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A Hidden Life
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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A Hidden Life dares to place these competing human emotions side by side. In doing so, Malick addresses the malleable nature of our value systems, especially when they are under attack by nefarious outside forces.
Posted Dec 18, 2019
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63 Up
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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63 Up is anticlimactic and apolitical, and will go down as one of the weaker installments in this monumental saga.
Posted Dec 12, 2019
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Waves
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Shults' impressively terrible film telegraphs tragedy with little regard for the nuances of human experience. It swings for the fences in every moment, producing the most uninteresting and unrewarding type of melodrama.
Posted Dec 04, 2019
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Synonymes
(2018)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Surely one of the strangest and most intoxicating films of recent memory.
Posted Nov 20, 2019
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The Irishman
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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The Irishman has plenty of assassinations, long tracking shots, and pop music cues one would normally associate with vintage Scorsese, but its most wrenching moments are the ones of silence.
Posted Nov 13, 2019
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Frankie
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Sachs' browsing camera trails each character at different times, giving them space to oscillate between grief and selfishness. There's no judgment made against their weaknesses and failures, but "Frankie" also doesn't let them off the hook.
Posted Nov 06, 2019
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Jojo Rabbit
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Director Taika Waititi tries his hardest to find the funny in fascism. Mostly, he fails miserably.
Posted Oct 30, 2019
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The Lighthouse
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Pattison and Dafoe provide moments of unhinged chemistry... Yet, it's Eggers' film that feels self-satisfying to a fault.
Posted Oct 23, 2019
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Pain and Glory
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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A sublime dance between the past and present ensues. Banderas' performance becomes the constant in the center, fluctuating between mournful disappointment and the nervous anticipation for artistic rebirth.
Posted Oct 16, 2019
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Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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A fleet footed and loving introduction to the work of a gunslinger scribe.
Posted Oct 09, 2019
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First Love
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Will surely please the gore hounds familiar with Miike's particular brand of stylized violence. The film also juxtaposes those shocking kill shots with genuine moments of empathy for the conflicted characters often discarded in the crime genre.
Posted Oct 02, 2019
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Judy
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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[Zellweger's] purposefully raw performance, defined by those soulful eyes framed by perpetually running mascara, taps into a painful legacy of starlets who've been used, abused, and ultimately discarded by the Hollywood machine.
Posted Sep 26, 2019
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Monos
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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It's a perfect example of formal showboating being marketed as vision. Landes must have bruises from all that chest thumping.
Posted Sep 26, 2019
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A Bigger Splash
(1973)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Toeing the line between documentary and fiction, Hazan creates a nonlinear, lucid narrative in which Hockney is positioned as the cipher genius seemingly operating on an entirely different wavelength.
Posted Sep 19, 2019
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Ad Astra
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Ad Astra remains an impressive big budget marvel, but what resonates most is the way Gray seamlessly explores how, eventually, we all must come face to face with the legend of our parents.
Posted Sep 18, 2019
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Los Reyes
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Through Chola and Football's eyes, life slows down just enough for us to see their purgatory as something beautiful and dynamic.
Posted Sep 05, 2019
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Before You Know It
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Utt's charming, self-deprecating ensemble is an effortless screwball throwback that loves its characters no matter their flaws.
Posted Sep 05, 2019
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Aquarela
(2018)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
|
Director Viktor Kossakovsky's riveting and experiential documentary is thunder put to film. It immerses the viewer in imagery of water, in all its various states, with the sole intention of destroying humanity's perceived superiority over nature.
Posted Aug 28, 2019
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A Faithful Man
(2018)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Louis Garrel delivers a decidedly benign spin on the relationship film that his father, Philippe, has been perfecting for decades... A Faithful Man ultimately lacks the thematic weight and conceptual audaciousness of his father's work.
Posted Aug 28, 2019
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Rojo
(2018)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Effectively droll.
Posted Aug 21, 2019
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The Nightingale
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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An ambitious and angry genre film, The Nightingale is awash in confrontational iconography that reveals the high crimes of colonialist histories traditionally written by white men.
Posted Aug 14, 2019
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One Child Nation
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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This quietly devastating document is so powerful precisely because it avoids being sensational or overtly critical.
Posted Aug 14, 2019
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Them That Follow
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Them That Follow has a great cast but doesn't know how to utilize any of their talents. The film is just another in a long line of overwrought southern gothics.
Posted Aug 07, 2019
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Piranhas
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Gripping and sobering, Piranhas examines how violent turnover morphs into a natural extension of our base desires for wealth and respect.
Posted Aug 07, 2019
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At War
(2018)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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While the inherent rage of At War is necessary, so to is some fundamental understanding of the character's deeper motivations. By stripping this story of any nuance, Brizé dips his toes into the iconography of propaganda.
Posted Aug 01, 2019
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David Crosby: Remember My Name
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Director A.J. Eaton's documentary often falls prey to some of the same hypocrisies exhibited by its subject, a surly man who bemoans that "time is the final currency" even as he openly admits that family plays second fiddle to his music.
