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4/5
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Napoleon
(2023)
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Hamish Macbain
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Phoenix, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny and chilling in the same scene, is as compelling as he always is... But it’s Vanessa Kirby who, much like Ryan Gosling in Barbie, upstages her title character.
Posted Nov 15, 2023
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4/5
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David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived
(2023)
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Vicky Jessop
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In this tragic story, Holmes is unbowed -- and to see him and Radcliffe ambling through the Potter archives together, reminiscing about the good times, is both triumphant and heartbreaking.
Posted Nov 14, 2023
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4/5
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Anatomy of a Fall
(2023)
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Sophie Monks Kaufman
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Hüller’s impenetrable poise is such that Anatomy of a Fall bleeds into an anatomy of her cool.
Posted Nov 11, 2023
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Little Big Man
(1970)
|
Alexander Walker
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A freak of a film. Its director's intentions are sometimes as mystifying as his material.
Posted Nov 10, 2023
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Atanarjuat the Fast Runner
(2001)
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Alexander Walker
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Written in basic Inuit, directed by Zacharia Kunuk and photographed with tableauesque dedication by Norman Cohn, an in-comer who lived with the tribes, it feels the authentic ethnic article.
Posted Nov 08, 2023
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4/5
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The Royal Hotel
(2023)
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Hanna Flint
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The Royal Hotel simmers with the heat of oppressive testosterone at a pub in the Australian Outback. That is, until it boils over with cathartic female rage.
Posted Nov 06, 2023
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4/5
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Bottoms
(2023)
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El Hunt
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In Bottoms... you’ll find more crude sex jokes than you can shake a pom-pom at. It’s also bizarrely violent.
Posted Nov 03, 2023
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4/5
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Fingernails
(2023)
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Hanna Flint
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Fingernails delivers a beautiful and eccentric articulation of the painstaking feeling of throwing yourself into the romantic unknown.
Posted Nov 03, 2023
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They Might Be Giants
(1971)
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Alexander Walker
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The acting works more enjoyably than the allegory... Its individual pieces are highly entertaining, however, and Scott is such a good Holmes I hope he'll play the part for real some day.
Posted Oct 24, 2023
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The Last Picture Show
(1971)
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Alexander Walker
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It's to the great credit of Peter Bogdanovich that he has sketched a piece of folk history without folksiness. That he has found a precise point in time at which the confidence of America missed a beat and never again recovered its rhythm.
Posted Oct 24, 2023
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Goodfellas
(1990)
|
Alexander Walker
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They are treated like lab specimens, clinically normal looking, yet mutated by some corrupt gene into social monsters we'd rather not claim as our next of kin. All that dissuades one from making an early exit is Scorsese's magisterial detachment.
Posted Oct 18, 2023
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2/5
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The Kitchen
(2023)
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Hamish Macbain
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So The Kitchen is a mood piece, really: it’s just that the mood is unfortunately not very interesting at all.
Posted Oct 17, 2023
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4/5
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How to Have Sex
(2023)
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Tom Davidson
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This is an unsparing look at the realities of mixing puberty, alcohol, and hazy ideas about sexual consent.
Posted Oct 17, 2023
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5/5
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Killers of the Flower Moon
(2023)
|
Hamish Macbain
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Despite the showy casting of the leading men, it becomes obvious very quickly that the real meat in Killers of The Flower Moon is the women’s stories.
Posted Oct 16, 2023
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5/5
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One Life
(2023)
|
Hamish Macbain
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It is, unquestionably, Hopkins’s film.
Posted Oct 16, 2023
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4/5
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The End We Start From
(2023)
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Ella Kemp
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The End We Start From explores more than motherhood at the end of the world, its subject is every nuance of womanhood at any stage of life.
