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Orion's Shoulder (Substack)

Orion's Shoulder (Substack) is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Stephen A. Russell.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Babygirl (2024) Stephen A. Russell A genuinely horny morality (fore)play that crackles with all the energy of a 90s erotic thriller as viewed through the disappointments of the post-Me Too era and the dashed hopes that attend what was supposed to rewrite the scene.
Posted Jan 03, 2026  Edit critic review
Gorgonà (2025) Stephen A. Russell Athens-based visual artist and filmmaker Evi Kalogiropoulou understands the power of intricately layered worldbuilding to pull us into a dangerously addictive dystopia.
Posted Jan 03, 2026  Edit critic review
Die My Love (2025) Stephen A. Russell Lynne Ramsay hasn’t put a foot wrong yet with her haunted tales of volatile outsiders. Jennifer Lawrence is incendiary as a woman on the edge who refuses to be pinned down
Posted Jan 01, 2026  Edit critic review
The Love That Remains (2025) Stephen A. Russell Godland filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason’s picture-perfect family drama blew me away like a giant and very angry rooster.
Posted Jan 01, 2026  Edit critic review
National Theatre Live: Inter Alia (2025) Stephen A. Russell Rosamund Pike’s towering performance in Suzie Miller’s gut-punch of a filmed play approaches sexual violence from a very different, if equally unsettling, angle.
Posted Jan 01, 2026  Edit critic review
Weapons (2025) Stephen A. Russell Take a bow, Amy Maddigan ... As alarmingly amusing as it is deeply disturbing on a DNA level.
Posted Jan 01, 2026  Edit critic review
Perro Perro (2025) Stephen A. Russell Marco Berger's best in ages, maybe ever ... it's achingly tender and tragic.
Posted Jan 01, 2026  Edit critic review
Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror (2025) Stephen A. Russell Getting at the heart of why it became a global sensation of found family fun, it centres on an 80-something, still in heels O’Brien’s bold bravery, back then and now, blurring gender lines without apology.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Riefenstahl (2024) Stephen A. Russell Andres Veiel’s searing takedown of megalomaniacal Hitler’s propaganda-spinner of choice, Leni Riefenstahl, does precisely what any great prosecutor does: hangs her by her own words.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
The Perfect Neighbor (2025) Stephen A. Russell You feel the loss here immeasurably, the horrible cost of stupid cruelty. This one will stick with me forever.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Megadoc (2025) Stephen A. Russell The clash of the titan, Coppola, with the dubious Shia LaBeouf is deliriously delicious, as is Aubrey Plaza’s even more unhinged than could be expected contribution. A snort-laugh avalanche from start to finish.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Chain Reactions (2024) Stephen A. Russell Alexandre O. Philippe’s ace The Texas Chain Saw Massacre breakdown.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
My Mom Jayne (2025) Stephen A. Russell Hargitay stitches still-raw family testaments with remarkable archival material to create something unmooring in its magnanimous reclamation.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
2073 (2024) Stephen A. Russell Amy filmmaker Asif Kapadia's clear-eyed wrangling with fake news blurs the documentary form to posit where our surveillance state and bad actors will lead us in the future, with Blade Runner-like fictional sequences led by Samantha Morton.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Come See Me in the Good Light (2025) Stephen A. Russell Recalling last year’s similarly generous Simon and Marianne, it’s as much about the joy of life as it is the spectre of death.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Zodiac Killer Project (2025) Stephen A. Russell This clever bait and switch is more about why our sinister collective obsession with murder and mayhem proliferates in the streaming age. Cheeky and creepy.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Mistress Dispeller (2024) Stephen A. Russell If you come here expecting a Dynasty-style cat fight, you’ll be sorely disappointed. If, instead, you’re up for a quietly complex reckoning with messy emotions and the occasionally smothering nature of relationships, you’ll be suitably rewarded.