Posted Jul 31, 2019
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Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood
(2019)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Actors are vulnerable and fragile creatures, which is why stunt people exist... Tarantino's newest epic, the brilliant, 1969-set Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, explicitly looks at two men who embody this dichotomy.
Posted Jul 26, 2019
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Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Truthfully, Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is less about tragic love or failed romance than an unglamorous emotional fracturing that took years to culminate, the stuff history books and popular culture usually care to omit.
Posted Jul 24, 2019
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Sword of Trust
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Lynn Shelton's new comedy is very aware of our increasingly idiotic political climate, but never succumbs to its inferred absurdity. Instead, the film takes a more nuanced approach.
Posted Jul 24, 2019
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The Art of Self-Defense
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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The film's bungled social politics don't limit the enjoyment of watching Eisenberg reach the apex of his embattled man-child persona.
Posted Jul 17, 2019
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Our Time
(2018)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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[Carlos Reygadas'] flare for formal surrealism and magic takes a backseat to a more lived and numbing experience.
Posted Jul 10, 2019
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Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Using Morrison's literature as a structuring device, the author, along with multiple literary critics and academic luminaries, give each book release insightful and funny historical context that deepens each achievement.
Posted Jul 10, 2019
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Maiden
(2018)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Maiden doesn't need to be formally subversive to be daring. Like Edwards herself, the film is relentlessly in step with the cycles of competition, of which gender should play no role.
Posted Jul 03, 2019
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Midsommar
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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It's a vanity project stretched to the gills with overcooked camera shots that conspicuously blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality.
Posted Jul 03, 2019
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Paris Is Burning
(1990)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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At times intimate and raw, Paris is Burning tries to capture the powerful essence of walking the floor to thunderous cheers and sometimes boos.
Posted Jun 26, 2019
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Being Frank
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Bailey's film ultimately feels like a misguided attempt to complicate male entitlement by humanizing it.
Posted Jun 26, 2019
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The Fall of the American Empire
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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[Director Denys] Arcand deserves some credit for going outside of his comfort zone. But he also has little clue how to make more salacious material equally scathing politically.
Posted Jun 19, 2019
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The Last Black Man in San Francisco
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Directed by newcomer Joe Talbot, the film uses slow motion and stylized zooms to create surreal moments contrasting with an on-the-ground immediacy. Impressive as they are, mixing these tones sometimes distracts from the sublime lead performances.
Posted Jun 19, 2019
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Late Night
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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[Presents] a false vision of equality, and Kaling and Ganatra's hapless film takes too many critical narrative short cuts to get there.
Posted Jun 12, 2019
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The Dead Don't Die
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Deeply self-aware, The Dead Don't Die utilizes absurdity to amplify the lumbering details of a slow-motion apocalypse. Chuckles will be had, especially if audiences are familiar with Jarmusch's patented filmmaking style.
Posted Jun 12, 2019
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Non-Fiction
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Assayas' critique of bourgeois semantics and digital addiction ultimately lacks bite, and instead dwells on the obvious emotional contradictions that have populated much of French cinema for decades.
Posted Jun 05, 2019
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Domino
(2019)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Domino might be the epitome of a mixed bag, something plucked from the archives of Cinemax circa 1992. But the moments that sting with uneasy truth remind us why De Palma remains such a potent artist.
Posted Jun 05, 2019
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The Silence of Others
(2018)
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Glenn Heath Jr.
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Dictators like Franco try to preserve their own power by creating rules and regulations that repress any of the nuances human life brings to the table... The Silence of Other brings the complexity of history and humanity back into the equation.
Posted May 29, 2019
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Wild
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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It ends up feeling like a cop-out. What's not is Maritaud's moving performance as a young man trying to find his place in a world made up of different prisons.
Posted May 29, 2019
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Meeting Gorbachev
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Archival footage and additional talking heads interviews complement the intimate sit down conversation, helping express why Mikhail Gorbachev was such a pivotal figure in 20th century global relations.
Posted May 22, 2019
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Long Day's Journey Into Night
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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If Kaili Blues hints at noir elements hiding beneath the surface, Bi's brilliant follow-up, Long Day's Journey Into Night, splashes them across the screen in cavernous interiors and vivid neon hues, ceaselessly dripping water.
Posted May 22, 2019
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The Biggest Little Farm
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Almost immediately the film proves disinterested in dissecting the complexities or nuances of their shift to rustic living... Maybe it was all that simple, but as a result, neither subject has much agency.
Posted May 15, 2019
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Trial by Fire
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Trial by Fire is an egregiously simplistic critique of capital punishment that wastes two immensely talented screen actors.
Posted May 15, 2019
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3 Faces
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Until now, Panahi has used [digital technology] to reveal the contradictory policies and ignorance that led to his own state-sanctioned creative stranglehold. Here, he gleefully passes the torch to a new generation of female artists.
Posted May 01, 2019
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Rafiki
(2018)
|
Glenn Heath Jr.
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Hardly flawless, Rafiki is nevertheless a humane portrait of personal vulnerability under attack by the collective.
Posted May 01, 2019
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