Posted Oct 16, 2023
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2/5
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The Miracle Club
(2023)
|
Ella Kemp
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... This is little more than a checklist of themes – Grief! Faith! Feminism! Family! – standing in for any true complexity.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
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3/5
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Sumotherhood
(2023)
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Ella Kemp
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Deacon feels his way through a messy string of what might work nicely as sketch vignettes instead of an actual feature –but if you know who and what you’re in for as you part with your cash at the ticket counter, it’s hard to not crack at least one smile.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
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4/5
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The Holdovers
(2023)
|
Tom Davidson
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It turns a wintry film into a heartwarming tale about a trio who find a way, by hook or by crook, to get through Christmas together.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
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Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
(1974)
|
Alexander Walker
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What this humane and briskly scripted film -- likeable from the word go -- reminds us is how seldom we see films that tell it like it is from the viewpoint of a woman.
Posted Oct 12, 2023
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Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
(1974)
|
Charlotte O'Sullivan
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Are humans doomed to bully or be bullied? That question haunts Alice, as it does all Scorsese’s protagonists. His films, though, are rarely dominated by women, which is why it’s especially important that people discover the ferocious, frazzled, Alice.
Posted Oct 11, 2023
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2/5
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Foe
(2023)
|
Hamish Macbain
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Davis, though, is shooting for something far grander: a kind of claustrophobic, The Shining-style psychological horror. Sadly he has neither the script nor the imagination to do this.
Posted Oct 11, 2023
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4/5
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The Taste of Mango
(2023)
|
Tom Davidson
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Abrahams’ film reaffirms the strength of generational bonds and champions the desire of the new generation to question and provoke and demand answers.
Posted Oct 10, 2023
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3/5
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Shoshana
(2023)
|
Tom Davidson
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It’s a brave effort, but since it’s not clear what Winterbottom, wants to say, he ultimately ends up saying nothing very much at all.
Posted Oct 10, 2023
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4/5
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All of Us Strangers
(2023)
|
Paul Flynn
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... This film admirably sits amid Andrew Haigh’s honourable portfolio of taking sexuality seriously.
Posted Oct 10, 2023
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2/5
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Golda
(2023)
|
Hannah Strong
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Golda is more like a chapter of a dusty history book than an invigorating, timely glimpse into the past.
Posted Oct 10, 2023
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3/5
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The Great Escaper
(2023)
|
Hannah Strong
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[Caine and Jackson] sell even the more on-the-nose moments in William Ivory’s script, and add gravitas to what could easily have been a patronising narrative.
Posted Oct 10, 2023
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The Bikeriders
(2023)
|
Nick Howells
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Jodie Comer roars into her first Great American Film Role. And in his finest effort yet, Mud director Jeff Nichols has given her quite the machine to ride on.
Posted Oct 10, 2023
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4/5
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Partygate
(2023)
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Robbie Smith
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This is the genius of television: to bring the parties we read about in newspaper articles or the clinical Sue Gray report to pulsating, hair-swinging, beer-chugging life.
Posted Oct 06, 2023
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Taxi Driver
(1976)
|
Alexander Walker
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At a time when law and order has its own psychotic defenders, the ironical moral seems to be that irrational vengeance is hard to distinguish from it.
Posted Oct 06, 2023
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4/5
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Saltburn
(2023)
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Ella Kemp
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It’s in service of the dizzying adventure of a story, undoubtedly wrestling with class and deception as much as desire and the plain silliness of youth. It’s all there, but one of the greatest pleasures of Saltburn is just being invited to the party.
Posted Sep 30, 2023
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2/5
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The Creator
(2023)
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Hannah Strong
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It’s a handsome film and demonstrates the filmmakers’ vivid imagination, but this doesn’t quite extend to the story itself, or its dialogue which often veers into cheesy territory.
Posted Sep 27, 2023
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The Exorcist
(1973)
|
Alexander Walker
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Frankly, The Exorcist is nothing but a superior shocker. A very well-made horror movie, with pretensions to something better (or certainly deeper) that never does more than stick its nose out and then hastily withdraw.