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Enigma (2025) Stephen A. Russell Drucker’s interested in the truth, but never disrespectful, in a rollicking doco that’s packed with jaw-dropping moments.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Phantoms of July (2025) Stephen A. Russell A whimsical yet weighty wonder, where a mine’s slag heap can be seen from rose gardens, it assembles a kooky crew of outcasts who find more in the dirt than most.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Presence (2024) Stephen A. Russell The Lucy Liu-led spooker Presence is fabulously inventive with POV (for the love of ****, TikTokers, please learn what it means), unnervingly so.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Bearcave (2025) Stephen A. Russell One of the films I felt most viscerally this year, you can practically touch the grass, taste the stream and feel the cave’s dirt under your feet as ... a voyage of the unsure ensues.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
1001 Frames (2025) Stephen A. Russell Mehrnoush Alia breaks down boundaries between artistic forms with her startling, experimental #MeToo drama ... If the ending pulls its anti-patriarchal punches a little, the journey is breathtaking.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Left-Handed Girl (2025) Stephen A. Russell Absolutely thrums with the street-level, day-in-the-life energy evident in Tangerine, where the mundane is manic and fast approaching magic. Loved seeing Taipei through the eyes of young stars Nina Ye and Shih-Yuan Ma.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Longlegs (2024) Stephen A. Russell Tediously derivative dross, nowhere even close to the perimeter of scary, with Nic Cage truly embarrassing in it.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
The Monkey (2025) Stephen A. Russell A riotous hoot that’s delightfully wicked, especially thanks to a gloriously unhinged Theo James.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass (2024) Stephen A. Russell Equal parts creepy and dreamy, this murky underworld marvel of fractured time and ticking mortality is the very epitome of a vibe, a stop-motion fever dream with European inflections that will haunt me forever.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025) Stephen A. Russell Bigelow has never flinched from wrangling with the imperial US’s snarling weeds in exceedingly prescient ways. Both sprawling and astonishingly focused, A House of Dynamite explodes off the screen.
Posted Oct 12, 2025  Edit critic review
Careless (2025) Stephen A. Russell The latest of Sue Thompson’s rabble-rousing docos ... centres the stress of locating suitable aged care support, despite horrific headlines, on her own mother, asking for a better result for all Australians. It's golden.
Posted Sep 14, 2025  Edit critic review
1000 Women in Horror (2025) Stephen A. Russell Tracing the proud lineage of not-all-men, actually, who built the genre from the ground up, including monstrous mother Mary Shelley plus filmmakers Alice Guy-Blaché and Lois Webber, it’s a zippy but deeply drawn, riotously rigorous doco.
Posted Sep 14, 2025  Edit critic review
Black Ox (2024) Stephen A. Russell Boundlessly brilliant ... Tetsuichirô Tsuta haunting ode to love between man and beast, resting on an eminently watchable Lee Kang-sheng’s sturdy shoulders ... [is] dreamily deep.
Posted Sep 14, 2025  Edit critic review
Pasa Faho (2025) Stephen A. Russell Beautifully observed, with neither worldview overruling the other in a film that’s all about what we can build together, Pasa Faho is a radiant celebration of community in a capitalist world determined to grind it into the ground.
Posted Sep 14, 2025  Edit critic review
First Light (2025) Stephen A. Russell First Light luxuriates in silence and stillness, never taking the obvious or easy road while wrangling with life’s great mysteries.
Posted Sep 14, 2025  Edit critic review
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (2025) Stephen A. Russell An almost Maupin-like ode to found family ... [the] fairy tale-like film is clear-eyed in its request for love and understanding, even for those who maybe don’t deserve it. Goodness knows we need a lot more grace in this world.
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Harvest (2024) Stephen A. Russell Enthralling ... Tsangari’s wild and unruly, woozy work of pure golden oddity, spun in 16mm by Good Time cinematographer Sean Price Williams, would be almost achingly sad, exposing the heart of dastardliness, if it weren’t wrought with so much wonder.
