There has never been a better time for American Kiyoshi Kurosawa fans. The recent run of restorations and new work hits a high point with today’s U.S. release of his excellent The Samurai and the Prisoner, tomorrow’s ultra-rare 35mm screening of Charisma, and the latter’s pending release from Janus Films (acquired alongside his marvelous Eyes of the Spider). Next month will finally bring the stateside debut of Serpent’s Path, a France-set remake of 1998’s feel-bad triumph that stars Damien Bonnard (Poor Things), Ko Shibasaki (The Boy and the Heron), Hidetoshi Nishijima (Drive My Car, Her Private Hell), Mathieu Amalric, and Claire Denis regular Grégoire Colin. Ahead of a September 11 opening from KimStim, we’re thrilled to premiere the trailer.

Those who know the original will be familiar with this iteration’s premise, then all the more surprised by its eventual turns—not least some reflection on the director’s own fish-out-of-water position in France. As the first go-round was complemented by the aforementioned Eyes—a project made with overlapping cast, crew, and premise—it sometimes seems Serpent’s Path is less a remake than the third in a series. (Kurosawa at least told me he considers it more in his creative spirit.) But I’ll let you see the movie and decide for yourself.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Kiyoshi Kurosawa revisits and reimagines his own 1998 thriller in this haunting French-language adaptation of Serpent’s Path, transforming a revenge story into a chilling meditation on grief, guilt, and moral decay. Relocating the action from Tokyo to the bleak outskirts of Paris, the film follows a bereaved father (Damien Bonnard) who embarks on a labyrinthine quest for vengeance against a shadowy child-trafficking organization known as ‘The Circle,’ aided by the enigmatic and unnervingly composed Sayoko, played with hypnotic ambiguity by Ko Shibasaki. Expanding upon the original’s psychological terrain while retaining its eerie inevitability, Kurosawa crafts a masterclass in atmosphere and existential dread, proving once again why he remains one of cinema’s great architects of unease.”

Find the preview below:

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Death of Robin Hood (Michael Sarnoski)

How many times has the story of Robin Hood been told? How many books have been written, how many movies made about the outlaw? With The Death of Robin Hood, writer-director Michael Sarnoski goes back to the source. Rather, the supposed sources. The earliest stories of Robin Hood were ballads told by commoners across England. These tales tell of an outlaw who does not give anything stolen to the poor, instead taking pleasure in killing the rich. In the medieval ballad “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne,” Robin beheads Gisborne and sticks his head on a spike. – Dan M. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

The Drama (Kristoffer Borgli)

Some critics are going to say The Drama is not about race, or that if it is, this is simply an accident born of colorblind casting. There is a reveal—the reveal the entire premise hinges on—early in the film that would perhaps make more sense to people if it had come from a white person. It’s definitely something that, historically, is more associated with troubled white American men. But this is a film, not real life, and The Drama presents us with a character viewers have never seen on the big screen before. – Jourdain S. (full review)

Where to Stream: HBO Max

Leviticus (Adrian Chiarella)

Being queer—especially in this rapidly regressive age—means becoming acquainted with a base level of fear for most of your life. It is something you learn early on: not only when you must discover who can be trusted with your survival, but whether they might betray that trust later. Violence takes so many forms that it can lead to a sort of paranoia that folds in on itself. Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus understands this intimately. By blending the mechanics of It Follows with the trauma of conversion therapy, he crafts a tense, thematically potent feature debut that is more than just a clear metaphor—this is a creepy horror picture in its own right. – Devan S. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Maddie’s Secret (John Early)

You can’t accuse John Early of not committing. Through the majority of his acting career, the comedian has become a reliable avatar for a palpable, toxic, hilarious narcissism, playing characters oblivious to the world outside the bubbles they’ve so thoroughly cultivated. That was particularly evident over four seasons of Search Party, as well as last year’s Stress Positions, a Sundance favorite that exposed the absurdity of living in quarantine over a masked summer. As an agoraphobic tenant in a Brooklyn brownstone, Early took the situation’s disaster and approached it through his very specific kind of self-assured, righteous mania to such an extent that his freak-outs are still rattling around in my brain. – Jake K-S. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) (Lucrecia Martel)

There is a direct and conscious through-line between Lucrecia Martel’s previous historical film Zama to her contemporary legal documentary Nuestra Tierra. We see the lives of indigenous communities in Argentina continue to be treated with little regard and a clear class and racial fissure exists in the nation. Martel films the court scenes and the footage of the disputed land as two battlegrounds spanning time. The murder of the Chuchagasta indigenous community leader Javie Chocobar at the hands of corrupt businessmen and bureaucrats reflects and mirrors the history of Argentina as, to this day, a disputed territory. While Martel’s cinema is known for its heavy use of metaphor, blending of fantasy and realism with impressionistic camerawork, this is a movie that pares everything down to cinema’s base elements, making crystal clear what is at stake. – Soham G.

