From Netflix Satire to Samurai Puzzles: A Four-Film Review Roundup
A roundup of four new releases—Ladies First (Netflix), Passenger, The Samurai And The Prisoner, and Bitter Christmas—spanning sharp satire, road-horror, historical mystery, and autofiction; reviewers largely critique Ladies First as clumsy and regressive, find Passenger uneven but with moments of visual flair, praise The Samurai And The Prisoner for Kurosawa’s measured suspense, and split on Bitter Christmas’s metatextual critique, delivering a mixed bag of ambition and execution across contemporary cinema.