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American Job
(1996)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Non-professional actors make up the rest of the cast, picked because they had experience as hourlies or managers in the film's workplace settings. Uniformly excellent, they help Smith blur the line between shambling indie and vérité documentary...
Posted Feb 02, 2021
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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
(1967)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Leone's penchant for contrasting two kinds of shots, close-ups and long shots, finds its corollary in the gray or blue...Leone turns gray soldiers blue in the simplest way possible. Movies were invented for ideas like that.
Posted Jan 26, 2021
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Breakfast at Tiffany's
(1961)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Edwards doesn't cut it into pieces. It's all easy, loping group shots following people from place to place.
Posted Jan 26, 2021
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Contempt
(1963)
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A.S. Hamrah
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This veiled criticism of dubbed sound in Italian movies, along with Lang's explanation of unity in Homer, mirrors the couple's break.
Posted Jan 26, 2021
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Scarface
(1932)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Among other things, Ben Hecht was a Chicago newspaperman, a playwright, author of maybe the funniest American novel...Hecht defines the writer-producer relationship...
Posted Jan 26, 2021
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It's a Gift
(1934)
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A.S. Hamrah
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There isn't a better illustration of unsparing W. C. Fields comedy than this portrait of Mr. Muckle, a hostile, uncontrollable blind man.
Posted Jan 26, 2021
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The Woman in the Window
(1944)
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A.S. Hamrah
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The dream ending is a negation that moves the film out the door and back into real life.
Posted Jan 26, 2021
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Orpheus
(1950)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Orpheus is a film of mirrors and windows. For Cocteau the answer to the question of whether the cinema is a window through which we observe others or a mirror in which we observe ourselves is that it is both and neither...
Posted Mar 26, 2020
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Marvel's the Avengers
(2012)
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A.S. Hamrah
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It is no longer enough for one superhero to fight a single villain while dealing with his own personal problems, apocalypse must now enter into it.
Posted Oct 11, 2019
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The Proposal
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Barragán's monumental, colorful, slab-like work, which photographs beautifully and is a pleasure to look at...
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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Jobe'z World
(2019)
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A.S. Hamrah
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This feature film is a concise and action-packed sixty-seven minutes long, and I could have easily watched another half hour of it.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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The Hustle
(2019)
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A.S. Hamrah
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The Hustle is very low stakes and I only saw it because I was stuck in a mall in New Jersey for two hours and it was the next thing playing.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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High Life
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Hard to take, unclear in its intentions, it nonetheless delivers hard truths in a new way.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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Diamantino
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Surely big pharma, right-wing manipulation, and the endless greed of the already wealthy deserve something a little harsher than this ninety-seven-minute underwear ad.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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Ash Is Purest White
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Zhao is one of the greatest actresses in cinema, and her journey in Ash Is Purest White is hardboiled and subtly melodramatic.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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Long Day's Journey Into Night
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Bi has established himself as a significant artist with just two films partially by being a synthesist of all previous auteur cinema.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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Non-Fiction
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Non-Fiction is an immature French farce.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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Her Smell
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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They're nice, studious, and millennial, like they got extra credit in a college course on riot grrrl for being in this movie. This removes the film by one step from the rawness...turning Her Smell into an acting exercise with '90s touches.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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The Souvenir
(2019)
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A.S. Hamrah
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The Souvenir is a beautifully realized, painful movie that only hits the viewer in the hours and days after seeing it.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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Domino
(2019)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Politics for De Palma is a bizarre excuse for exploitation. This is one of his films in which he spares no one.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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Captain Marvel
(2019)
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A.S. Hamrah
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It's hard to remember Captain Marvel because it was boring.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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John Wick: Chapter 3 -- Parabellum
(2019)
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A.S. Hamrah
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The choreography and the black-transparent look of that section of the film gave it a jolt and, for a while, a reason to exist. The rest lacked anything as involving, despite the aggressive, nonstop complication of every second of the film.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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Us
(2019)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Peele is haunted by his Reagan-era childhood and its pop-culture debris, which is understandable, but compulsively inserting it into his movie makes Us much less frightening than it could have been.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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The Dead Don't Die
(2019)
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A.S. Hamrah
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In the end, it plays like a country version of Ivan Passer's bleak-funny 1974 movie Law and Disorder...what matters to Jarmusch is that there is a natural order in the universe.
