Jack Hanley

3 Hidden Gems Not To Miss At The 2025 Telluride Horror Show

By Correspondents Shay Wescott and Jack Hanley It's finally here... The 16th Annual Horror Film Festival Returns to Telluride, Colorado, October 10–12, 2025! As ever, the official Telluride Horror Show line-up announcement delivers horror fans some of the most anticipated and talked about films of the year.

The Filmic 5: Courage, Bob Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film I Am Loving This Week ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is ESSENTIAL VIEWING for every American. PTA (in his most ambitious outing) reminds us though a comically sedated DiCaprio that the REAL danger of the Revolution is not

The Filmic 5: So Long, Sundance Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley Back from a whirlwind of late-summer festivals and too many film panels and midnight screenings to count, HanleyOnFilm is BACK in its natural habitat. The suitcase is still half-unpacked, the festival lanyards are already relics, and the brain is

The Filmic 5: Throwdown On Sesame Street Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley We are thrilled to be back after the short summer festival circuit! Let's talk film... I. Indie Film Moment I Am Loving This Week My partner, producer, and forever collaborator Shay Wescott just sent me this snapshot

The Filmic 5: Analog Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film I Am Loving This Week I confess I cannot stop thinking about THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME. Perhaps the perfect Father’s Day film (and my favorite cinematic Father/Daughter relationship of recent memory), I expected to enjoy it

The Filmic 5: Making Waves Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film Anniversary I Am Participating In This Week "You all know me. Know how I earn a livin'...writing films essays and critiques and such. I've been waiting half a century for this fish

The Filmic 5: Sewer Legends Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film Dispatch From Cannes Exciting Me This Week Of all the recent dispatches from my favorite critics out of Cannes this week, none have proven more tantalizing than that of Sight & Sound critic Jonathan Romney and his

The Filmic 5: Not Leaving The Car Here Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Upcoming Film Most Exciting Me This Week I ADORE the films of the "New Georgian Wave"...Georgian cinema—rich, elliptical, and profoundly regional—is one of the most idiosyncratic film traditions to emerge from the post-Soviet

The Filmic 5: The Lusty Month of May Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film STILL Making Me Happy This Week SINNERS (USA) Dir. Ryan Coogler In SINNERS, Ryan Coogler steals away from fangs of IP to orchestrate a sumptuous (if not shaggy) plunge into southern gothic horror, where sin seeps through

Sinners (2025) Review

by Jack Hanley of Kinophila and HanleyOnFilm.com SINNERS (USA) Dir. Ryan Coogler In SINNERS, Ryan Coogler steals away from fangs of IP to orchestrate a sumptuous (if not shaggy) plunge into southern gothic horror, where sin seeps through the floorboards like molasses and seduction calls through every note. Subverting

The Filmic 5: Professor Coogler Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film Moment Making Me Happy This Week I've adored director Ryan Coogler since my early film festival programming days where I first encountered his masterful debut, FRUITVALE STATION. And while I MAY be still be a

The Filmic 5: Unknown Stuntman Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film News I Am THRILLED About This Week Something amazing happened this week...the Academy FINALLY listened. ;) This Wednesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the LONG OVERDUE creation of a competitive category for achievement

The Filmic 5: CinemaCon Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley It is a pleasure to be returning to the Filmic 5 after a brief hiatus working the Spring Film Festival Season both as a host and/or part of the screening committees for some amazing Festivals (special thanks to

The Filmic 5: Awards Edition!

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Award Moment That Made Me Cheer This Week It is well known that I have ALWAYS fostered a love/hate relationship with Award Shows in general- and the Oscars IN PARTICULAR. Indeed, I used to author a yearly

Who WILL, Who SHOULD, and the ACTUAL BEST Films and Performances of 2024: Oscar Ballot Showdown

In this very special edition of our annual Academy Awards feature, special guest Scott Aigner of Blindspotting: A Film Discovery Podcast joins his co-host Jack Hanley in a Oscar Ballot Prediction grudge-match for the ages…or at least until next year. Actress In A Supporting Role Who Will Win: (Scott)

The Contrarian: 2024 Academy Awards

Film Critic Jack Hanley Brings You His Annual "Anti-Oscars" Cinephile Edition Each year, Kinophila and HanleyOnFilm critic Jack Hanley crafts a nominee list in eight categories comprised entirely of often the more deserving films and performances ignored, snubbed, or neglected by the Academy Awards nomination committee. We select

The Filmic 5: Special YouTube Edition Vol. 2

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. We Remember David Lynch David Lynch was, perhaps, our greatest singular surrealist alchemist- a smirking conjurer of terrible beauty and dreamlike dread in equal measure. From the industrial wailing of ERASERHEAD to the uncanny suburban Americana horror of

MadS (2024) Review

by Jack Hanley of Kinophila and HanleyOnFilm.com MADS (France) Dir. David Moreau Just WOW. MadS is the single-shot, REC meets Euphoria crossover you didn’t know you needed in your life. Shot in a single take (or at least the illusion of one), this zombie incarnation is teaming with

The Filmic 5: The Let's All Gaze At Bob Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film I Am Loving This Week THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (Iran) Dir. Mohammad Rasoulof One of my proudest moments during my tenure with the Crested Butte Film Festival was the programming push made by myself and

A Different Man (2024) Review

by Jack Hanley of Kinophila and HanleyOnFilm.com Aaron Schimberg's A DIFFERENT MAN plays Kaufman by way of Kafka in a bleakly black-comedic examination of both the faces you are given... and the ones we fashion for ourselves.Anchored by brilliant turns from both Pearson and Stan, the

Maria (2024) Review

by Jack Hanley of HanleyOnFilm.com MARIA (2024) Dir. Pablo Larraín In a pleasantly surprising departure from his brilliant canon of "horror biopics"—featuring the reliable unraveling of powerful women in isolation (JACKIE, SPENCER)—Pablo Larraín leans heavily and unabashedly into fabulism for his subject's final

The Filmic 5: End Of Year Nostalgia Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film I Am Loving This Week A DIFFERENT MAN (2024) Dir. Aaron Schimberg Aaron Schimberg's A DIFFERENT MAN plays Kaufman by way of Kafka in a bleakly black-comedic examination of both the faces you are given.

The Filmic 5: Are You Not Entertained Edition

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film I Am Loving This Week Nicely surprised by WICKED- while I still hold a bit of a grudge against the McGuire source material for ushering in our over-saturated era of needless classic-canon revisionism that undermines some of

The Filmic 5

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film I Am Loving This Week ANORA (Dir. Sean Baker) The most politically consequential film since PARASITE and unequivocally the best film of 2024. Sean Baker has long proven to be our most vital (and empathetic) American Neorealist-

The Filmic 5

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I hope this finds you all well! I'm thrilled to be back from a bit of a sabbatical working and attending some Fall Film Festivals (my favorite time of year!). Let's get into the 5