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IONCINEMA.com

IONCINEMA.com is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Jordan M. Smith, Nicholas Bell.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
2.5/5
Straight Circle (2025) Nicholas Bell As could be predicted, the film builds to an expected, and ultimate irony. But much like the title suggests, it feels as if we get right back to where we started from.
Posted Nov 26, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
Fire of Wind (2024) Nicholas Bell Ultimately a tad tiresome even with a slim running time of seventy-four minutes, Fire of Wind suggests Mateus has the eye of a formidable filmmaker, but the narrative feels like more of a concept than statement.
Posted Oct 30, 2025  Edit critic review
4/5
Bravo Bene! (2025) Nicholas Bell For those who know nothing about Maresco or his body of work, Bravo Bene! strangely succeeds as a documentary biopic in orienting the audience’s understanding of the man, at least as a director who has had a formidable career in the Italian film industry.
Posted Sep 09, 2025  Edit critic review
4/5
Silent Friend (2025) Nicholas Bell With a vibrating audio palette and crisply edited finesse, Silent Friend becomes a sensuous immersive experience.
Posted Sep 05, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
Duse (2025) Nicholas Bell Duse accomplishes something of its intention, a frustrating film about a difficult woman who may never have heard of Stanislavsky but certainly embodied his mantra, "It's all about the work."
Posted Sep 03, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025) Nicholas Bell The immediacy of the title’s importance is speaking directly to the present, utilizing cinema as the tool to break through the apathy of the news cycle.
Posted Sep 03, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
The Stranger (2025) Nicholas Bell Ozon’s take on The Stranger effectively administers the source’s intentions -- and clearly, there is a point, even if Meursault himself would reject it. protagonist.
Posted Sep 02, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
Father Mother Sister Brother (2025) Nicholas Bell With a familiar wry tone, Jarmusch’s palette may arguably feel slight, but it’s a nuanced exercise examining the eventual evolution experienced between parents and children growing apart.
Posted Sep 01, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
Below the Clouds (2025) Nicholas Bell The past informs the present of modern day Naples in Below the Clouds, the latest documentary from Gianfranco Rosi.
Posted Sep 01, 2025  Edit critic review
1.5/5
The Wizard of the Kremlin (2025) Nicholas Bell It’s a film which basks in banality, at its best inspiring a sense of apathy when it should be evoking dread in the vein of classic 1970s paranoid political thrillers.
Posted Aug 31, 2025  Edit critic review
2/5
At Work (2025) Nicholas Bell A film which feels audaciously removed from the very experiences it believes to profoundly ponder.
Posted Aug 29, 2025  Edit critic review
2/5
Jay Kelly (2025) Nicholas Bell In a film jam packed with notable names and personas, it’s a film which eventually feels less than the sum of its parts. However, those prone to the paralytic trance of Hollywood glitter might be dazzled by its superficial excesses.
Posted Aug 28, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
Orphan (2025) Nicholas Bell Rife with disturbing symbolism, Orphan does take painstaking time to take flight, and the build up sometimes feels like it’s spinning its wheels over obvious territory.
Posted Aug 28, 2025  Edit critic review
2/5
Mother (2025) Nicholas Bell As the loose-fitting, overtly generic title suggests, this is merely an impression, and doesn’t quite configure how Mother Teresa became a humanitarian symbol.
Posted Aug 27, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
La Grazia (2025) Nicholas Bell Certainly, Sorrentino does ask questions worth pondering. But the corresponding answers are often monosyllabic.
Posted Aug 27, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
The Mastermind (2025) Nicholas Bell Compared to Reichardt’s greatest hits thus far, it’s her least compelling presentation of a solitary, melancholic character to date.
Posted May 28, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
Young Mothers (2025) Nicholas Bell ...[The Young Mother's Home is] another tenderly administered portrait of the human condition from directors who have mastered the ability to capture such experiences without resorting to fussy declarations or cheap sentimentality.
