Orion's Shoulder (Substack)

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Sep 11, 2026 A tight chamber piece with a theatrical feel and a raging hunger for the horn. Go to Full Review The Invite (2026) 96% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Sep 8, 2026 Love and forgiveness soak the sore bones of Jenkins’ equal parts tender and tumultuous Moonlight. An enduring gift to cinema, it’s a homecoming in many senses. Go to Full Review Moonlight (2016) 98% 79%

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Sep 7, 2026 With stunning production design, costumes, score, cinematography and more, this is grown-up cinema at its most scintillating. Go to Full Review The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026) 97% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Sep 7, 2026 The lived reality of war rumbles through the floorboards towards you in Palestinian-Syrian filmmaker Abdallah Al-Khatib’s nerve-shattering thriller that stitches a tapestry of loosely overlapping lives to give a sense of what is lost. Go to Full Review Chronicles from the Siege (2026) - - - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Sep 7, 2026 It’s an absolute delight, but plan to hydrate as much as possible given you’ll be losing gallons from your eyeballs, especially if, like me, you’ve had to say goodbye to a parent. Go to Full Review Tangles (2026) 95% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Sep 7, 2026 Saying a lot about our screentime addiction without ever feeling didactic, this one will gently unmoor you. Go to Full Review Light Pillar (2026) - - - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Sep 7, 2026 Blaževičius’ cruise missile-guided point ignites this desert-dry black comedy of ill manners. Go to Full Review How to Divorce During the War (2026) 100% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Sep 7, 2026 It takes the humdrum reality of working a buzzing, floodlit convenience store and heightens its indignities ever so slowly, like boiling an unwitting frog... a scalding satire that sizzles. Go to Full Review Anymart (2026) - - - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Sep 7, 2026 Emotionally anchored by their bashful recollections, alongside luminous recreations in which they’re portrayed by Chirag Lobo and Mina Dale, it’s astonishingly gorgeous. Go to Full Review The Cycle of Love (2025) 100% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Jul 4, 2026 A slow and subtle but never alienating film that relishes its peaceful contemplation of place, personal experience and the vastness of time Go to Full Review Silent Friend (2025) 94% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Jun 18, 2026 The result is both a fitting tribute to remarkable humans and the gift they bestowed on the future and also a real good time. Go to Full Review Once Upon a Time in Harlem (2026) 100% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Jun 18, 2026 On the Road is a magnetic movie that revels in its quiet character beats, an enthusiastically horny energy and the vast expanse that engulfs them. Somewhere along the way, it shifts gears into the sublime. Go to Full Review On the Road (2025) - - - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Jun 18, 2026 For all its darkness, there’s an effervescent luminosity to Dusabejambo’s insistence on hope. Go to Full Review Ben'Imana (2026) 100% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Jun 18, 2026 Mungiu resists clear-cut moralising, instead miring the parents in a muddy moral quandary when accusations of raising their hands to their children brings down the full weight of child protection services with an equally rigid viewpoint Go to Full Review Fjord (2026) 92% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Jun 18, 2026 Coward’s heart-sore ode to the many young men and their potential slaughtered on the altar of the so-called Great War, leans into Close’s aching tenderness Go to Full Review Coward (2026) 95% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Jun 18, 2026 Shot on gorgeous 16mm in the classic confines of the 4:3 aspect ratio with disarmingly post-dubbed dialogue, Rose of Nevada works the heightened social realism of Bait with the eerie uncanny of Enys Men to great effect. Go to Full Review Rose of Nevada (2025) 92% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Jun 18, 2026 It's incandescent. Go to Full Review Dao (2026) 83% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Jun 18, 2026 A lyrically non-linear, daydream-like insight into the artist’s embrace of nature and the body in all their liberating glory. Go to Full Review Barbara Forever (2026) 100% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Apr 5, 2026 Again recasting body horror’s bones into something equally thrilling and frightening, Alpha is a suitably devastating parable of the AIDS crisis that also draws deep on Ducournau’s Amazigh heritage Go to Full Review Alpha (2025) 57% - -

Stephen A. Russell Orion's Shoulder (Substack) Apr 5, 2026 Ozon’s sun-kissed reverie reengages his mercurial Summer of 85 star, Benjamin Voisin, as the unbothered, angular in shape and spirit shipping clerk, Meursault ... it’s a tantalisingly opaque Rorschach. Go to Full Review The Stranger (2025) 91% - -