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2nd Chance
(2022)
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Craig Mathieson
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American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani (99 Homes) segues into documentaries without a hitch in this thoughtful, quietly expressive portrait of a quintessentially American entrepreneur.
Posted Sep 28, 2023
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The Exorcist
(1973)
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Colin Bennett
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If this cinema of revulsion-for-its-own-sake is what you wish from a medium of art and entertainment, the best of Transylvanian luck to you. Next time you can demand a look at medical films of operations.
Posted Sep 27, 2023
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2.5/5
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It Lives Inside
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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This first feature from the young Indian-American writer-director Bishal Dutta is an intermittently interesting example of the genre, though not an especially skilful one.
Posted Sep 21, 2023
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2.5/5
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Blue Beetle
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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Director Angel Manuel Soto and writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer do their best to weave a few additional progressive elements into this basically routine production, evidently aimed at younger viewers.
Posted Sep 14, 2023
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2/5
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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As a grown adult who went in stone-cold sober, I can’t say that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem took me anywhere I hadn’t been before, though that doesn’t mean I was given nothing to think about.
Posted Sep 07, 2023
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3/5
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Selena
(1997)
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Lawrie Zion
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All in all, it's a serviceable tribute, but hardly a memorable experience for those who don't already remember her.
Posted Sep 06, 2023
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2.5/5
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Haunted Mansion
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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No central theme emerges beyond a blandly generalised one about moving on from the past, which is to say that overtly at least, this Haunted Mansion plays it even safer than its 2003 predecessor.
Posted Aug 31, 2023
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White Men Can't Jump
(1992)
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Neil Jillett
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This carelessly plotted film works chiefly on the strength of the performances of Snipes and Harrelson, who illustrate, with inventive gusto, Sheldon's themes of racial antagonism and masculine competitiveness and stupidity.
Posted Aug 30, 2023
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When a Man Loves a Woman
(1994)
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Neil Jillett
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Mandoki exercises enough control to get fine performances from Ryan Garcia. They make us believe that they are two people who wonder whether being in love with each other is worth the pain it brings.
Posted Aug 28, 2023
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Heart of Stone
(2023)
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Craig Mathieson
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There’s neither a palpable physicality to the set-pieces nor a genuine hum to the storytelling.
Posted Aug 25, 2023
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1/5
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Sound of Freedom
(2022)
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Jake Wilson
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Though slickly made and never too openly lurid, at its core this is the simplest kind of exploitation movie, in which a stance of righteous indignation supplies an alibi for a fascination with hidden evil, linked in turn with a fear of corrupt foreigners.
Posted Aug 25, 2023
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4/4
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Lone Star
(1996)
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Barbara Creed
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Although didactic in parts, Lone Star is a beautifully-constructed, absorbing drama with fine acting,
Posted Aug 23, 2023
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4/5
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Lone Star
(1996)
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Jim Schembri
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As Lone Star's powerful final scene suggests, fully knowing the past, as uncomfortable as it may be, at least gives you the option to decide how much you will allow it to reshape your life.
Posted Aug 23, 2023
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2/5
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Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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What the film wants to say about the relation between simulation and reality also isn’t entirely clear: if there’s little functional difference, why bother risking physical injury and death?
Posted Aug 10, 2023
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3/5
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They Cloned Tyrone
(2023)
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Craig Mathieson
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It does waver at times, but the laughs are always backed by insightful ideas.
Posted Aug 03, 2023
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Stephen Curry: Underrated
(2023)
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Craig Mathieson
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There’s little bravado, virtually no famous faces offering hagiographic praise. As authorised sports documentaries go, it’s like Curry himself: dedicated and persistent.
Posted Jul 28, 2023
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4.5/5
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Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
(2021)
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Craig Mathieson
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The way director Dean Fleischer Camp mixes stop-motion animation and live action filmmaking is matched by the storytelling’s fusion -- everything gels delightfully.