Where to Stream: VOD

Pretzhell (ZXY)

ZXY — The Gyslexic Die is an enigmatic musician from Estonia. He goes by many names, some of which are more famous than others. This is the music video for his recent single “PretzHell.”

Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club

Renoir (Chie Hayakawa)

Just three years since earning a special mention from the Camera d’Or jury for Plan 75, Chie Hayakawa returns to Cannes as one of seven filmmakers debuting in the main competition––an uncharacteristic breath of fresh air from a festival known for sticking with the old guard. In Plan 75, an acidic work of speculative fiction, Hayakawa imagined a near-future timeline where Japan decided to see to its aging-population crisis by introducing a voluntary euthanasia program. Hayakawa approaches adjacent themes in her sophomore feature, Renoir, a film about family, death, and intergenerational friction that looks not to the future but the director’s own past. – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Underland (Rob Petit)

As humanity continues mining Earth’s resources with wanton abandon, the concerns of those with the most influence have been towards the skies––the space dreams of inhabiting another planet once we’ve depleted all this one has to offer. But what could exploring Earth’s subterranean wonders tell us about the origins and future of our species? Robert Macfarlane’s evocatively transportive, poetically imaginative 2019 book Underland investigated such questions through the perspectives of those seeking the void. In adapting the text to the screen, Rob Petit takes a compelling (if more straightforward) excavation into the depths of our planet. – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Also New to Streaming

Disney+/Hulu

The Devil Wears Prada 2

Kino Film Collection

Successive Slidings of Pleasure

Netflix

A Private Life

Shudder

Nightborn

VOD

Westhampton

There’s podcasts about movies (hello) and there are movies about podcasts. A podcast helping create a movie that is not itself about the podcast, but reflects its worldviews and the sense of humor that has become a kind of lingua franca among people in their 20s and 30s: that is novel.

Thus: Chunks. If you’re a regular listener of Chapo Trap House, you’ve probably heard ads for the film proffered by the show’s producer Chris Wade, who has also taken up producing duties on this film, which is a comedy anthology that moves between public-access TV, animation, live-streamed poker, and more straight-ahead narrative projects that still reflect something of screen life and the modern dystopia. Chunks was spearheaded by Amber A’Lee Frost, a longtime contributor to Chapo who has since started ColdFeet, a production entity that previously supported Eephus. It was my pleasure speaking with Chis and Amber about Chunks, translating the Chapo sensibility to cinema, and ColdFeet’s forthcoming projects.

Subscribe here and listen below:

Music courtesy of Lex Walton: “Love Theme from an Unreleased Film” from the album Giving It Up.

Looking for what to see in theaters? Our feature, updated weekly, highlights our top recommendations for films currently in theaters, from new releases to restorations receiving a proper theatrical run.

While we already provide extensive monthly new-release recommendations and weekly streaming recommendations, as distributors’ roll-outs can vary, this is a one-stop list to share the essential films that may be on a screen near you.

Barrio Triste (Stillz)

At barely two years old, Harmony Korine’s “post-cinema” company EDGLRD is already branching out. After directing AGGRO DR1FT and Baby Invasion, Korine takes on a producer role for Barrio Triste, the feature debut of Colombian-American artist Stillz. It’s a good match of talents, given Stillz’s background as a music video director for artists like Bad Bunny and Rosalia, and while Barrio Triste takes a vibes-based approach à la Korine’s last two features it’s an entirely different beast. Exhilarating, tense, personal, and enigmatic, Barrio Triste is a compelling look at a lost generation in search of salvation, and among this year’s best first features. – C.J. P. (full review)

Bouchra (Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki)

Based on a real-life conversation shared by co-director Meriem Bennani and her own mother, Bouchra (co-directed with Orian Barki and co-written by them and Ayla Mrabet) opens with a phone call. Aicha (Yto Barrada) is checking in on her daughter from Morocco when Bouchra (Bennani) broaches a subject they’ve been avoiding for almost a decade. Stuck creatively, the latter has decided to find emotional catharsis through a script about the complex dynamic shared with her parents and seeks context from the opposite side. – Jared M. (full review)

Do You Love Me (Lana Daher)

In what could’ve also been called Lebanon Plays Itself, Lana Daher’s ambitious, all-archival Do You Love Me captures some 70 years of Lebanese history, curated from a search that began with more than 20,000 potential sources. Consolidated to just 76 minutes, the resulting feat of montage is an experiment as playful as it is informative, showing a country in turmoil and citizens who still find happiness in everyday life. – Jordan R.

