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Lauren Humphries-Brooks
Tomatometer-approved critic
Lauren Humphries-Brooks is a writer, editor, and media journalist. She holds a Masters degree in Cinema Studies from New York University, and in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh. She regularly contributes to film and pop culture websites, and has written extensively on Classical Hollywood, British horror films, and the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres. She currently works as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader.
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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All You Hear Is Noise (2023) |
All You Hear is Noise allows the three to speak for themselves, falling neither into condescension nor turning into an “uplifting” story about overcoming disability. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jun 20, 2023
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The Gullspång Miracle (2023) |
The Gullspång Miracle’s otherworldly elements hang at the peripheries, as the various subjects give nothing away at first, then burst out with declarations of love and hate, or even fantasies of violence. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jun 20, 2023
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Chasing Chasing Amy (2023) |
Chasing Chasing Amy is about finding identity and solace in cinema and art, as often problematic and complex as that art can be—and how at times we can also leave those films behind, without losing our love for them. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jun 11, 2023
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Dark Glasses (2022) |
At base, Dark Glasses is a damn good thriller, well-paced and well-acted, with a slow-building dread and a clear interaction between many of the thematics that run throughout Argento’s films. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Oct 11, 2022
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Hellraiser (2022) |
If the original Hellraiser sought to explore the lines between horror and sex, pleasure and pain, with the Cenobites representing extreme sadomasochistic desires, this reboot explores the same within the context of drug addiction. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Oct 09, 2022
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Love in Kilnerry (2019) |
Despite its promising concept, Love in Kilnerry fails to fulfill its goals, becoming instead a generic, paint-by-numbers comedy that somehow misses the mark on most, if not all, of its punch lines. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Oct 03, 2022
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Hocus Pocus 2 (2022) |
If this sequel is less biting than the original, Hocus Pocus 2 is still a candy-coated poison apple held out performers whose enthusiasm filters through the screen. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Oct 01, 2022
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Belle Vie (2022) |
There’s an inherent optimism and faith in humanity at the base of Belle Vie, that the human need for community and connection over a good meal will always be there. Given the doomsaying of the past few years, this film is a lovely spark of hope. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Aug 29, 2022
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Micerz (2021) |
At the jaded heart of the film is an idea about people caring about each other and finding their own weird little space, whether that’s a broken-down van or a comedy club with a toilet that hasn’t been cleaned since the eighties. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jun 25, 2022
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God Save the Queens (2022) |
There’s something wonderful and refreshing about a film featuring drag queens that does not entirely rely on broad comedy or uber-serious subplots. God Save the Queens is about workaday drag queens. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jun 13, 2022
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Kaepernick & America (2022) |
Kaepernick & America examines the influence that a simple act of protest had not just on the man who did it, but on the country outraged by it. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jun 11, 2022
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The Northman (2022) |
While the violence, blood, and mud won’t be for everyone, The Northman is a rewarding film for those who venture into its wilderness. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted May 20, 2022
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What We Do Next (2022) |
The narratives intersection of race, class, and social justice provides both an individual and a universal exploration of abusive systems from the perspectives the people trapped, and attempting to work, within them. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted May 02, 2022
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Parallel Mothers (2021) |
Parallel Mothers is ultimately about healing trauma through catharsis, the understanding and uncovering of the past as a way to push through into the future. Women are the repositories of trauma, working through the countrys collective suffering . - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Feb 28, 2022
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Corridor of Mirrors (1948) |
Even if Corridor of Mirrors is ultimately insubstantial, that is also a part of its charm, and its strangeness. It might be odd, a little meandering, and occasionally incoherent, but then...that's what dreams are made of. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Dec 30, 2021
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Number 17 (1932) |
Number Seventeen's weirdness is quite entertaining, a great director playing around in a sandbox full of tropes and genuinely creepy images. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Dec 10, 2021
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This Is Not a War Story (2021) |
Though This is Not a War Story deals with trauma, there is also an underlying hope to it-that the characters it depicts might be OK, that they can learn to connect to each other, that they cannot banish their trauma, but might be able to live with it. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Nov 22, 2021
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The Accused (1948) |
If The Accused is ultimately of its time, it also attempts to stretch beyond it. While not exactly a progressive film, it nevertheless grapples with assault, victim-blaming, and women existing within a deeply patriarchal culture. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Nov 18, 2021
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The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935) |
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is far from the best Dickens adaptation of the period, but it does give life to a story that has always been a little loose and truncated. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Nov 18, 2021
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Titane (2021) |
Titane is a rare kind of film, a waking dream that makes perfect sense while you're experiencing it, but that upon waking makes you go, "Well, that was odd." - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Oct 28, 2021
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Malignant (2021) |
Malignant is the best of contemporary horror written in bold, bloody, flashing neon letters. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Sep 13, 2021
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Theater of Blood (1973) |
Theater of Blood is a rare delight. It's a camp horror film, a dissection of Shakespeare, a diatribe against cruel critics, a wicked adoration of the acting profession. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Sep 06, 2021
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The Green Knight (2021) |
The Green Knight wants to be a complex allegory of the death drive, but fails to touch on its own narrative's chivalric code or the inherent dark humor at its core. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Aug 22, 2021
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Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It (2021) |
While there are times when the film edges into a charming but simple celebration of Moreno's career, the heavier aspects of it deepen the viewing experience and raise some important issues - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jun 20, 2021
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She Done Him Wrong (1933) |
