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
Sriram Raghavan's Andhadhun (2018) remains a landmark of Hindi-language cinema from India — 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.
★★★☆☆
Homi Adajania's Cocktail 2 (2026) remains a landmark of Hindi-language cinema from India — Reviewers have been largely unimpressed with this spiritual sequel, calling its love triangle thin and overlong despite …
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
Ashutosh Gowariker's Lagaan (2001) remains a landmark of Hindi-language cinema from India — 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.