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The Lost King
(2022)
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Bilge Ebiri
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The fact that The Lost King never quite reconciles this tension between striving for noble recognition and the fallacy of divine majesty feels like an implicit damnation of both.
Posted Mar 24, 2023
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John Wick: Chapter 4
(2023)
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Angelica Jade Bastién
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Chapter 4 is blissfully entertaining, full of pratfalls and acting turns that lead to the audience swelling with oohs, aahs, and yelps.
Posted Mar 23, 2023
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National Anthem
(2023)
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Matthew Jacobs
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National Anthem grants familiar coming-of-age beats a fresh backdrop.
Posted Mar 20, 2023
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Inside
(2023)
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Alison Willmore
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As a movie, Inside is utterly bloodless — an exercise in eking out an existence in improbable circumstances that just feels like a chore.
Posted Mar 18, 2023
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Shazam! Fury of the Gods
(2023)
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Bilge Ebiri
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It’s competent, uninspired swill, undone largely by the fact that it’s following up a superior first movie.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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4/5
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Problemista
(2023)
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Matthew Jacobs
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Torres’s directorial eye is wholly his own, though one can see shades of Miranda July, Michel Gondry, and Charlie Kaufman in Problemista.
Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Come and See
(1985)
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David Denby
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The movie is a succession of brutally sincere "art" assaults, jammed together like the poorly articulated cars of an old freight train.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
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Scream VI
(2023)
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Bilge Ebiri
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Despite my antipathy toward the Scream-quels, I found myself gripped by enough of Scream 6 that I imagine fans of the series will embrace it.
Posted Mar 10, 2023
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Palm Trees and Power Lines
(2022)
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Roxana Hadadi
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The relationship McInerny and Tucker build is so convincing in its mixture of exploitation and yearning that Palm Trees and Power Lines capably secures what Lea desires most too: your attention.
Posted Mar 08, 2023
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Chris Rock: Selective Outrage
(2023)
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Kathryn VanArendonk
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On paper, it all seems thrilling and possibly combustible. Which is why it is so disappointing when, in life, Chris Rock’s Selective Outrage cannot rise to the moment.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre
(2023)
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Bilge Ebiri
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Everybody in Operation Fortune — yes, even Ritchie — seems to be having fun. Sometimes, that’s all you need.
Posted Mar 04, 2023
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Creed III
(2023)
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Alison Willmore
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Creed III’s greatest achievement is demonstrating that there’s more story to be told about Donny, who after two films had been looking pretty thoroughly explored as a character.
Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Thelma & Louise
(1991)
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David Denby
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Thelma & Louise is wonderfully acted from top to bottom, and it's full of life and jokes and offbeat perceptions. Ridley Scott has rid himself of the alien gnawing at his insides. People, it turns out, are far more interesting in the long run.
Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Cocaine Bear
(2023)
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Bilge Ebiri
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Cocaine Bear is just as good as it needs to be. If it were any better, it probably couldn’t call itself Cocaine Bear.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
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Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
(2023)
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Bilge Ebiri
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I’m getting bored just typing all this up. More concerningly, it looks like the filmmakers themselves were bored putting it onscreen.
Posted Feb 17, 2023
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Return to Seoul
(2022)
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Angelica Jade Bastién
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[Chou] grounds his story in the contours and illuminations of lead Park Ji-Min’s features and expressions in a debut performance so piercing it makes the entire film move like a breathing poem.
Posted Feb 17, 2023
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The Blue Caftan
(2022)
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Roxana Hadadi
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Maryam Touzani’s film is as precise and vivid as its titular garment.
Posted Feb 12, 2023
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Magic Mike's Last Dance
(2023)
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Alison Willmore
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Despite being half–“Let’s put on a show” movie and half–romantic comedy, two genres dedicated to delight, Magic Mike’s Last Dance never achieves satisfaction... No matter how winking, the intellectualizing drains the mojo.
Posted Feb 07, 2023
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Knock at the Cabin
(2023)
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Bilge Ebiri
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The most exhilarating and wounding film M. Night Shyamalan has made in many, many years.
Posted Feb 03, 2023
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One Fine Morning
(2022)
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Bilge Ebiri
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This could have easily become a torrid, tear-jerking melodrama, but Hansen-Løve’s matter-of-fact approach to performance and incident allow the emotions to emerge organically from the unfussy drama onscreen.
Posted Jan 27, 2023
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Infinity Pool
(2023)
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Alison Willmore
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The film’s woozy spectacles do eventually become numbing, as does Goth’s turn as the yowling ringleader, but that’s all in line with the experience.
Posted Jan 27, 2023
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The Big Lebowski
(1998)
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David Denby
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Jeff Bridges has so much dedication as an actor that he sacrifices himself to the Coen brothers’ self-defeating conception. Even Bridges can’t open up a character who remains unconscious.
Posted Jan 21, 2023
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Skinamarink
(2022)
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Alison Willmore
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Skinamarink is as hair-raising as it is boring, which doesn’t feel like a failure so much as the goal of this micro-budget effort.
Posted Jan 13, 2023
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Plane
(2023)
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Bilge Ebiri
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The highest compliment I can pay the new Gerard Butler action film is that it lives up to the conceptual purity of its title.
Posted Jan 13, 2023
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Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
(1992)
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David Denby
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There isn't a thought that's worked out, a dramatic situation perceived clearly and told truly... Harris short-circuits her own movie.