Posted Aug 15, 2019
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Aquaman
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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The film's simple-mindedness makes it work.
Posted Mar 29, 2019
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The House That Jack Built
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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...The House That Jack Built becomes a different film, one that is quite astonishing... If these scenes don't redeem the film's brutality, which Von Trier must not care about anyway, they sure (as hell) make it entertaining.
Posted Mar 29, 2019
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Vox Lux
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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This gradual inconclusive petering out is a strategy in itself. Its cold, tired repetitiveness, I guess, is the goal, although maybe it's meant to be redemptive or triumphant. Or maybe Corbet is rickrolling us.
Posted Mar 29, 2019
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Ghostbox Cowboy
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Immersed in our shared dollar-store world of travel-sized toiletries, useless trinkets, and selfie sticks, Ghostbox Cowboy investigates American and Chinese capitalism by presenting two sides of the same bad penny.
Posted Mar 29, 2019
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Welcome to Marwen
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Welcome to Marwen retains a certain power, which comes from both the documentary on which it is based, and on Zemeckis's desire to make a career-enfolding late work so he could bare his soul.
Posted Mar 29, 2019
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The Mule
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Dianne Wiest's performance as Earl's ex-wife is repetitive and "acted," in the typical male-female dichotomy of Eastwood movies.
Posted Mar 29, 2019
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The Wife
(2017)
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A.S. Hamrah
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The Wife is an aging fantasy of revenge. Close's character is the real talent in the family.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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At Eternity's Gate
(2018)
|
A.S. Hamrah
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What's so odd about today is the way people love bad art with such boundless enthusiasm.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Never Look Away
(2018)
|
A.S. Hamrah
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Look away, look away, look away, Deutschland!
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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A Star Is Born
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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A Star Is Born is a movie about what happens at an awards show, designed to collect awards at other awards shows.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Hale County This Morning, This Evening
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Ross has his own peculiar, attentive approach.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Cold War
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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There have been a lot of films about singers this year. This one, a Red Star Is Born, counters them by rejecting notions of success from our side of the Iron Curtain.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Roma
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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To Roma's credit, Cleo is not a sidekick or played for laughs. She's in the foreground.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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If Beale Street Could Talk
(2018)
|
A.S. Hamrah
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Jenkins's work should be defining the mainstream...
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Capernaum
(2018)
|
A.S. Hamrah
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Labaki's ability with these non-professional actors, including the baby, is remarkable.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Shoplifters
(2018)
|
A.S. Hamrah
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Lily Franky's performance is a grab bag of little quirks and maladies.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Bohemian Rhapsody
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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He's just a poor boy from a poor family. Spare him his life from this monstrosity.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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The Favourite
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Colman's performance as Queen Anne is worthy of Charles Laughton in its lack of vanity and its ever-building pathos.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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The section of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs titled "Meal Ticket" is the best in the film. The darkest, bleakest, and the most macabre, this vignette evokes the hellish carnival world of Tod Browning...
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Can You Ever Forgive Me?
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a movie for adults with a grown-up understanding of economic realities and the ways inner turmoil affects behavior.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Green Book
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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By the end it turns into a Hallmark Christmas movie with color-blind, non-homophobic hugs all around.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Vice
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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It should be a slam-dunk, not a highlight reel. McKay has done the unthinkable: botched a takedown of Dick Cheney, a man who shot his friend in the face and then made him apologize.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man
(1963)
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A.S. Hamrah
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The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man should be projected twenty-four hours a day somewhere in Manhattan, so that before we're all pushed into the sea off Rockaway Beach people can be reminded of the strange form of life that once lived here.
Posted Dec 18, 2018
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Leave No Trace
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Like Captain Fantastic from a couple of years ago, but with much more art, grace, and a sense of actual danger, Leave No Trace restates the male Gen-X narrative of protecting children from the outside world and their eventual reintegration into it.
Posted Dec 18, 2018
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Let the Corpses Tan
(2017)
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A.S. Hamrah
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As a feature film, it's pointless and repetitive, especially the squeaking-leather-pants sound effect that recurs over and over again.
Posted Dec 18, 2018
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Gavagai
(2018)
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A.S. Hamrah
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Tregenza is not sketching the wistful unhappiness of the moneyed creative class so much as staring into the divide between souls.
Posted Dec 18, 2018
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