Nadine Whitney – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS (Tribeca 2026) – Review by Nadine Whitney

June 12, 2026 Nadine Whitney Ben Wang, David Wain, elizabeth banks, Fred Melamed, Gail Daughtry and The Celebrity Sex Pass, Henry Winkler, jennifer aniston, John Slattery, Ken Marino, paul rudd, Weird Al Yankovich, Zoe Deutch

Wain’s fish-out-of-water comedy relies heavily on increasingly ridiculous situations to carry the comedy. No stranger to getting silly, Filmmaker David Wain’s satire is very rarely anything but silly. Charming performances by Deutch and especially Slattery, Wang, and very game Jon Hamm can’t glue the “situational” aspect of the film together to form something particularly sustained and more than occasionally funny. Set piece after set piece grows tiring even if you’re on board with the over-the-top nature of everything.

Reviews

MARAMA – Review by Nadine Whitey

April 22, 2026April 27, 2026 Nadine Whitney Aotearoa/New Zealand, Ariāna Osbourne, Colonialism, Gothic, maori, Mārama, Taratoa Stappard, Toby Stephens

Taratoa Stappard crafts a moody and spellbinding tale of revenge and reclamation. Mārama is a true genre gem with an ever-relevant focus on the violence of colonialism and the overarching reach of greedy and insatiable men who twist legacy. Imaginative and vivid with a keen sense of the works that came before it, Mārama does what it intends to with perfection.

Reviews

WASTEMAN – Review by Nadine Whitney

April 21, 2026April 23, 2026 Nadine Whitney Alex Hassell, british films, Cal McMau, Cole Martin, David Jonsson, Tom Blyth, Wasteman

Cal McMau’s debut feature Wasteman feels like the oxygen is being sucked out of your lungs as it presses the claustrophobic hell of an English prison on to the audience via the beaten down protagonist Taylor (David Jonsson). Incarcerated for thirteen years, Taylor has stayed out of trouble by shrinking himself. His hunched shoulders and heavy-lidded eyes communicate that he wants to be ignored in the overcrowded prison by both other inmates and the screws. Stepping out of line has violent consequences as the opening scene viscerally demonstrates. Shot on someone’s cell phone is an assault where the section’s drug dealers mercilessly beat a prisoner who stole from him. Paul (Alex Hassell) picks up a television and smashes it on the thief’s head. No one tries to stop what is happening, and from the response of the guards, no one really can.

Reviews

THEY WILL KILL YOU – Review by Nadine Whitney

March 24, 2026March 26, 2026 Nadine Whitney Alex Litwak, heather graham, Kirill Sokolov, Myha’la, Patricia Arquette, They Will Kill You, Zazie Beetz

Kirill Sokolov’s first English language feature is far from substantial. Indeed, when one reads that his filmmaking style is influenced by Park Chan-Wook, Sam Raimi’s gory-driven horror-comedies, and anime, They Will Kill You becomes obviously derivative. Yet, there’s pleasure at just how far he is willing to go with his one-woman army played by Zazie Beetz. Everything is turned up to eleven and the film doesn’t stop for a moment. If you want a rip-roaring, messy, (mostly) one location survival thriller with ultra-violence, crawling eyeballs, and Satanists of the Ready or Not variety wearing pig masks and robes in a spooky private building in New York, Sokolov has you covered (in blood and guts). They Will Kill You isn’t selling a deep story; it’s selling a splatter-stick dark comedy with maximum carnage. It’s gross and bloody fun.

Reviews

MOTHER OF FLIES – Review by Nadine Whitney

January 28, 2026February 1, 2026 Nadine Whitney Adams Family, DIY horror, John Adams, lulu adams, Toby Poser, Zelda Adams

The Adams Family, composed of Toby Poser, John Adams, and their daughters Zelda and Lulu, have long been leaders of indie DIY horror. Up until Mother of Flies their most effective film was the witch coming-of-age folk horror Hellbender. Mother of Flies is the culmination of years of experimentation and refining their cinema-poetic voices and is simply extraordinary. Mother of Flies is an intelligent horror film rich in the tradition of dark fairytales. It is also replete with physical and mental agony. Blood flows, pain singes, and the poison of nature is compared with the poisons of medicine.