Posted Jul 28, 2023
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3.5/5
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Talk to Me
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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The Philippous play fair by their audience. This is a real horror movie rather than an elevated one.
Posted Jul 28, 2023
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Amityville 1992: It's About Time
(1992)
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Adrian Martin
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An engaging combination of florid, baroque horror and colorful teen comedy, Amityville 1992 is one for "exploitation" cinema connoisseurs.
Posted Jul 27, 2023
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The Man Without a Face
(1993)
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Adrian Martin
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Gibson handles ably, if not imaginatively, this cross between a typical episode of The Wonder Years and a hothouse family melodrama in the vein of The Prince of Tides.
Posted Jul 27, 2023
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Mad Dog and Glory
(1993)
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Adrian Martin
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Robert De Niro has rarely shown such judicious acting restraint as he does here, with extremely moving results.
Posted Jul 27, 2023
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Hard-Boiled
(1992)
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Adrian Martin
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Hard-Boiled is action cinema at its finest and most imaginative.
Posted Jul 27, 2023
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Bringing Up Baby
(1938)
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Age Staff
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It is Cary Grant's film chiefly, with Charlie Ruggles all too briefly amusing in his jungle calls.
Posted Jul 25, 2023
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The Ghost of Richard Harris
(2022)
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Craig Mathieson
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This is a considered and sometimes moving documentary about the Irish actor Richard Harris, a vivid and unruly star.
Posted Jul 20, 2023
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The Lost City of Melbourne
(2022)
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Craig Mathieson
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A valuable documentary about not only how we shape our cities, but how our cities shape us, Gus Berger’s feature recounts, via excellent deployment of archival material, how Melbourne’s grand architectural history was literally destroyed.
Posted Jul 20, 2023
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3.5/5
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Oppenheimer
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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[An] often laborious yet genuinely strange and gripping movie -- a grand spectacle inspired by some of the grimmest events in human history, and itself an invention meant to blow us all away.
Posted Jul 19, 2023
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The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts - Springsteen E Street Band
(2021)
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Craig Mathieson
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A suitably ragged multi-camera shoot is all energy and outreach, complete with an unstoppable performance of "Born to Run."
Posted Jul 14, 2023
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2.5/5
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Insidious: The Red Door
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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This is standard horror movie stuff, but also a considered aesthetic, as Wilson underlines by all too briefly bringing on Hiam Abbass as an imperious professor who holds forth about Goya and the need to balance darkness and light.
Posted Jul 14, 2023
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4/5
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The New Boy
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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The real drama is in Thornton’s style, always lyrical but never fluidly so: smoothness in this context would be impossible, since we’re never comfortably aligned with any one character.
Posted Jul 14, 2023
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3/5
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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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The last 40 minutes of Dead Reckoning Part One make up for the rest, and rank with the most thrilling action sequences I’ve seen this year.
Posted Jul 14, 2023
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4/5
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The Matrix
(1999)
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Adrian Martin
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Rarely has a blockbuster been so enjoyable. Superbly staged and edited, it never loses its drive and intrigue. Reeves has come a long way as an actor since the woeful Johnny Mnemonic, and so has the entire cyberpunk genre on screen.
Posted Jul 12, 2023
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2/5
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The Matrix
(1999)
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Jim Schembri
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For a cyber-techno action thriller, though, the film lacks imagination.
Posted Jul 12, 2023
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John Early: Now More Than Ever
(2023)
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Craig Mathieson
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It’s involved, detailed stand-up, a genuine performance. And Early makes it look easy.
Posted Jul 06, 2023
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The Plains
(2022)
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Craig Mathieson
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It’s structurally audacious -- deliberately removing the extraneous so that you closely examine what remains: voices, beliefs, and the clogged arterials of peak hour.