The Invite (Olivia Wilde)

Small in scale, yet so much greater than the sum of its parts, Wilde conducts her quartet of players to an orchestral performance. She builds the dramatic tension of a relationship-turned-powder-keg from years of complacency and poor communication over staccato strings until it reaches its summit, only for it to drop and rise again. Employing just four principal actors, including herself, and a single apartment, it’s an impressive feat to pull off and a testament to her progression as actor-turned-director. – Kent M. W. (full review)

I Want Your Sex (Gregg Araki)

Making his long-awaited return to feature filmmaking after a 12-year absence, Gregg Aaraki was back at Sundance this year to premiere I Want Your Sex, an erotic comedy that brings together Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Charli XCX, Daveed Diggs, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Margaret Cho, and Johnny Knoxville. Caleb Hammond said in his Sundance review, “I Want Your Sex is Araki, at 66 years old, telling the younger generation that while life experiences can be painful and messy––and the flight instinct might scream at them to stay home and avoid at all cost––the alternative of being old and reflecting on missed opportunities is far more painful.”

Jimmy (Yashaddai Owens)

My favorite discovery at the 2024 New York Film Festival was Yashaddai Owens’ Jimmy, a jazzy, French New Wave-esque portrait imagining James Baldwin’s (Benny O. Arthur) arrival to Paris in November 1948. With a plethora of biographical dramas seemingly rinsing and repeating key moments of a famous subject’s life in a formally familiar fashion, Owens radically rethinks the form of the biopic, one that transports the viewer with the fresh sights and sounds of a new city that would go on to shape the author’s work. Shot on grainy, evocative 16mm in black-and-white, it’s an adventurous gamble that succeeds on every front. – Jordan R.

Maddie’s Secret (John Early)

You can’t accuse John Early of not committing. Through the majority of his acting career, the comedian has become a reliable avatar for a palpable, toxic, hilarious narcissism, playing characters oblivious to the world outside the bubbles they’ve so thoroughly cultivated. That was particularly evident over four seasons of Search Party, as well as last year’s Stress Positions, a Sundance favorite that exposed the absurdity of living in quarantine over a masked summer. As an agoraphobic tenant in a Brooklyn brownstone, Early took the situation’s disaster and approached it through his very specific kind of self-assured, righteous mania to such an extent that his freak-outs are still rattling around in my brain. – Jake K-S. (full review)

Night Nurse (Georgia Bernstein)

The best narrative film I saw at Sundance earlier this year, Night Nurse is a movie that very much walks to the beat of its strange drum. With shades of early Atom Egoyan, Georgia Bernstein’s directorial debut is a psychosexual drama following a nurse’s peculiar journey becoming connected to a strange patient’s perverse idea of fun. John Fink said in his review, “The perverse Night Nurse doesn’t quite qualify as a psychosexual thriller, despite underlying erotic tension; there is something more seductive and sinister under the surface.” – Jordan R.

The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan)

After a clunky opening setting the table for his time-hopping reworking of Homer’s epic, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey settles into a rhythm of melding awe-worthy spectacle with the emotional toll of a seemingly never-ending journey of despair and sacrifice. What I was most struck by, even for all its fantastical elements, is how much Nolan mines from the rather spare natural settings to instill a grounded sense of vastness when it comes to Odysseus’ journey. While one wishes for a bit more patience to take it all in, the trademark propulsiveness of the director works wonders as we discover the ingenuity of each setpiece. For another perspective, read Nick Newman’s eloquent review, which details why the technical feat of shooting entirely in IMAX has its drawbacks. – Jordan R.

Remake (Ross McElwee)

“I used to call myself a filmmaker. I used to call myself your father.” These two sentences are repeated like a mantra through Ross McElwee’s latest searingly personal documentary, Remake, focused primarily on the devastating loss of his 27-year-old son Adrian to a fentanyl overdose in 2016. It’s the director’s first film in fifteen years—the last, Photographic Memory, also utilized his relationship with Adrian to tackle self-reflective themes around parenthood, perspective, and the passage of time. McElwee has, for decades, been a pioneer of the type of tangential documentary storytelling popularized of late by artists like Nathan Fielder and John Wilson; work that on the surface appears as though the person behind the lens is making it up on the fly and finding a destination in real time, yet is far more methodically researched and developed over painstaking hours in the editing room. (Unlike the majority of his earlier work, which he edited solely, McElwee pulled in the aid of master editor Joe Bini, whose oeuvre includes Grizzly Man and American Honey). – Mitchell B. (full review)

Romería (Carla Simón)

Continuing in the low-key register of her Golden Bear winner Alcarràs, Carla Simón returns with Romería, another tale of intergenerational dissonance. A film about the stories families choose to tell and the ones they bury deep inside, it unfurls on Spain’s Atlantic coast, where 18-year-old orphan Marina (Llúcia Garcia) hopes to reunite with her paternal family. It’s also a story about displacement and yearning for lost roots, themes that cut close to the bone for a director whose parents died of AIDS when she was still a child, and who reunited with her father’s family in the town of Vigo, Galicia, where the film is set, at the same age. Simón has always been an autobiographical filmmaker; Romería might be her most personal work yet. – Rory O. (full review)

Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin)

