Simran Hans
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Return to Seoul (2022) |
Park Ji-min is incredible in this film. I cannot believe it was a debut performance. She's so magnetic, and unpredictable, and sexy, and changeable. - Monocle
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| Posted May 26, 2023
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Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023) |
It's so innocent. It's really sweet. - Monocle
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| Posted May 26, 2023
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The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) |
I think what's quite clever about the structure of the film is that McDonagh flips your allegiances [in a way that's very finely balanced. - Monocle
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| Posted Oct 27, 2022
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Top Gun: Maverick (2022) |
Tom Cruise is here to save cinema. He's here to save America. And I'm here for it. - Monocle
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| Posted Jun 10, 2022
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The Phantom of the Open (2021) |
Despite the inherent silliness, the actors play it straight. There’s an earnestness to Rylance’s performance, which encourages us to find inspiration in the underdog. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Mar 20, 2022
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Master (2022) |
Diallo utilises the visual language of horror... to express the terror of racism and the rot of its legacy. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Mar 20, 2022
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X (2022) |
Ripe with playful winks and nudges. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Mar 20, 2022
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Rebellion (2021) |
[A] thoughtful, spirited documentary... - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Mar 20, 2022
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Hive (2021) |
Basholli understands that healing is possible, even if closure isn’t. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Mar 19, 2022
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Against the Ice (2022) |
A tense encounter with an angry polar bear and a phantom hot air balloon are highlights during the endless plodding across the frozen wilderness. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Mar 06, 2022
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Rebel Dread (2020) |
Letts is such a good storyteller that the film’s biggest issue becomes its main strength. - Guardian
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| Posted Mar 06, 2022
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The Batman (2022) |
As a standalone police procedural, it works quite well, but as a franchise reboot it’s not enough of a reset. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Mar 05, 2022
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A Bread Factory, Part Two (2018) |
Part One is a manual for maintaining integrity as standards of art, journalism and personal ethics slip. It could exist comfortably as a standalone film, but it wouldn’t be as much fun without the weirder, more experimental Part Two... - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Feb 20, 2022
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A Bread Factory, Part One (2018) |
Part One is a manual for maintaining integrity as standards of art, journalism and personal ethics slip. It could exist comfortably as a standalone film, but it wouldn’t be as much fun without the weirder, more experimental Part Two... - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Feb 20, 2022
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Here Before (2021) |
Riseborough’s intensity helps sell the idea of a possible otherworldly presence, but the script is less committed, faltering with a lacklustre ending. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Feb 20, 2022
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Dog (2022) |
What’s more surprising than watching Tatum share a bath with a Belgian malinois is the message nestled among the film’s sillier capers. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Feb 20, 2022
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Jackass Forever (2022) |
The cumulative effect is strangely heartwarming, a touching insight into 20 years of indestructible male friendship. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Feb 06, 2022
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Lingui, The Sacred Bonds (2021) |
[A] compelling though not exactly subtle drama... - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Feb 06, 2022
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Belle (2021) |
The film’s message is a beautiful one: to integrate our real-life vulnerabilities with the persona we project is to become all the more powerful. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Feb 06, 2022
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Moonfall (2022) |
There are too many characters and too many redemption arcs in this silly, overstuffed sci-fi. At least the eye-poppingly expensive special effects are cool. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Feb 06, 2022
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The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) |
The film smiles politely at Tammy Faye’s tacky aesthetic without ever fully embracing it, a bad-faith approach to its heroine. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Feb 05, 2022
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The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) |
The film has a cold, abstract beauty. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 31, 2022
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Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road (2021) |
Wilson isn't especially articulate, but his emotional responses to the individual songs are often lucid and revealing. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 23, 2022
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Hostile (2021) |
An overpowering score is sadly distracting and labours the point; the subject alone is grave enough. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 23, 2022
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Memory Box (2021) |
Teenage girls are taken seriously in Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige's lively coming-of-age drama. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 23, 2022
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A Journal for Jordan (2021) |