Posted May 28, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
Resurrection (2025) Nicholas Bell But despite it’s arguable ostentatiousness, Gan’s ability to translate cinema as a dreamlike state is certainly exceptional, and there are elements which run along the same wavelengths as David Lynch.
Posted May 28, 2025  Edit critic review
4/5
Night Moves (1975) Nicholas Bell Sharp’s level of complex characterization is impressive in this nervous neo-noir,
Posted May 23, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
Sentimental Value (2025) Nicholas Bell Joachim Trier delivers his own sterling parallels to Ingmar Bergman in his sixth feature, Sentimental Value, which contends with the circuitous reconciliation between a father and daughter through art.
Posted May 22, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
Caravan (2025) Nicholas Bell The film itself is largely an internalized narrative, and it’s the physicality shared by Geislerová and Vodstrčil which propels the film’s quiet but meaningful relationship driven meaning.
Posted May 22, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
Woman and Child (2025) Nicholas Bell Curiously, it’s an ensemble piece wherein no one is inherently likable, which casts a murky pallor over a film which insistently defies morality considering no one seems capable of doing the right thing.
Posted May 22, 2025  Edit critic review
4/5
Yes! (2025) Nicholas Bell Lapid’s latest is an admonition of almost shocking import, an increasingly rare example of modern art speaking truth to power.
Posted May 22, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
The History of Sound (2025) Nicholas Bell A film that doesn’t sob but quietly sheds tears into a pillow.
Posted May 21, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
Romería (2025) Nicholas Bell A film which feels like a humble, highly personal exercise in catharsis for Simon. However, the increasingly monotonous narrative, underserved by a lack of dramatic conflict and a muted character arc, fails to compel.
Posted May 21, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
Fuori (2025) Nicholas Bell Mournful but also celebratory, Martone isn’t shying away from the unpleasant aspects of Sapienza’s life, but rather attempting to show how fascinating she was because of them.
Posted May 21, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
It Was Just an Accident (2025) Nicholas Bell There’s no doubt with this explicit critique, which utilizes a familiar narrative formula but has the potency of a poison pen letter aimed to slash through the debilitating censorship demanded of auteurs expected to exist as prisms of propaganda.
Posted May 21, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
Sleepless City (2025) Nicholas Bell Understated and featuring likable lead performances from its nonprofessional cast, Sleepless City feels too familiar to feel restless about.
Posted May 20, 2025  Edit critic review
2/5
Eagles of the Republic (2025) Nicholas Bell A strident, matter-of-fact tonality tends to purposefully avoid tension building through dark satire, but its subversive potential never dives deeper than a superficial tease.
Posted May 20, 2025  Edit critic review
1/5
Alpha (2025) Nicholas Bell It’s as if the film is afraid of stillness, to distract us from pondering, trying to delay us from the realization of what’s happening even though it’s fairly evident early on.
Posted May 20, 2025  Edit critic review
2/5
Wild Foxes (2025) Nicholas Bell Unfortunately, its frustratingly familiar tropes never transcend the obvious trajectories.
Posted May 20, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
A Useful Ghost (2025) Nicholas Bell Bizarre but often poignant in its existential pondering on what motivates these disembodied spirits to remain behind, Boonbunchachoke mines the essence of eternal unfinished business.
Posted May 19, 2025  Edit critic review
1/5
The Phoenician Scheme (2025) Nicholas Bell Whatever The Phoenician Scheme seems to be offering, congratulations to those who are enlightened or enlivened through the consumption of its contrived excess. For those numb to its charms, it’s nothing short of trying.
Posted May 19, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
The Richest Woman in the World (2025) Nicholas Bell Fun, but not nearly as devious as it could have been, The Richest Woman in the World is an odd curiosity piece, but worth the price of admission alone to see Huppert, a bored, worldly vampire allowing herself to be drained by a desperate sycophant.