The films of Mark Jenkin ooze a hypnotic, seasick sensibility; to watch them is to be lulled by their restless jumps through time and space, their ability to convert his home turf of Cornwall into a suspended world where facts and visions collide in stupefying dioramas. The director is a spinner of wandering tales, never fueled by linear plots so much as ambient forces: a ticking clock, gusts of wind, the distant roaring of waves. His dramas tend to pull your gaze from people and toward the inanimate objects that litter their surroundings. It’s here––in the interstice between the fictional foreground and non-fictional background––that the actual story often lies. – Leonardo G. (full review)

The Samurai and the Prisoner (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

After viewing a certain ensemble period epic dominating the box office, the next that should be highest on your radar this summer hails from Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The Samurai and the Prisoner is a knotty, fascinating samurai mystery that sees the Japanese director adopt an entirely different register from most of his work, yet still showcases a thrilling set of formal tricks. Leonardo Goi said in his Cannes review, “Like its protagonist, The Samurai and the Prisoner is a curious oddity. It’s a film that keeps bloodletting to a bare minimum and delights in subverting genre expectations to fascinating effects. Where other recent entries in the canon opted for bigger, action-packed spectacles—recall Takeshi Kitano’s gruesome 2023 Kubi—this is a much more stately, almost contemplative affair, a kind of throwback to mid-century masterpieces from Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa.”

More Films Now Playing in Theaters

• Her Private Hell
• The Kidnapping of Arabella
• Obsession
• Rosebush Pruning
• Sheep in the Box
• Tuner

Read all reviews here. For our NYC-specific repertory round-ups, including many films that will tour the country, bookmark NYC Weekend Watch.

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2026 Cannes coverage. The film opens on July 31.

Lord Murashige Araki (Masahiro Motoki) doesn’t like killing. A samurai presiding over Arioka Castle in 16th-century Japan, he’s a walking contradiction—a warrior bound by a merciless code of conduct he has no trouble forsaking, much to the dismay of his own court. All through Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s first jidaigeki, he is summoned to execute people who’ve betrayed him, disobeyed his orders, or simply view death as the only means to save their honor. Every time, however, he pointedly refuses, trading murders for extended sojourns inside Arioka’s cavernous prisons. The line between mercy and weakness is perilously thin, and his most faithful disciples must work overtime to spin those apparent acts of cowardice into the wise decisions of a man deserving his throne. “I cannot see into your heart,” Murashige’s wife tells him early on, baffled by his unorthodox clemency. Hell, does anyone? 

Like its protagonist, The Samurai and the Prisoner is a curious oddity. It’s a film that keeps bloodletting to a bare minimum and delights in subverting genre expectations to fascinating effects. Where other recent entries in the canon opted for bigger, action-packed spectacles—recall Takeshi Kitano’s gruesome 2023 Kubi—this is a much more stately, almost contemplative affair, a kind of throwback to mid-century masterpieces from Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa. An adaptation of Honobu Yonezawa’s prize-winning novel of the same name, it is split into four chapters, each yoked to a distinct season. We begin in winter 1578, with Arioka under siege by Nobunaga Oda, the tyrannical despot Murashige used to serve, and with the capture of the titular prisoner, Kanbei Kuroda (Masaki Suda, last seen playing an online scammer in Kurosawa’s 2025 Cloud), an envoy Oda had sent to the fortress on a diplomatic mission. The enemy’s forces are inching ever closer, but the looming attack doesn’t worry Murashige quite as much as the mysterious murder of eight-year-old Jinen, the son of a former ally who’s abandoned the warlord to side with Oda. The boy, too, had pleaded Murashige to kill him as a way to atone for his father’s defection, to no avail; when his body is found in one of Arioka’s chambers, Samurai suddenly turns into a court procedural, and its lead into a detective-cum-prosecutor prodding his retainers into confessing their misdeeds.

It is here that Kurosawa tips his hand. One way of interpreting the disorientation his saga accrues is that this film favors words over action—which isn’t to say it is uneventful, or that its script is excessively verbose. Samurai is largely powered by conversations, yet Kurosawa stages them as verbal sword battles. There is palpable electricity to the exchanges, none more flammable than those between Murashige and Kanbei, an astute strategist eventually enlisted to solve the child’s assassination—and the several other strange occurrences in this eminently strange film—from behind bars. And there is something growingly sinister about how Kurosawa immortalizes the locale. An indoor epic, Samurai mostly unfolds inside Arioka, where the real-life Murashige barricaded himself in 1578 after rising against his master. But Yasuyuki Sasaki, who’d previously lensed Cloud, turns the castle into something closer to a jail than a refuge, invoking a panopticon effect as his camera pans 360-degrees across the inner courtyard. 

