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You Hurt My Feelings
(2023)
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Kurt Loder
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Lies of the little white variety are one of life’s most useful social lubricants.
Posted May 26, 2023
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Sanctuary
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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We wonder if there’s some sort of kicky sex romp in the offing. In any other movie, maybe. But this is definitely not any other movie.
Posted May 15, 2023
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Sisu
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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One of the many pleasures to be found at the movies is the thrill of watching Nazis get blown away. Now, from Finland, comes a new movie filled with Nazis, and they do some very fine dying.
Posted Apr 28, 2023
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Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
(2023)
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Kurt Loder
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As fresh a take on the world of girls as Judy Blume’s 1970 novel was in its time—the movie is uncommonly faithful to its beloved source.
Posted Apr 28, 2023
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Beau Is Afraid
(2023)
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Kurt Loder
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This movie is three hours long, and almost every minute of its home stretch might have been custom-designed to crush a viewer’s interest. (And it’s not a fun horror movie, by the way.)
Posted Apr 14, 2023
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A Good Person
(2023)
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Kurt Loder
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The best reason to see this movie is to watch Pugh. There's no other actor quite like her working in movies at the moment.
Posted Mar 31, 2023
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John Wick: Chapter 4
(2023)
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Kurt Loder
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"I'm going to kill them," Wick tells Winston.
"You can't kill everyone," Winston says.
I didn't catch Wick's reply.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre
(2023)
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Kurt Loder
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Orson Fortune is an agent who'll only fly private and only drink "the finest clarets." I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think of Jason Statham as a "finest clarets" kind of guy.
Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
(2023)
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Kurt Loder
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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania wants to psych you up about the launch of "Phase Five" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a corporate entity that's now 15 years old and starting to look a little winded.
Posted Feb 17, 2023
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Knock at the Cabin
(2023)
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Kurt Loder
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Why Shyamalan neglected to tack on the word "Door" at the end of the title is an issue that will have to be thrashed out between him and his god (please copy me on that, guys).
Posted Feb 03, 2023
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Skinamarink
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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By the end, after offering us virtually nothing at all in the way of action, the movie is undone by its 100-minute length. It feels at least half an hour too long.
Posted Jan 20, 2023
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M3GAN
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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The implacable M3gan is a real piece of work. Literally.
Posted Jan 06, 2023
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Babylon
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Decadence shouldn't be such a chore to sit through.
Posted Dec 23, 2022
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The Whale
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Aronofsky has a tender regard for the problems endured by the overweight: negotiating the complexities of bathrooms, struggling to force wheelchairs through too-narrow doorways, dropping a set of keys on the floor...
Posted Dec 09, 2022
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Violent Night
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Definitely not your parents' kind of Christmas movie.
Posted Dec 02, 2022
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The Fabelmans
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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A Steven Spielberg movie about his childhood back in the 1950s sounds like a ticket to a cotton-candy apocalypse. But The Fabelmans, while certainly sweet, is never sugary. And it's deeply engaging.
Posted Nov 11, 2022
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Holy Spider
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Raw and unsentimental, and reminiscent in some ways of the gruesome 1986 true-crime movie Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (although nowhere near as bloody).
Posted Oct 28, 2022
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The Banshees of Inisherin
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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A stirring demonstration of the actor's art.
Posted Oct 14, 2022
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Halloween Ends
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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The movie feels longer than it is (a little under two hours) because of a serious Michael Myers deficit in the early innings.
Posted Oct 14, 2022
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Smile
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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There's some fine, creepy leering. But several elements—upside-down camera moves and pointless cat closeups—serve no purpose (not to mention use of the old Chordettes hit "Lollipop" for no bleedin' reason whatsoever).
Posted Sep 30, 2022
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The Good Boss
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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In one of his subtlest performances, in one of his best films, Bardem is wonderfully funny puncturing the low-hanging balloons of upper-class moral pretensions.
Posted Sep 02, 2022
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Emily the Criminal
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Emily is a woman who's found no way to exert control over her life until she gets in touch with her inner badass.
Posted Aug 22, 2022
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Bullet Train
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Pitt exudes both easy warmth and deep chill in equal measures. At age 58, he is the Elder Dude of interesting movies....