Adams is a vivacious screen presence with a twinkle in her eye, and Jordan can't quite match her, unable to draw out any real inner turmoil in a character who is respectable to a fault. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 23, 2022
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Belfast (2021) |
Kenneth Branagh's unabashedly feelgood memoir of growing up in Belfast as the Troubles erupted in the late 1960s suffers from a problem of perspective. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 22, 2022
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Licorice Pizza (2021) |
One thing I really like about this movie is the way it's structured, because it's meandering and it's loose [but] all these little moments, they feel like stories and anecdotes and memories that have been told and recounted many times. - Monocle
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| Posted Jan 13, 2022
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The 355 (2022) |
Diane Kruger slapping Jessica Chastain across the face with a frozen fish should be funny. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 10, 2022
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Minyan (2020) |
What's most interesting about Eric Steel's tender coming-of-age drama is the queerness hiding in plain sight. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 10, 2022
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Ailey (2021) |
Ailey's story is interspersed with rehearsal scenes of a new work celebrating the 50th anniversary of the company he founded. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 10, 2022
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A Hero (2021) |
What begins as funny and almost farcical, soon shifts into something much sadder and more sobering. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 10, 2022
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Munich: The Edge of War (2021) |
[A] handsome spy thriller... - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Jan 10, 2022
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The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) |
The three witches who prophesy Macbeth's fate are reimagined as one "weird sister". She is played by the acclaimed stage actor Kathryn Hunter, who snaps, twists and contorts her body to terrifying, memorable effect. - Guardian
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| Posted Dec 31, 2021
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The King's Man (2021) |
The tone lurches awkwardly from sweeping colonial melodrama to grim battle epic, camp, pseudo-Bond caper and crass, unfunny farce. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Dec 30, 2021
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The Matrix Resurrections (2021) |
The romance between [Tiffany and Neo] has always been the molten core of the Matrix films; their power as a duo is what drives the story forward. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Dec 30, 2021
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Clifford the Big Red Dog (2021) |
The film is best when it sticks to children's caper mode, jostled along by gentle toilet humour, bad-tempered barnyard animals and a scene of two kids driving a van across Manhattan. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Dec 12, 2021
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Lamb (2021) |
I laughed out loud... and had nightmares later. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Dec 12, 2021
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Don't Look Up (2021) |
An ensemble cast stacked with A-listers is no guarantee of a good time. Neither is McKay's bombastic, shake-you-by-the-shoulders direction. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Dec 12, 2021
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Citizen Ashe (2021) |
This thoughtful documentary about Arthur Ashe, the first African American man to win Wimbledon in 1975, understands that representation is only one step towards equality. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Dec 12, 2021
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Being the Ricardos (2021) |
Fans of Sorkin's own dense, rhythmic screwball dialogue will enjoy watching Alia Shawkat and Jake Lacy trade zingers in the writers' room. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Dec 11, 2021
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House of Gucci (2021) |
I think it's fun. I think it's extremely silly. I think it's tonally all over the place. I think it's defiantly worth watching. - Monocle
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| Posted Dec 02, 2021
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Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021) |
A damning mini-essay about Romania's cultural and political history, it playfully unpacks the conservative attitudes expressed by Emi's critics. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Nov 28, 2021
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Pirates (2021) |
The film is as irrepressibly likable as its writer-director, the broadcaster and actor Reggie Yates. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Nov 28, 2021
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Encanto (2021) |
What's interesting and unexpected is the film's subtle acknowledgement of culturally specific generational trauma and displacement. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Nov 27, 2021
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You Will Die at Twenty (2019) |
Sudanese film-maker Amjad Abu Alala's radiant drama dares to wonder if death could inspire courage rather than fear. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Nov 14, 2021
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Natural Light (2021) |
There's a cold, sombre beauty to the compositions, which are rendered in varying shades of sludgy mud-brown. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Nov 14, 2021
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Tick, Tick... Boom! (2021) |
Alexandra Shipp is a grounding presence as Larson's girlfriend, Susan, while Garfield fizzes with energy and outsize emotion. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Nov 14, 2021
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Cry Macho (2021) |
There's something touching about seeing the 91-year-old Eastwood in such a reflective mood. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Nov 13, 2021
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Procession (2021) |
What could have been a disaster in the hands of a less sensitive film-maker ends up an extraordinary feat of care, collaboration and creativity. - Observer (UK)
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| Posted Nov 13, 2021
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