Kurosawa has long excelled at weaponizing offscreen space. His 21st-century ghost stories—haunted by ectoplasms and murderous entities patrolling cities as spectral as cemeteries—drew their terrifying power not just from what they showed but kept purposely hidden; the world that lies just outside his frames is always alive with an uncanny sense of danger. That technique here reaches an apotheosis. It’s not that Samurai is devoid of violence; it’s that this by and large takes place outside our view. Save for a late-night battle sequence, we mostly hear about Oda’s troops slaughtering their way toward Arioka, about enemies fallen at the front, about the heroic feats of Murashige’s subordinates. So much of Samurai comprises rumors that may or may not be true, depending on who you choose to believe, animating the paranoid energy that courses through it.  

For a director best famed for his chilling allegories of our back-to-front digital lives, the starkly novel setting will likely lead conversations about Samurai towards an alleged departure from the rest of Kurosawa’s oeuvre. But Murashige’s struggle for emancipation from the ruthless bushido moral compass aligns him with the drifters populating works like Cure, Pulse, or Cloud—outcasts likewise hellbent on breaking free from their restrictive social orders, all rules be damned. Murashige spent his last years as a teaist, and in what’s possibly his most indelible sequence, Kurosawa captures him as he treats a few vassals to his special brew. With bated breath, they watch him pour it from one of his beloved urns, so entranced by the performance that it’s as if he’d ensorcelled them. Chances are you’ll leave the film just as hypnotized. 

Samurai is the kind of work that feels designed to sidestep you, not just by virtue of its enigmatic protagonist, but as a result of its formal choices. Edited by longtime collaborator Koichi Takahashi, it moves in hiccups, with sudden cuts abruptly slingshotting you from one conspiracy to the next. Kurosawa matches gravity with absurdity, punctuating his characters’ psychological torments with gallows humor. This, too, is nothing novel, strictly speaking, nor is the distancing effect these tonal shifts can elicit. But the rewards for those unafraid to meet this film and submit to its confounding charms are immense. Kurosawa finds in Murashige a formidable analog; anchored as it may be to a rich, illustrious cinematic lineage, The Samurai and the Prisoner feels at once retro and rebellious—a loving tribute from one disruptor to another. 

The Samurai and the Prisoner premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival and will be released by Janus Films on July 31.

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2026 Sundance coverage. The film opens on July 31.

Across Park City and beyond, the question on everyone’s mind has been: is I Want Your Sex the “return to form” for Gregg Araki, as described by director of programming Kim Yutani in her introduction to the film last night? Not quite. A ridiculous, sex-filled romp with entertaining stretches, his first feature in 12 years often plays like a lecture from one sexually liberated queer male to the reportedly sexless younger generation. And while Araki might have a point, there is something too direct in its approach. 

Its structure comprises Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) relaying events of a whirlwind romance with his boss, fiery artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), which leads to the present in which he discovers her floating face-down in a pool (a direct nod to Sunset Boulevard, of course). Two detectives (Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville) listen to Elliot’s tale suspiciously. If Araki, an aging provocateur, oscillates between Elliot’s pure-heartedness and Tracy’s brash, fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence, these detectives inhabit the audience’s perspective, quick to point out clear power imbalances in this illicit workplace romance, mentioning “grooming” where applicable—a charge Elliot promptly dismisses. In Elliot’s mind, he wanted this relationship as much as she did, and his tone carries an open fondness for the story he weaves, despite it ruining his life in just about every conceivable way. 

I Want Your Sex is Araki, at 66 years old, telling the younger generation that while life experiences can be painful and messy––and the flight instinct might scream at them to stay home and avoid at all cost––the alternative of being old and reflecting on missed opportunities is far more painful. To put it in more Araki-like terms: you only live once, so stop watching so much porn and get out there and connect with (i.e. bang) one another. Tracy gives Elliot countless mini-speeches to such effect, ranging from the entertaining to overly didactic. Elliot occasionally pushes back on Tracy’s dismissive attitude, at one point laying out a host of factors for why his generation isn’t having sex. But like Tracy’s speechifying, this retort feels unnatural, as if pulled from a think piece in the Atlantic or New York Times. 

Elements of Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt are present in Sex‘s boomer perspective on woke culture, but the closer reference point might actually be Brian Jordan Alvarez’s FX series The English Teacher. That show looks at how a classically liberal gay Millennial interacts with the decidedly less-woke younger generation who don’t hold the same reverence for traditional institutions and politics that he’s been brought up to respect. The latter is the savvier depiction of the generational divide, and I Want Your Sex lacks a deep-enough perspective when surveying the younger generation.

The film’s sets are brightly lit and every wall looks like it was painted the day before shooting. This hyper-digital artifice is intentional, but does act to make it just a bit harder to get invested in the central relationship between Elliot and Tracy. Though Wilde’s portrayal is a blast to watch, the script offering her plenty of juicy lines, the character feels too removed from reality, a pure caricature of an art-world feminist who still wants the benefits that her male counterparts have enjoyed for decades (primarily in the fucking of interns). Hoffman’s performance works best when tied to his boyish charm. He’s the opposite side of the same coin as Marty Mauser in Marty Supreme. Whereas Marty deploys his charisma deliberately to manipulate, Elliot’s aimless persona allows him to land on his feet without much work. But Hoffman possesses limitations in dramatic scenes, and the script doesn’t lend him aid. His frequent refrain is some variation of “Are you fucking insane?” aimed at Tracy, who is often doing something that can only be described as “fucking insane.”

