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Asteroid City
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Wading through yearning, mourning, disappointments and the unknown, Schwartzman and Johansson in particular are astronomically spectacular.
Posted Aug 09, 2023
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Meg 2: The Trench
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Not that anyone is required to try, but no one can stop Meg 2: The Trench's most apt line from proving oh-so-true: "this is some dumb shit".
Posted Aug 09, 2023
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Chevalier
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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While it's the tale, reclamation and portrayals that shine brightest — even if detailing significant parts of Bologne's later story in the text-on-screen post-script is a curious move — reaching ample high notes comes easily.
Posted Aug 09, 2023
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Sisu
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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Sisu is many things, just like the term itself in its native Finland — and impossible to stop watching is one of them.
Posted Jul 30, 2023
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Talk to Me
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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It's constantly clicking, snapping and ensuring that viewers are paying attention — with terror-inducing imagery, a savvy sense of humour, both nerve and the keenness to unnerve, and a helluva scary-movie premise that's exceptionally well-executed.
Posted Jul 29, 2023
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Oppenheimer
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Murphy is spectacular, and has never been better as Nolan stares so intimately and contemplatively at his revealing face. How joyous it is to see Downey Jr, also never better, actually act again.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Barbie
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Gerwig has directed a lively, zany, oh-so witty and pretty Barbie flick that's perfectly cast, a costuming showcase and, in Barbie Land, a production-design dream.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Carmen
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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Sumptuous and a swirl of feelings... pirouettes with swoon-inducing strength with help from its stunningly cast leads.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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The kind of movie spectacle that always looks best on the biggest and brightest of silver screens.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Insidious: The Red Door
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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This isn't a meaningful exploration of trauma's lingering impact, the current genre go-to, as much as it wants to be.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Joy Ride
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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At their best when Joy Ride is either at its most manic and outrageous, or its weightiest and intelligent, Park, Cola, Hsu and Wu are a dream cast.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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The New Boy
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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With his oh-so-perceptive eye, Thornton's visuals stunningly do what New Boy does: expresses everything with little speaking necessary.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Reality
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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With gripping chills and dripping dread, it puts viewers in Winner's shoes as her world turns — and ours — but the world keeps turning.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Watching Ford flashing his crooked smile again, plus his bantering with Waller-Bridge, is almost enough to keep this new instalment whirring.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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As dull as a smashed headlight.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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No Hard Feelings
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Lawrence is a comic dream... she's such a natural here that wanting No Hard Feelings to constantly ramp up the OTT antics stems wholly from her performance.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Red, White & Brass
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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An affectionate and joyous film that doesn't just pay tribute to events that clearly begged for the big-screen treatment from the moment that they happened... but to the community and culture goes all-in when it comes to national pride.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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The Flash
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Feeling like disparate pieces that don't stitch together to make the best whole isn't what The Flash was aiming for, but it's what's been zapped into cinemas.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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You Hurt My Feelings
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Louis-Dreyfus is at her best, and a true sensation, whenever she's in leading-lady mode in front of writer/director Nicole Holofcener's lens.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Elemental
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Elemental feels like Pixar is taking its titular term to heart in the worst way, making for rudimentary rather than particularly ravishing or resonant viewing.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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The Boogeyman
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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A feature can be as layered as strings upon strings of fairy lights and equally as conventional as a regular incandescent bulb... The Boogeyman, with its generic title, swings between both extremes.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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All the money in the world can't make people in tights standing against green screens as visually spectacular and emotionally expressive as the Spider-Verse films.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Sweet As
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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As set to all-Indigenous soundtrack, the film is happiest surveying, contemplating and being in the moment; like protagonist, like movie.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Saint Omer
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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Diop will never forget Kabou, and audiences won't be able to get her film, its extraordinary story or its exceptional lead actors out of their heads, either.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Renfield
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Renfield is at full power when Cage is front and centre, and feels like its blood is slowly being drained when he's out of the frame.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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The Little Mermaid
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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When 'Under the Sea' echoes against a literal sea of colour, movement, creatures and energy, it's a dazzling Golden Age Hollywood-esque spectacular. There's no escaping the movie's bloat when it's not merrily floating, however.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Limbo