Posted May 19, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
Renoir (2025) Nicholas Bell Hayakawa unspools a tonally uneven character portrait which cleaves too many narrative paths to aptly explore any one aspect with any depth.
Posted May 18, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
Nouvelle Vague (2025) Nicholas Bell Essentially, Linklater is applying his own hangout tableaux to the New Wave alumni. But it fails to capture the energy of what exactly made them such trailblazers.
Posted May 18, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
Her Will Be Done (2025) Nicholas Bell Moody, sometimes overtly sullen as it hurtles towards an inevitable, anticipated finale, Kowalski prizes agony and discomfort over cathartic bloodletting, creating a grimy, backwoods vibe where no one’s hands are clean.
Posted May 16, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
Kika (2025) Nicholas Bell Essentially, like the profession, it’s a tale as old as time... but Poukine circumnavigates the usual tropes to steer a path into what feels like a surprise journey towards self actualization.
Posted May 16, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
Two Prosecutors (2025) Nicholas Bell In 2025, a Ukrainian director evoking Stalin’s reign of terror through bureaucratic dismantling in ways which eerily echo the current state of affairs in the United States is its own formidable quagmire to unpack.
Posted May 16, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
The Girl in the Snow (2025) Nicholas Bell It has all the essence of a horror narrative and, yet, Hémon keeps an icy, observational distance, as if the film itself is destined to remain in a permanent state of defrost.
Posted May 16, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
Case 137 (2025) Nicholas Bell There’s little that makes Dossier 137 stand out beyond the specific civil unrest of recent history it’s revisiting, but Drucker’s empathetic and resilient turn is compelling enough to maintain interest.
Posted May 16, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
Sound of Falling (2025) Nicholas Bell Hypnotic and transfixing, it’s a film experience demanding marination, only bothering to explain itself in stops and starts, like an amnesiac slowly puzzling together constantly shuffled memories.
Posted May 14, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
Leave One Day (2025) Nicholas Bell At its core, Leave One Day is a solid, fulfilling melodrama that might be hitting all the familiar notes, but does so with considerable gusto thanks foremost to a lovely turn from Armanet.
Posted May 14, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
Enzo (2025) Nicholas Bell In a sense, we’ve seen narratives like Enzo in various iterations, but the film, like its lead character, evens out into an confident stride to match his newly discovered balance and self-reliance without compromising the integrity of reality.
Posted May 14, 2025  Edit critic review
2/5
The Safe House (2025) Nicholas Bell De Gaulle’s odd flight for respite aside, The Safe House doesn’t quite convey just how tumultuous May, 1968 was.
Posted Mar 19, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
Timestamp (2025) Nicholas Bell Timestamp will likely not feel ‘of the moment’ for long. And while it contains powerful imagery, Gornostai isn’t digging too deeply into the mechanics of the education system, more so showcasing the resilient evolution of a besieged population.
Posted Mar 19, 2025  Edit critic review
4/5
The Blue Trail (2025) Nicholas Bell Pleasurably mordant in its critique of governmental propaganda disguising violence and inhumanity, Mascaro showcases lead Daniela Weinberg as a witty, resourceful woman who is far from ready to walk gentle into that good night.
Posted Mar 17, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
We Believe You (2025) Nicholas Bell Aggravating but ultimately empathetic, it’s set almost entirely within the sterile confines of a judge’s office, which ultimately feels like a structured reprieve whenever we’re forced to stray outside these rigid confines.
Posted Mar 17, 2025  Edit critic review
2.5/5
The Best Mother in the World (2025) Nicholas Bell Its subject matter is inherently best approached with less fussy narrative accoutrements, which arguably makes Muylaert’s latest feel a bit elemental and straightforward in comparison to her previous filmography.
Posted Mar 17, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
The Devil Smokes (2025) Nicholas Bell The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box) does string us along on an eerie path, depositing us into the unsettling without laboring the film’s dalliance with genre.
Posted Mar 17, 2025  Edit critic review
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