I Want Your Sex is not quite the comeback for Araki that’s been advertised, but it holds bright spots. For a special Sundance celebrating its last year in Park City and first since founder Robert Redford passed away, it makes too much sense to also celebrate an indie legend in Araki, who’s had a whopping eleven films premiere at the festival since its early-90s heyday. 

I Want Your Sex premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

Vince (Brodie Townsend) is back in town for the first time in nine months. The first time since his modeling-acting career took off enough to start gracing magazine covers. Ross (Michael Vlamis) knows he’s back. They’re two prongs of their “golden triangle,” after all. The third, Sayo (Jeff Wahlberg), doesn’t. His relationship with Vince is more complicated from their on-again-off-again, more-than-just-friends dynamic. It might be “on again” soon.

Sayo is trying to hold strong, though. He ditches Vince at the club to go home and develop that night’s photos, only to have his old friend show up at his door anyway. While he forces him to sleep in the tub rather than his bed, Sayo can’t quite say no to an invitation Vince offers: meeting a famous connected photographer to perhaps get a bit of a glow-up in the industry himself. The night promises to be an insane party.

As director Corrin Evans (an intimacy coordinator making her feature debut) and co-writer Lily Cowles reveal once Corpus takes this trio into the forest, however, it’s not quite the rager they anticipate. There are only two more attendees besides their host, Vince’s new industry pal Billie (Cowles): her partner Cata (Ching Valdes-Aran) and their blood-soaked friend Wren (Nuha Jes Izman). So we actually discover that we know more about what’s happening than them.

The reason is simple: Evans and Cowles don’t start Corpus with Sayo journeying to the club to shoot pictures and sell drugs. They start it with Wren—a green model excited to work with Billie before the latter turns their solo session into an “edgy” pairing the girl is too scared to stop. Why is she still there? Why is she suddenly oozing with enough confidence to make Billie nervous? Why is she standing in the middle of the courtyard with a chicken corpse in-hand?

Our minds start racing the moment we see her, and our initial assumptions are probably correct, but that doesn’t mean we have a full grasp of the situation. Because it’s not just about what Billie and company might do to Vince and his guests. It’s also about Sayo wading through the complex waters of his feelings for his estranged friend. Ross agrees to come for the hope of party sex; Sayo agreed because Vince said he needed him as an ally amongst potential wolves.

So while we are obviously clocking all the strange occurrences—raw meat for dinner, the pointed intrigue on behalf of the women once they see three men instead of one, and the hosts’ aversion to photos despite Billie’s occupation—our main focus for the moment is Sayo’s emotional struggle. The caution with which he’s guarding his heart from being broken again and the yearning to simply give in because it’s impossible to ignore that desire.

It’s the perfect mix of narrative mystery and character drama that leads into blurred lines between sexuality and control. Billie and Cata fawning over Vince. Vince leading Sayo on. Sayo realizing the sole hope he has of survival might be to cut Vince off completely and never risk being tested again. And once the reality of what’s happening does rear its head, that same lust ultimately sees the prey willingly sacrificing themselves to their predators. Reason so rarely wins.

I loved the whole aesthetic that Evans (who also edits) and cinematographer Charlie Cole create. The music sets the 1998-era mood (not to mention Sayo’s Walkman) while the imagery, marked by a sort of “living photograph” effect each time Sayo clicks the shutter on his camera, is gorgeous to behold. Add the setting’s beautiful old mansion, with paintings and peeled wallpaper adorning the walls, and it’s hard not to think about gothic vampires.

That’s not what this is, though. Not really. The mythology at the back of Corpus is simpler in scope yet just as supernatural. And the film does well to know there’s no need to explain it. Once we intuitively understand the mechanics, all that’s left is to watch it play out and see who’s left standing. The result plays with gender, age, and jealousies as the carnal desire to be with someone merges with the psychological urge to become them. It leads to a fantastic climax.

And it all revolves around Ross’ talking-just-to-talk “golden triangle” wherein he’s the money, Vince is the face, and Sayo is the rock. The women don’t supply a direct comparison. Cata declares she’s all three, but you can definitely feel that she is the leader, Billie the acolyte, and Wren the wild card. How things play out confirm this suspicion, with everyone hastily trying to wrap their heads around a rapidly deteriorating situation that escapes their grasp all at once.