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
By Design (2025) Stephen A. Russell With much to say about the objectification of women, unreal Instagram-proliferated lifestyles and the vultures who circle our ever-decreasing disposable incomes, it’s a bountifully biting fable.
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
A Useful Ghost (2025) Stephen A. Russell This queerly beloved, incurably horny ghost story ... sparks both surprisingly astute commentary on those sucked up and spat out by the capitalist machine, and the brutality of Thailand’s buried political history. All without losing sight of goofy gags.
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
The Toxic Avenger (2023) Stephen A. Russell Macon Blair’s long-awaited, incurably anarchic Troma reanimation ... ramps up the practical effects, wild production design, bombastic music and trippy visuals, performing a minor miracle in making superhero franchises profanely, insanely fun again.
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Late Shift (2025) Stephen A. Russell A thriller-like tribute to nurses who go above and beyond, often at great personal cost and under abusive duress, to ensure all their patients are comfortable ... The Teacher’s Lounge star Leonie Benesch again proves her mettle as a performer.
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
GEN_ (2025) Stephen A. Russell It's an astonishing salve for sore hearts, to sit in the kind and compassionate company of doctor Maurizio Bini ... Equally caring for the journeys of his transitioning patients and ... couples undergoing IVF treatment, his graciousness speaks volumes.
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Birthright (2025) Stephen A. Russell A cathartically chaotic debut feature ... that locks horns with the manufactured housing and cost-of-living crises ... Absurd from the off ... there is, nonetheless, an exceedingly grim reality to the open intergenerational warfare that follows.
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Little Trouble Girls (2025) Stephen A. Russell The film teeters towards, but never quite crosses, into mean girl territory, instead swerving into the sublime as an escape from Sasa Tabakovic’s increasingly dangerous choirmaster. Mystically rewarding.
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Two Times João Liberada (2025) Stephen A. Russell A remarkably astute debut feature ... Shot in scratchy 16mm and artfully playing with the fourth wall and filmmaking itself, [it] is a mighty reckoning with who gets to tell what story and how, and I was all the way in.
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) Stephen A. Russell For better or worse, this is truly the legacy character’s film, heavily indebted to the ‘97 version ... A little bit of nostalgia never hurt anyone, and [it] has just enough investment in its cool kids to hook into a new generation.
Posted Jul 18, 2025  Edit critic review
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) Stephen A. Russell Too dumb to function ... Sure, the body count increases, but I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is even less focused, almost entirely targeting random hotel employees.
Posted Jul 18, 2025  Edit critic review
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) Stephen A. Russell Not terrible. Not dull. Just ok, and infinitely inferior to Scream.
Posted Jul 18, 2025  Edit critic review
A Nice Indian Boy (2024) Stephen A. Russell There aren’t many beats you won’t see coming a mile off ... But it’s abundantly clear Sethi’s poured his heart and soul into this, ably abetted by the adorkable pairing of Soni and Groff and plumped up by Garg and Patel’s delightful deadpanning.
Posted Jul 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Materialists (2025) Stephen A. Russell While Materialists is beautifully lensed by returning cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, there’s an empty sheen to a disappointingly sterile and perplexingly shallow sophomore offering.
Posted Jul 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Superman II (1980) Stephen A. Russell There is no Zod but Terence Stamp, in a magnificent sequel that flies far beyond its behind-the-scenes rankling.
Posted Jul 09, 2025  Edit critic review
Superman: The Movie (1978) Stephen A. Russell The eruption of Krypton in Donner’s first flight is a thing of unmitigated cinematic beauty, Brando’s cue cards be damned. As is the earthquake’s devastation – more models please – and Clark’s determination to turn back time.
Posted Jul 09, 2025  Edit critic review
Superman (2025) Stephen A. Russell While Gunn's zanier approach was undoubtedly a necessary course correction from the over-grimness of Zack Snyder’s tenure featuring Henry Cavill, I remain unconvinced he had to go quite so cartoonish.
Posted Jul 09, 2025  Edit critic review
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