reducing them to fisticuffs, it can at once be an outlet for long-buried emotions and a metonym for why men find it so hard to be vulnerable in front of their peers in the first place.
In her debut feature Wild Foxes (2025), Valery Carnoy takes a typically French-realist approach to the material, using the paradoxical nature of boxing to explore the young Camille’s (Samuel Kircher) complicated relationship with the sport and what it says about his stunted view of himself and his supposed friends.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!
Nino Messily Navigates the Storm
By Jared Abbott
Imagine being in your late twenties, diagnosed with throat cancer — most likely from an HPV infection — and being told you have to freeze your sperm immediately if you ever want kids because chemotherapy starts in three days. That’s the brutal starting point of Nino (2025), written and directed by Pauline Loquès, starring Theodor Pellerin in the title role.
What follows isn’t over-the-top melodrama, but a nuanced exploration of what happens when life shifts overnight — how you withdraw and try to process something that just doesn’t make sense.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!