Category Archives: Cucalorus x Film Matters

“Sometimes a movie isn’t what you think. It can offer a different perspective or solution to a crisis . . . so long as you can crack THE CODE.” Eugene Kotlyarenko opens his 2024 film, The Code, with this quote, … Continue reading →

Rowdy Friends, the new feature-length film directed by Jacob Hatley, is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and it likes it that way. Rough around the edges but full of exuberance, this film throws fiction and truth into … Continue reading →

Watching Duino (2024) felt like stepping into a mirror and seeing parts of myself I hadn’t recognized before. The quiet tenderness of its storytelling, the rawness of its emotional hidden layer, hit close to home in a way I didn’t … Continue reading →

“We live in a modern world, in a remote area.” This quote from the film drives the overall message of One with the Whale. This documentary, directed by Peter Chelkowski and Jim Wickens, follows the life of a family in … Continue reading →

Georden West’s Playland is a visually stunning blend of performance art and documentary that asks the audience to be witnesses of Boston’s oldest queer bar as it transcends time to tell the stories of its patrons, performers, and personnel through … Continue reading →

An observational and sometimes borderline poetic documentary, How to Have an American Baby, directed by Leslie Tai, follows the lives of Chinese women who have already given or plan to give birth in the United States in order for their … Continue reading →

Much like the formation of coal deep within the earth, Appalachian native Elaine McMillion Sheldon forms an eloquently layered piece of creative nonfiction, weighed down under mountains of history and threaded by a river of shining narration in her documentary, … Continue reading →

In the era of Britain’s Thatcher administration, a repertory cinema emerged as a cultural phenomenon that would inspire a generation. SCALA!!!, directed by Ali Catterall and Jane Giles, unfolds the riotous inside story of the infamous Scala Cinema. Between 1978 … Continue reading →

Welcome to the Enclave Introduced as a virtual community for like-minded women, The Enclave exists as a haven enabling an escape from the mundane of reality. At once a safe neighborhood, now under siege from Reddit trolls, digital hackers, and … Continue reading →

The Monkey Puzzle shorts block of Cucalorus features experimental shorts existing in the limbo between dream and nightmare. These shorts use surreal imagery to convey indescribable parts of the human experience or fears we don’t dare speak of. This review … Continue reading →