Posted Jul 06, 2023
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2/5
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Belle & Sebastian: Next Generation
(2022)
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Jake Wilson
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It’s a pretty basic plot, frankly, and suspense is minimal, even compared to the Belle and Sebastian movie trilogy of the 2010s (which, unlike the 1960s TV series, was set around the time of World War II).
Posted Jul 06, 2023
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2/5
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Magnolia
(1999)
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Adrian Martin
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Once the script framework is locked down -- nine characters passing through a single day and night in the San Fernando Valley -- Anderson can only trudge relentlessly through the bleak stations of American misery.
Posted Jun 30, 2023
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Amy Schumer: Emergency Contact
(2023)
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Craig Mathieson
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A concise live performance that clocks in at approximately 50 minutes, Emergency Contact won’t radically change perceptions of the 42-year-old comic, but it has a tangy succession of punchlines that undercut familiar forms.
Posted Jun 29, 2023
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4/5
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Limbo
(2023)
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Debi Enker
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Limbo uses as its catalyst an event that’s both tragically familiar and catastrophically disruptive. It then portrays the aftermath with sensitivity, compassion and a restraint that enhances its impact.
Posted Jun 29, 2023
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3.5/5
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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Ford as an actor is typically allergic to sentimentality, but it’s precisely his emotional restraint that ensures he’s able to move us when he needs to.
Posted Jun 29, 2023
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Macon County Line
(1974)
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Colin Bennett
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Look behind the familiar facade, the lyrical dissolves and violent flurries of a minor thriller like Macon County Line, and you find a dramatic strength and truth that are not nearly common enough in this genre of cinema.
Posted Jun 27, 2023
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Phantom of the Paradise
(1974)
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Colin Bennett
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An overblown spoof, it flits so maniacally from shot to shot that nothing much emerges but desperate grandiosity and ear-ache.
Posted Jun 27, 2023
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Back to the Future
(1985)
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Neil Jillett
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Back to the Future has an irresistible playfulness.
Posted Jun 27, 2023
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2.5/5
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Armageddon
(1998)
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Michael Bodey
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Armageddon is as much an amalgam of many films before it, rather than its own entity. This is not a bad thing when the money is on the screen, but Armageddon could have done with some playfulness.
Posted Jun 21, 2023
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3/5
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No Hard Feelings
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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It's richer material than anything in the last season's worth of superhero blockbusters, and with big-screen Hollywood comedy at a low ebb, perhaps we should be thankful that No Hard Feelings exists at all. Not too thankful, however.
Posted Jun 21, 2023
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2.5/5
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Elemental
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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It’s a muddle, frankly, and the beauty of the animation can’t wholly compensate, especially given the mostly witless dialogue and the fact the traditional Pixar ease with plot construction seems to have evaporated.
Posted Jun 17, 2023
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2.5/5
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The Flash
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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Keaton, like the character he’s playing, has had several decades to think about what being Batman might really mean -- and his prickly, complicated presence has a gravity the movie otherwise strives for but seldom achieves.
Posted Jun 17, 2023
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4/5
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You Hurt My Feelings
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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It’s all highly relatable, however distant you might feel from this particular social circle of well-off New Yorkers. Holofcener knows as well as anyone around how to make us cringe and laugh by turns, or simultaneously -- and I’m not just saying that
Posted Jun 14, 2023
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3/5
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The Black Demon
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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Like Grunberg’s earlier work, The Black Demon might be called a B-movie, whatever that ancient term has come to mean. Or you might say that it was made by someone who remembers what genre movies in general were traditionally meant to look like.
Posted Jun 14, 2023
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2/5
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Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry, The
(2023)
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Jake Wilson
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A feelgood fable as twee as its title.
Posted Jun 14, 2023
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Sissy
(2022)
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Craig Mathieson
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Barlow and Kane Senes, the film’s co-writers and co-directors, slip easily between satiric humour and gory ramifications. They get the genre’s conventions, but with Dee’s committed performance leading the way, they refuse to simply accept them.
Posted Jun 14, 2023
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