Posted Jan 10, 2023
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Eve's Bayou
(1997)
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Angelica Jade Bastién
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What stays with me after all these years are the images of its female characters in liminal states, on the edge of awakenings: Roz’s beautiful façade cracking under the pressure of her husband’s impropriety...
Posted Jan 10, 2023
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The Pale Blue Eye
(2022)
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Bilge Ebiri
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A mystery that’s more about mood than ingenuity. But the chill you feel in your bones may actually enhance the suspense; Cooper clearly understands that mysteries live or die on their atmosphere.
Posted Jan 06, 2023
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A Dry White Season
(1989)
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David Denby
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Unbearably stiff.
Posted Jan 03, 2023
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Living
(2022)
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Bilge Ebiri
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The highest compliment I can pay Living is that it takes those dusty ideas and makes them resonate once more. Not unlike remembering an old, familiar song, and understanding it for the first time.
Posted Dec 26, 2022
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Babylon
(2022)
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Angelica Jade Bastién
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Babylon is a film too busy writing an elegy for the still-breathing body of film as a medium to capture the true beauty and complications of being alive.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
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Strictly Ballroom
(1992)
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David Denby
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This Australian production requires extreme indulgence -- and not the pleasant kind of indulgence, either, the kind in which you feel yourself to be a capital fellow; in this case, you feel that someone has made a fool of you.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
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Groundhog Day
(1993)
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David Denby
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Groundhog Day might have been a mere gimmick movie, but it isn't; it's something better -- a gentle fantasy of both paralysis and liberation.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
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Jhund
(2022)
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Siddhant Adlakha
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A stylish, propulsive, and resonant tale of frustrations channeled through sport.
Posted Dec 20, 2022
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Gangubai Kathiawadi
(2022)
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Siddhant Adlakha
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Rather than trying to eke out a new place for sex workers in conservative society, it makes the convincing case that they are already a vital fixture.
Posted Dec 20, 2022
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Vikram
(2022)
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Siddhant Adlakha
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The camera crafts a lurid atmosphere as it follows each man down dark corridors and murky moral paths in one of the most ludicrously enjoyable movies of 2022.
Posted Dec 20, 2022
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Avatar: The Way of Water
(2022)
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Bilge Ebiri
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If the first Avatar is remarkable because it shows us wondrous lands nothing like our own, The Way of Water is remarkable because it shows us that this world is, in fact, very much like our own.
Posted Dec 13, 2022
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Empire of Light
(2022)
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Bilge Ebiri
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All life appears to have been drained out of this movie.
Posted Dec 09, 2022
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Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
(1975)
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David Denby
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There's subversive black humor and violence lurking in Jeanne Dielman's implacable calm.
Posted Dec 07, 2022
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Devotion
(2022)
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Bilge Ebiri
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There are stretches of Devotion where it doesn’t seem like all that much is happening, but then you look closer and you realize that just about everything is happening.
Posted Nov 25, 2022
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Strange World
(2022)
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Alison Willmore
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So much of Strange World’s audaciousness is front-loaded into its concept, and so little of it comes through in the execution.
Posted Nov 25, 2022
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All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
(2022)
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Alison Willmore
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If Goldin and Poitras seem like an odd pairing, the tension that comes from their collaboration is what gives All the Beauty and the Bloodshed its vitality.
Posted Nov 23, 2022
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The Inspection
(2022)
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Alison Willmore
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Bratton, who has an eye for compelling framing and unexpected beauty, has made something more complicated than a treatise against the power structures enshrined in the military, though he’s very aware of them.
Posted Nov 21, 2022
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Disenchanted
(2022)
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Jen Chaney
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This isn’t an organic continuation of Giselle’s story so much as an uninspired knockoff of the original, yet another attempt to use existing IP to attract viewers and subscribers besotted by the prospect of watching something familiar on a Friday night.
Posted Nov 18, 2022
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Bones and All
(2022)
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Bilge Ebiri
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The whole film, for all its gore and talk of animalistic abandon, feels like a dutiful, skin-deep pastiche.
Posted Nov 18, 2022
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The Menu
(2022)
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Alison Willmore
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What makes The Menu more satiating than other recent, glitzier skewerings of ultracapitalism is that its satire isn’t so glib that it leaves you feeling comfortably outside of the proceedings.
Posted Nov 18, 2022
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Braveheart
(1995)
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David Denby
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Gibson puts us in the peculiar position of longing for him to die. Braveheart overstays its welcome. It's an epic looking not only for a point but an exit line.
Posted Nov 18, 2022
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The Son
(2022)
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Alison Willmore
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The Father is such an achievement that it’s hard to believe The Son was made by the same person.
Posted Nov 11, 2022
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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
(2022)
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Angelica Jade Bastién
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Regrettably, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever tries to do so many things that it comes across as threadbare and pallid — less a failure of imagination and more of circumstance, time, and narrative constraints.
Posted Nov 09, 2022
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Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
(2022)
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Bilge Ebiri
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This fake Weird Al movie could have used some of the real Weird Al’s cleverness. Weird doesn’t feel like a parody; it feels like an impostor.
Posted Nov 07, 2022
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Something In The Dirt
(2022)
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Roxana Hadadi
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For those who are fine without finality, Something in the Dirt’s funky, frenetic paranoia is fun to hang out with for a while.
Posted Nov 04, 2022
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