Posted Sep 27, 2023
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3/5
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Expend4bles
(2023)
|
Ellen E Jones
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... Installment number four of the elite mercenaries series manages to not be entirely extraneous to our entertainment needs, disarming as often with easy charm, as with a high-kick to the hyoid.
Posted Sep 21, 2023
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2/5
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The Lesson
(2023)
|
Ellen E Jones
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Like many an Oxford undergrad, this film isn’t as enchantingly clever as it thinks it is, and while The Lesson does have indisputably good taste in both actors and influences, the pastiche of a rarified, literary world never fully convinces.
Posted Sep 20, 2023
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4/5
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Fremont
(2023)
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Charlotte O'Sullivan
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The script (co-written by Jalali) is especially sharp when it comes to examining the ways that refugees get pigeon-holed as saints or sinners.
Posted Sep 18, 2023
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A Haunting in Venice
(2023)
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Charlotte O'Sullivan
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An indulgent if disposable treat, it’s just right for Halloween.
Posted Sep 10, 2023
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5/5
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Green Border
(2023)
|
Jo-Ann Titmarsh
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Like a skilled conductor, she [Holland] directs this large orchestra of players to produce an incredible ensemble work that will remain in the memory long after viewing.
Posted Sep 08, 2023
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2/5
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My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
(2023)
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Charlotte O'Sullivan
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Time to bury this franchise.
Posted Sep 08, 2023
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5/5
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Past Lives
(2023)
|
Charlotte O'Sullivan
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Song finds the political in the personal and avoids seeming indulgent or niche.
Posted Sep 08, 2023
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2/5
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Origin
(2023)
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Jo-Ann Titmarsh
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When DuVernay moves away from her screenplay and towards Wilkerson’s book, the language flows and the film becomes way more interesting.
Posted Sep 08, 2023
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Hit Man
(2023)
|
Jo-Ann Titmarsh
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An intelligent comedy that contains plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and references Kant and Nietzsche, it is also a thriller that is darker than it first appears.
Posted Sep 08, 2023
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2/4
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Y tu mamá también
(2001)
|
Alexander Walker
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A Mexican movie that's true to its origins, but worldwide in its youth appeal.
Posted Sep 07, 2023
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3/4
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Traffic
(2000)
|
Alexander Walker
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To be frank, it's a downer. But an engrossing downer, with a multitude of revelatory stories springing out of performances, characters, dialogue or social setting and recalling what American movie making was like in its entertaining but serious prime.
Posted Sep 06, 2023
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2/5
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Ferrari
(2023)
|
Jo-Ann Titmarsh
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Despite numerous issues, there are some things to like about Ferrari. First of all: location, location, location.
Posted Sep 05, 2023
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4/5
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Passages
(2023)
|
Charlotte O'Sullivan
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From the way Sachs shoots the streets of Paris, it’s obvious he adores New Wave film-makers like Truffaut.
Posted Sep 05, 2023
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3/5
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Coup de Chance
(2023)
|
Jo-Ann Titmarsh
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Coup de Chance was never going to dazzle but it doesn’t entirely disappoint. As long as you like very Woody Allen Woody Allen films.
Posted Sep 04, 2023
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2/5
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Priscilla
(2023)
|
Jo-Ann Titmarsh
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Priscilla’s story is well known and audiences have most recently seen her depicted in Baz Luhrman’s Elvis biopic. So what can the filmmaker add to Priscilla’s story? The short answer is: not much.
Posted Sep 04, 2023
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The Killer
(2023)
|
Jo-Ann Titmarsh
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... It’s pretty bog standard stuff, albeit directed and acted very deftly.
Posted Sep 03, 2023
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5/5
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Poor Things
(2023)
|
Jo-Ann Titmarsh
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Together, Lanthimos and his team of players and crew have conjured up a delight that – like its protagonist – is eccentric, smart, a little dark, lovely to look at and charming as hell.
Posted Sep 03, 2023
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