Coming in at a spare hour plus, She Done Him Wrong is entertaining, hilarious, and shocking in many ways-even in a Pre-Code world, what West got away with onscreen is nothing short of revolutionary. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jun 12, 2021
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West Michigan (2021) |
In many ways, West Michigan contains a somewhat predictable arc-siblings who have difficulty connecting find solace on the road-but does a good job of enhancing those elements via the charm of the central characters and their developing bond. - Suddenly A Shot Rang Out
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| Posted Apr 20, 2021
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Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021) |
Delightfully, this isn't a film about two sad middle-aged women getting their groove back, but two happy middle-aged women having a good time stretching beyond their comfort zones. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Apr 18, 2021
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The Ringmaster (2019) |
This isn't so much about an unscrupulous filmmaker deliberately manipulating a person for his own gain, but about trying to force a story (and a person) into a shape that just won't fit. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jan 25, 2021
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Paracelsus (1943) |
Is this a humanist attempt to undercut Nazi ideology? Perhaps. Is it a propaganda piece valorizing Germany and its perceived place in history? Perhaps. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Dec 23, 2020
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Effigy: Poison and the City (2019) |
The complexity of the psychological history provides Effigy with some of its tensest scenes, especially between Gottfried and Cato, as both women face a male-dominated society requiring them to be either waifs or monsters. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Dec 21, 2020
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La Madrina: The Savage Life of Lorine Padilla (2020) |
Raquel Cepeda helps to guide the narrative from a feminine and ultimately feminist perspective, and provides us insight into a world of women from which a male filmmaker would be forcibly locked out. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Nov 23, 2020
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French Exit (2020) |
Like Frances, it manages to draw us in and make us care about people that we might otherwise not want to care for. I'm a little upset that I enjoyed French Exit as much as I did, and perhaps that's the point. That's its magic and its fascination. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Oct 22, 2020
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Nomadland (2020) |
Nomadland is perhaps one of the deftest works of cinema in recent years, transcendent simply by looking, unflinchingly, into the heart of the American character. It lets the characters, the landscape, and the images take the viewer where they need to go. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Oct 05, 2020
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MLK/FBI (2020) |
This is a valuable documentary not least because it does not shy away from the fact of King's humanity, looking at him as a person rather than an idol, and not proposing to be the final answer to how we understand or navigate his legacy. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Sep 20, 2020
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Maedchen in Uniform (1931) |
The nascent sexuality of the girls in an all-girls school becomes an ideological battleground between authoritarianism and enforced heterosexuality, and freedom and fluid sexuality. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jul 24, 2020
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Shirley (2020) |
It's not only a spectacular use of cinema to render the spirit of Jackson's work, it's an angry, elegiac rendering of female psychology. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jun 14, 2020
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Olivia (1951) |
It's a study in female relationships, their complexity, and the centralizing of female desire, couched in the form of a complex gothic melodrama that prizes women above all else. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jun 04, 2020
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The Third Strike (2021) |
Jones crafts a stirring narrative of women fighting against an unjust justice system that punishes minorities for relatively minor offenses and creates a cascade of suffering for past and future generations. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted May 08, 2020
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Deliver Us (2016) |
It is an affecting documentary, a window into a fringe element of faith that has often possessed horror film lovers, but holds within it a deep-seated system of beliefs and rituals that are still part of the world today. - Suddenly A Shot Rang Out
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| Posted Apr 30, 2020
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The Bellmen (2020) |
The Bellmen aspires to cult heights in the same vein as Super Troopers, but it may not go down as a cult film simply because it's far too nice. And that, to be honest, is what's most enjoyable about it. - Suddenly A Shot Rang Out
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| Posted Apr 28, 2020
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Supernatural (1933) |
The real attraction here is Lombard, wonderful as she plays basically a dual role. It does make one wish she had done a few more horror films to round out her oeuvre. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Apr 20, 2020
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Silent Panic (2018) |
Silent Panic is a middling thriller, with a solid concept and mostly solid performances. Director Kyle Schadt finds some excellent points of tension to keep the viewer engaged, but the film becomes less believable as it goes on. - Suddenly A Shot Rang Out
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| Posted Apr 20, 2020
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The Song of Songs (1933) |
The Song of Songs isn't a perfect film by any stretch, and at times its gender relations are extraordinarily problematic, but it does give insight into Dietrich's range, the humor underlying some of her persona, and the nuance underlying her image. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Mar 25, 2020
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Union (2018) |
Writer/director Whitney Hamilton's film Union is an ambitious, intriguing work that attempts to navigate some difficult waters, made more difficult by a limited budget. - Suddenly A Shot Rang Out
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| Posted Mar 25, 2020
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Night Sweats (2019) |
It's seldom that contemporary film is actually offensive in its gender politics, but this goes beyond casual, thoughtless sexism and enters the realm of explicit, self-satisfied, and unreflective misogyny. - Suddenly A Shot Rang Out
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| Posted Mar 12, 2020
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Man in the Shadow (1957) |
The starkness of the narrative is part of what makes it so powerful - this is a story of corruption and the way in which the powerful exploit racism and wealth to control the narrative. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Feb 28, 2020
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Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) |
If you want to understand the essence of women under patriarchy, in its starkest, funniest, and most extreme, see Birds of Prey, and emancipate the Harley within. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Feb 13, 2020
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Gretel & Hansel (2020) |
Gretel & Hansel comes off as a failed but honest attempt to do something new with a well-worn fairy tale - a gorgeous piece of art coupled with an interesting idea that just doesn't quite work. I - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Feb 05, 2020
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Color Out of Space (2019) |
Color Out of Space is a niche narrative, so fundamentally Lovecraftian that, if you like his work, you'll enjoy this, and if you don't like it...well, you might actually be interested after this one. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Jan 21, 2020
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High Flying Bird (2019) |
The script is fantastic... It plays almost like an Ocean's 11 movie. - Citizen Dame
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| Posted Dec 11, 2019
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