Film Comment Editor · Essays & Film Theory
Dr. Okonkwo holds a PhD in Film Studies and writes long-form critical essays situating new releases within broader cinematic movements.
53 reviews published on Celluloid
★★★★½
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie (2001) endures as a defining romance landmark from France, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Strongly recommended — a staple of its national cinema.
★★★★½
Raghavan's darkly comic thriller became a word-of-mouth phenomenon across India and abroad.
Essential viewing — among the finest films in Indian cinema.
★★★★½
Marcel Camus's Black Orpheus (1959) endures as a defining romance landmark from Brazil, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Strongly recommended — a staple of its national cinema.
★★★★½
Lee Chang-dong's Burning (2018) endures as a defining drama landmark from South Korea, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Essential viewing — a certified classic.
★★★☆☆
Reviewers have been largely unimpressed with this spiritual sequel, calling its love triangle thin and overlong despite committed performances from its three leads, with only scattered praise for individual scenes and the Sicilian production design.
Skip unless you are a franchise fan — reception was mixed.
★★★★☆
Joko Anwar's Gundala (2019) endures as a defining action landmark from Indonesia, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Strongly recommended — a staple of its national cinema.
★★★★½
Kemi Adetiba's King of Boys (2018) endures as a defining crime landmark from Nigeria, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Strongly recommended — a staple of its national cinema.
★★★★½
An underdog sports epic so grand it earned India its first Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
Essential viewing — among the finest films in Indian cinema.
★★★★½
Mehmet Ada Öztekin's Miracle in Cell No. 7 (2019) endures as a defining drama landmark from Turkey, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Strongly recommended — a staple of its national cinema.
★★★★½
Paolo Genovese's Perfect Strangers (2016) endures as a defining comedy landmark from Italy, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Strongly recommended — a staple of its national cinema.
★★★★½
Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985) endures as a defining action landmark from Japan, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Essential viewing — a certified classic.
★★★★½
Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004) endures as a defining comedy landmark from United Kingdom, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Essential viewing — a certified classic.
★★★★☆
Upi Avianto's Sri Asih (2019) endures as a defining action landmark from Indonesia, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Strongly recommended — a staple of its national cinema.
★★★★☆
Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977) endures as a defining horror landmark from Italy, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Strongly recommended — a staple of its national cinema.
★★★★☆
Carlos Carrera's The Crime of Father Amaro (2002) endures as a defining drama landmark from Mexico, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Strongly recommended — a staple of its national cinema.
★★★★½
Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) endures as a defining drama landmark from France, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Essential viewing — a certified classic.
★★★★½
Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden (2016) endures as a defining romance landmark from South Korea, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Essential viewing — a certified classic.
★★★★½
Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (1963) endures as a defining drama landmark from Italy, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Essential viewing — a certified classic.
★★★★½
Alfonso Cuarón's Y Tu Mamá También (2001) endures as a defining drama landmark from Mexico, with scores that still shape how audiences discover cinema from the region.
Essential viewing — a certified classic.
★★★★½
Kathleen Chalfant brings devastating specificity to Sarah Friedland's unhurried drama about a retired cook adjusting to life in memory care.
Quiet, humane, and deeply affecting.
★★★★½
Neo Sora's 175-minute Tokyo drama threads surveillance-state anxiety through a loose friendship story that builds political fury sideways.
Patient, prickly, and urgently of-the-moment.
★★★★☆
Louise Courvoisier finds unexpected sweetness in a teenager's clumsy attempt to hold his family together after his father's death.
A gentle French masterwork hiding in plain sight.
★★★★☆
Shoshannah Stern's insider portrait lets Marlee Matlin speak for herself, avoiding hagiography while honoring a groundbreaking career.
Essential viewing on Deaf representation and resilience.
★★★★★
Lojkine follows a delivery cyclist's frantic asylum deadline with urgent handheld immediacy, turning bureaucratic dread into pure cinematic tension.
A thriller where the clock is immigration policy — and it never stops ticking.
★★★★½
Geeta Gandbhir assembles bodycam and interrogation footage into a slow-burning indictment of Florida's stand your ground culture without ever raising its voice.
Devastating true-crime cinema with civic urgency.
★★★★☆
İlker Çatak follows The Teachers' Lounge with a Golden Bear-winning drama about a Turkish artist couple crushed by state retaliation.
Urgent, gripping, occasionally overextended.
★★★★☆
Didem İnselel anchors a patient, quietly devastating drama about a disappearance that forces one family to reckon with years of unspoken resentment.
Restrained, aching, deeply humane.
★★★★½
A single day in 1993 Lagos becomes a devastating portrait of fatherhood, memory, and a nation on edge.
A near-perfect debut
★★★★½
Mascha Schilinski's Cannes Jury Prize winner braids four generations of girlhood into one haunting, formally daring German epic.
A staggering generational achievement.