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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This is another rich, impassioned and affecting feature about the vast chasm between being Black and white in Australia, and it refuses to see hurt, pain and unspeakable loss with anything but the clearest of eyes.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Fast X
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Living on-screen life a quarter mile at a time now seems more like a variety show than a movie, at least where all that recognisable talent is involved.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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John Farnham: Finding the Voice
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Reinforces two core contrasts: that great music is eternal, but even superstars are only flesh and blood; and that the tunes that last seem like easy hits, but so often spring from a lifetime of hard work.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Infinity Pool
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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If Goth couldn't flip from enticing to merciless so suddenly and seamlessly, Infinity Pool wouldn't be the entrancing nightmare about soulless sound, fury, sex, bodies, life and death signifying nothing that it so deeply and intoxicatingly is.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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The Survival of Kindness
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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Not merely because the title says so, Hussein's is a face of kindness, giving the movie a warm and lively focal point amid its rampant suffering and atrocities.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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The Inspection
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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Bratton stares head-on at his protagonist's distressing ordeal... his feature is all the better because it refuses to make obvious and unchallenging choices, even when it's at its most arduous and depicting one of cinema's most well-documented routines.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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This farewell to part of the MCU always feels like a zippy, self-contained Guardians of the Galaxy movie, rather than a placeholder for more and more future franchise instalments.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Polite Society
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Anarchic and eye-popping... whatever this high-energy charmer throws at the screen, it always serves the narrative. It also showcases Manzoor's lively and bold filmmaking eye.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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The Giants
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Showing all the green splendour it possibly can is equally a must and a masterstroke.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Beau Is Afraid
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Smart, dark, cerebral, gut-punching, hope-crushing, relatable, hilarious and horrific... it'd be the film's biggest surprise if Aster wasn't chuckling — and having the ultimate fever dream.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Evil Dead Rise
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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While Evil Dead Rise definitely knows the series it's in, it's no mere exercise in blasting expected targets.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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The Innocent
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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The Innocent's French pop-synth soundtrack gifts the already fast-paced film with a marvellous sense of bounce, but also reflects exactly what the movie is: a supremely finessed, funny, endearing and engaging flick that echoes for everyone.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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Suzume
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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Suzume is as sweet and swoonworthy as Shinkai's work comes, and as earnest, intricate, intelligent, involving and enchanting.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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EO
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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The effect is otherworldly, as is the entirety of this haunting and touching film as it peers at life so often ignored, undervalued and exploited on this very earth.
Posted Jul 22, 2023
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The Super Mario Bros. Movie
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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If 2023's The Super Mario Bros Movie is a response to its predecessor, it's a happily dutiful one, doing its utmost to copy the video game. The strongest feeling it inspires: making viewers want to bust out their old NES or SNES or Game Boy.
Posted Apr 08, 2023
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Air
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Affleck turns the quest to sign a then just-drafted Jordan by a struggling shoe company into infectiously entertaining viewing.
Posted Apr 08, 2023
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Broker
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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This is vintage Kore-eda, and it's warm, wise, wonderful, canny and complex.
Posted Apr 07, 2023
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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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Mostly, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is enough of a romp — a romp with clear franchise-starting ambitions, even though there's already been three D&D movies dating back to 2000, but a romp nonetheless.
Posted Apr 07, 2023
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Of an Age
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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A keenly felt romance that swells and swirls with lingering emotions.
Posted Apr 07, 2023
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John Wick: Chapter 4
(2023)
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Sarah Ward
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No matter how a John Wick movie finishes, it ends with viewers wanting more — and this is no exception, including more of Yen as Caine alongside Keanu.
Posted Apr 07, 2023
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Living
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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Conveying the difference between being and relishing so effortlessly and also so heartbreakingly, Nighy is a marvel, and one that the movie around him lives for.
Posted Apr 07, 2023
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Till
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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Chukwu and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski can barely bring themselves to peer away from Deadwyler, who stuns in frame after frame.
Posted Apr 07, 2023
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Pearl
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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A savvy deepening and recontextualising of a must-see scary-movie franchise that's as much about desire, dreams and determination as notching up deaths.
Posted Mar 19, 2023
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Meet Me in the Bathroom
(2022)
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Sarah Ward
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Affectionate, in the moment, revealing, reverent: Meet Me in the Bathroom hits all of those notes.
Posted Mar 18, 2023
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