The cast is great, too. Townsend epitomizes the coyly manipulative ingenue used to getting his way. Izman embraces the unpredictability of her character while Vlamis entertains with his own’s constant arousal from the chaos. And both Cowles and Valdes-Aran feel wiser and stronger in their calmness. But it’s truly Wahlberg’s film insofar as leading us through the twists and turns of the heart, soul, and body. His Sayo is content with normal, but normal is long gone.

Corpus screened at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Japan Society
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Charisma plays on an ultra-rare print this Saturday.

Roxy Cinema
Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, Bigger Than Life, and Party Girl show on 35mm Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; a print of Uncut Gems plays this Friday; a 16mm puppet program shows on Sunday night.

Film at Lincoln Center
Jane Campion’s The Piano continues screening in a 4K restoration.

Museum of Modern Art
Films by Ernst Lubitsch, Charlie Chaplin, and Raoul Walsh play in Silent Movie Week.

Spectacle
The best adaptation of The Odyssey, Franco Piavoli’s Nostos: The Return, screens on Saturday.

Anthology Film Archives
Films by Buñuel and Chaplin play in Essential Cinema; a Marcel Duchamp series begins.

Museum of the Moving Image
A new edition of See It Big: 70mm begins with a weekend of 2001; Ready Player One and Paprika play on Saturday and Sunday, respectively; a series devoted to Matt Johnson’s Tony brings Ratatouille and Tampopo on Sunday.

Film Forum
Luchino Visconti’s White Nights begins a run while Dread Beat an Blood and Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March continue in new restorations.

IFC Center
Manhunter: The Final Cut continues; Thief, Heat, Gummo, SLC Punk, and a print of Elephant show late.

Nitehawk Prospect Park
Space Jam and Talladega Nights play early on Saturday and Sunday.

Metrograph
Good Morning, Millionaires’ Express, Rambling Rose, Mountains of the Moon, First Blood, Drunken Master II, and The Green Room play on 35mm; In Her Shadow begins while Gary Oldman, Yves Saint Laurent, Carolco, The Worldwide West, Lau Kar-leung, and Jean-Louis Ughetto continue.

While Maika Monroe is currently shooting a sequel to her breakout feature with They Follow, she can next be seen in a horror film of the gothic variety. Sanctuary director Zachary Wigon brought Victorian Psycho to Cannes earlier this year, and it will now arrive on September 25. Ahead of the release from Bleecker Street, the new trailer has arrived for the film starring Jason Isaacs, Ruth Wilson, and Thomasin McKenzie.

Here’s the synopsis: “Set in Victorian England, Victorian Psycho sees an eccentric governess arrive at a remote gothic manor, where strange happenings stir suspicion that she’s not what she seems.”

Savina Petkova said in her Cannes review, “In 1858, pre-Freud times, a castle in the Yorkshire moors of Northern England by the name of Ensor House becomes the new dwelling place for young governess Winifred Notty (Maika Monroe, on a horror streak from Longlegs). What awaits her is a predictably stilted family of huge wealth, the Pounds, comprising Mrs. Pounds (Ruth Wilson), Mr. Pounds (Jason Isaacs), the heir Andrew (Jacobi Jupe), and their teenage daughter Drusilla (Evie Templeton), but the script—based on Virginia Feito’s novel of the same name—has more than a few surprises in store for all. By following the erotic thriller Sanctuary with a period piece and a mysterious premise, director Zachary Wigon makes the most of this turn towards gothic horror: the delightfully wacky Victorian Psycho can be a testament to both his adaptability and commitment to genre.”

See the preview and poster below:

A love story unlike any this year, Alex Huston Fischer & Eleanor Wilson’s Wicker tells a fable in which a woman (Olivia Colman) commissions a wicker husband (Alexander Skarsgård) to be made by the local basketmaker (Peter Dinklage). Also starring Elizabeth Debicki and shot by Lol Crawley (The Brutalist), the film will now get a release on October 23 from Black Bear Pictures and, with this, the first trailer has arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “An audacious comedic fable about sex, marriage, and the absurdities of social convention, WICKER tells the wholly original love story of an ostracized fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) who commissions a husband to be made by the local basketmaker (Peter Dinklage). When her wicker husband (Alexander Skarsgård) proves more spectacular than she ever imagined, his soulful spirit and unique prowess awaken something inside her, setting off a wave of jealousy, fascination, and upheaval that threatens the very fabric of village life.”

Kent M. Wilhelm said in his Sundance review, “This sophomore feature is a lighthearted period piece set in a time and place that never existed. Their screenplay, based on Ursula Wills-Jones’s short story The Wicker Husband, is a skewering of patriarchal relationship dynamics and traditions. The world they construct is a fun house mirror’s reflection of reality, allowing for a heightened world that feels believable despite its anachronous qualities. The characters have no proper names. Instead, as a jab to the old-fashioned practice of wives adopting their husband’s last name, the men are referred to by their occupation and the women by their relationship to those men. We experience the cruelty inherent to this society from the perspective of an outsider, someone who doesn’t adhere to its conventions and becomes the subject of ridicule for it. Adding some sweetness to their poison is the crass, bawdy manner with which the village hobnobs, wisely adding levity to their nastiness. Along with the sharp cultural satire, Wicker has one show-stopping card up its sleeve: a wicker Alexander Skarsgård.”