Reviews

ATROPIA – Review by Nadine Whitney

December 8, 2025December 14, 2025 Nadine Whitney alia shawkat, Atropia, Callum Turner, Channing Tatum, Chloë Sevingy, Hailey Gates, Jane Lee, Military Industrial Complex, Priscilla Garita, Tim Heidecker, Zahra Alzubaidi

Actor and journalist Hailey Gates initially set out to make a documentary about Californian desert military bases that were set up as enemy towns so soldiers could train with role-players acting as potential insurgents. The towns are real fakes, they exist, but the U.S. Military weren’t keen on Gates potentially revealing sensitive information. Thus, the scattershot fictional satire Atropia came into being. In her debut feature Gates manages to hit some targets with comedic, and at times, sincere barbs. However, when it comes to the film as a whole the comedy and satire goes through the attrition of repetitiveness and the sincere concerns about the ludicrous nature of putting army cadets through such a misguided and useless exercise gets lost in the mix.

Interviews

Hikari on Loneliness, Being Japanese and RENTAL FAMILY – Nadine Whitney interviews (Exclusive!)

November 17, 2025November 18, 2025 Nadine Whitney Brendan Fraser, Hikari, Rental Family, Searchlight Pictures, twiw, week in women

Hikari’s tender film Rental Family takes Phillip (Brendan Fraser) an out of work actor living in Japan through the phenomenon of role playing as a real-life character in the lives of Japanese people who require a figure to act as family or friend. At the heart of the film is the epidemic of loneliness and Japan’s difficulties in dealing with mental health and social difference. Hikari, herself, experienced isolation and loneliness when she participated in an exchange program in America. Nadine Whitney speaks with Hikari about reaching out to people to create chosen families.

Reviews

REEDLAND (RIETLAND) – Review by Nadine Whitney

October 28, 2025October 30, 2025 Nadine Whitney Anna Loeffen, Gerrit Knobbe, Loïs Reinders, Netherlands, Oscar submission, Reedland, Rietland, Sven Bresser

Ruination appears to be filmmaker Sven Bresser’s theme. Whether sudden or inevitable, or simply a no longer sustainable way of life, there will come a time in the not-so-distant future where the village’s way of life simply fades away. If you want easy answers, defined heroes and villains, and a sense of potential ‘better days to come’ Reedland will disappoint. However, if you’re prepared to be immersed in stunning, mysterious, and bewildering depiction of a rarely depicted place, Reedland is transfixing and beguiling.

Reviews

VIOLENT ENDS – Review by Nadine Whitney

October 28, 2025November 1, 2025 Nadine Whitney Alexandra Shipp, Billy Magnussen, Bruce McKinnon, John-Michael Powell, Matt Riedy, Ray McKinnon, Violent Ends

Violent Ends, John-Michael Powell’s neo-western cum Southern Gothic cum revenge crime thriller is formulaic. In a small Ozarks town hit hard by financial woes for the farmers of the area, the Frost family dominated the river-based drug smuggling operations in Arkansas in the 1980s. Three brothers: Donny (Bruce McKinnon), Walt (Ray McKinnon), and Ray (Matt Riedy) all vied for complete control of the operation leading to a schism where Walt took the meth market and Donny the cocaine. Ray was taken off the chess board when he ended up serving a long prison sentence. Bad blood is never forgotten nor cleansed, and the next generation continues the crime legacy.

Reviews

THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE – Review by Nadine Whitney

October 22, 2025October 23, 2025 Nadine Whitney Curtis Hanson, maika monroe, mary elizabeth winstead, Micah Bloomberg, Michelle Garza Cervera, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.

Women’s domestic thrillers and horror films have a long history with literature and cinema, and they require a story that is inventive with the tropes and ideas in the genre to make them memorable and distinct from a Lifetime movie. Michelle Garza Cervera’s direction and the two primary performances tip The Hand that Rocked the Cradle towards a sleeker production. However, there’s no complete escape from the low rent tawdriness of the script. The Hand that Rocked the Cradle is eminently forgettable, and that’s for the best.

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