Posted Aug 05, 2022
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Nope
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Not quite.
Posted Jul 22, 2022
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Thor: Love and Thunder
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Bringing Russell Crowe in to play Zeus -- in a scene that goes on much too long -- is an idea that must have been hatched during an all-night mead bender.
Posted Jul 08, 2022
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Elvis
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Butler captures the conflicted soul of a man who conquered the world but died alone on a bathroom floor in Memphis.
Posted Jun 24, 2022
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The Innocents
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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Has some memorable horror flourishes, but its real subject is evil itself...
Posted May 13, 2022
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Hatching
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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The drool will stay with you.
Posted Apr 29, 2022
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Dual
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy), who plays Sarah and her eventual clone as two identical women who are nevertheless very slightly different.
Posted Apr 29, 2022
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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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A reminder to never, ever write Nic Cage off...
Posted Apr 22, 2022
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Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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What really distinguishes the film is its truly excellent CGI, which recalls the long-gone time when computer imagery really did seem to be a species of magic.
Posted Apr 15, 2022
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Ambulance
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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If an alien visitor pulled up to our planet one day in some sort of interstellar space Uber and wanted to know what a Michael Bay movie was, we could just show them "Ambulance."
Posted Apr 08, 2022
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Memoria
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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Virtually a parody of an awful arthouse movie.
Posted Apr 01, 2022
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Given the movie's crazed pace, which is exhausting over the course of more than two hours, its unexpected tenderness comes as a surprise.
Posted Mar 25, 2022
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The Batman
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Pattinson shares several (although too few) scenes with Kravitz, and their flirty chemistry enlivens every one of them.
Posted Mar 04, 2022
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Hellbender
(2021)
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Glenn Garvin
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Hellbender has wit, style and some awesomely gruesome special effects.
Posted Feb 26, 2022
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Kimi
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Soderbergh is still in love with movies. He probably could have turned out a film like Kimi during nap times. But no naps were taken, and the making of it clearly had his full attention.
Posted Feb 18, 2022
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Moonfall
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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The movie's rampant computerization and subpar lighting design make whole scenes look fake, and clich shaky-cam photography is a recurring annoyance.
Posted Feb 04, 2022
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The King's Daughter
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Here at last, but still many moments too soon...
Posted Jan 21, 2022
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The 355
(2022)
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Kurt Loder
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Dull nearly to the point of indifference.
Posted Jan 07, 2022
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Licorice Pizza
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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Pros and cons...
Posted Dec 31, 2021
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Nightmare Alley
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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In its concern with texture-gleaming deco walls and polished marble hallways-the picture is in some sense about the moody pleasures of noir itself.
Posted Dec 17, 2021
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House of Gucci
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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Scott's customary costume designer, Janty Yates, has done an impressive job of summoning the fearless sartorial spirit of 1970s-'80s fashions...
Posted Nov 24, 2021
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Belfast
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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Branagh's picture conveys a compact feeling of time and place without working up too much of a sweat about it.
Posted Nov 12, 2021
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Dead & Beautiful
(2021)
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Glenn Garvin
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Like most heavily metaphored shows, D&B is more about style than action or characters, and it eventually collapses from the strain of its own weighty symbolism.
Posted Nov 05, 2021
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Last Night in Soho
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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Uses Swinging London as a backdrop for a knotty tale that never quite figures out what it wants to be. Period thriller? Ghost story? Slasher flick? A bit of each, really...
Posted Oct 29, 2021
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The Velvet Underground
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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The magic of the Velvets' music is vividly suggested here in live clips.
Posted Oct 15, 2021
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Dune
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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The making of a second movie would presumably be contingent upon the ability of this one-which is long and dark and slow-to find an audience.
Posted Oct 15, 2021
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No Time to Die
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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Ana de Armas' sparkling presence highlights the surprising droopiness of much of the rest of the movie.
Posted Oct 01, 2021
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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
(2021)
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Kurt Loder
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The picture would be worth seeing just to watch Tony Leung command the screen every minute he's on it.
Posted Sep 07, 2021
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