See the preview and poster below:

One of the breakouts of the Sundance Film Festival this year, where it picked up the U.S. Dramatic Directing award, Josef Kubota Wladyka’s stylish and moving Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! is coming this fall. Ahead of a September 25 release, Sony Pictures Classics has now debuted the first trailer and poster for the film starring Rinko Kikuchi, Alberto Guerra, and Alejandro Edda.

Here’s the synopsis: “Inspired by the spirit of Josef’s mother, Ha-Chan, HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY! follows Haru and Luis who love competing in Tokyo’s ballroom dance scene, but after tragedy strikes, Haru withdraws into isolation. When friends coax her back to the studio, she develops an infatuation with the new instructor. She must face what comes next as sparks fly.”

Blake Simons said in his review, “In dance, you have to lead with confidence. Your partner looks to you for guidance, and they require you to look back at them responsively, to move instinctually without faltering. There’s need for surefootedness, consistency, and impeccable timing. Luckily for us, Josef Kubota Wladyka’s fun and deceptively frothy third feature Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! has all of these qualities in spades.”

See the preview and poster below:

More than reclaiming the zombie motif from the knee-jerk response that Night of the Living Dead inhibited, Maya Annik Bedward’s Black Zombie is a reclamation of Vodou from the colonial fear-mongering that used it to demonize Black people the world over. Because it’s 2026 and Haitians are still cautious to admit their connection to the religion. There’s still an outsider belief that Haiti’s recent hardships are a result of its ancestors making a pact with the Devil.

It’s why I love that Bedward included Erol Josué’s candid response when asking about his feelings towards the film. He explains that he’s optimistic her heart is in the right place and his words will hold contextual value within the reality of Vodou rather than be warped to confirm the bias of Hollywood’s bastardization, but he’s been burned before. He’s seen other filmmakers come and go, only to have the finished work become yet another example of cultural voyeurism.

Well, I hope he breathed a sigh of relief after watching this one—it’s as far from William Seabrook’s The Magic Island and Wade Davis’s The Serpent and the Rainbow as you can get. Bedward very consciously only uses poor portrayals when scholars like Dominique Taffin, John Cussans, and Kaiama L. Glover poke holes in the depictions. She lets Josué, Yves-Grégory Francois, and Mambo Labelle Déese Botanica’s words and actions display Vodou’s beauty.

The film takes us through the history of Haiti so that we can better understand the origins of the word “zombie,” how it was weaponized, and the ways in which it’s evolved to both detach from its genesis and further perpetuate the stereotype. We learn about the African slaves working the sugar cane fields and praying for death so their spirits could return to Guinea, and how the idea of being a zombie was a prison of the soul from ever finding that release.

To gain that context is to see countless movies in a new light. How Night of the Living Dead using a Black lead could traumatize more than empower. How World War Z and other latter-day examples repurpose the “horde” into a metaphor for “othering” as a means to dehumanize (and thus murder) without remorse. Yet the only reason John Russo and Romero made their zombies into flesh-eaters was because Old Hollywood’s evil Black slaves weren’t scary enough.

You get a little bit of gore talk from Tom Savini, some Americanized Vodou talk from Slash, and the indefatigable allure of zombies as a pop-culture icon through Zombie Walk organizer Thea Munster, but Black Zombie is never better than when it’s delving deeper into the psychology, spirituality, and heritage beneath those aesthetic touchstones. Horror as an escapist outlet from state violence. Or a “zombie awakening” leading to actual revolutionary independence.

There are real-world implications beyond cinematic monsters. Just look how you can draw a line from the colonialist machine in Saint-Domingue to the Trump Administration targeting Haitian immigrants—a bid to remove them from the United States—by leaning into the same racist talking points from 100 years ago, despite so many of them propping up the American elder-care system on their backs. It’s all spelled out in figurative neon lights.

That’s not to belittle other through lines, including Zandashé Brown making her horror films from a Black lens that takes all of that into consideration. These two things go hand-in-hand—understanding by way of lifting the veil, thanks to oral traditions surviving as pushback against the sensationalism, is only half the battle. You still need Brown and Bedward to make use of that truth and disseminate it through their art to the masses who still need to learn.

Black Zombie is thus as much an educational resource to reveal Hollywood’s indoctrination in service of colonial infrastructure as it is an answer utilizing that knowledge to combat it in real time without the need for subterfuge (although the story of Haitians wrapping Vodou in Christianity is fascinating). Bedward plays with fictionalized reenactment to start building a new canon to replace the 1930s and ’40s clips exemplifying Western spin. She’s setting souls free.

Black Zombie screened at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival and opens in select theaters on September 11.