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Story Ave
(2023)
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Lisa Kennedy
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In a quiet and compassionate supporting performance, Luis Guzmán proves a beacon for a young graffiti artist — and for this debut feature from Aristotle Torres.
Posted Mar 29, 2023
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Kill Boksoon
(2023)
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Jessica Kiang
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Silly, splashy, CG-assisted nonsense — and at 2 hours 17 minutes, way too long.
Posted Mar 28, 2023
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What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?
(2023)
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Owen Gleiberman
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A singular piece of rock history, even if hardly anyone knows about it. I didn’t know about it, but now that I’ve seen the film I’d call it essential.
Posted Mar 28, 2023
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On the Edge
(2023)
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Jessica Kiang
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What’s remarkable about all these cases and more, is the intense, individual attention Jamal provides, treating each patient with dignity and compassion.
Posted Mar 27, 2023
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Praying for Armageddon
(2023)
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Jessica Kiang
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A glossy, persuasive and increasingly alarming documentary exposing the influence of the fundamentalist Christian lobby on US politics.
Posted Mar 27, 2023
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Inside
(2023)
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Murtada Elfadl
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The film has exhausted both the premise and its leading man’s capabilities, while the audience has grown tired of pondering whatever themes it purports to examine. It’s time to part ways, and yet the images keep flickering and the film keeps going.
Posted Mar 25, 2023
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Wild Life
(2023)
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Guy Lodge
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[A] handsome, emotionally stirring documentary...
Posted Mar 25, 2023
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Frybread Face and Me
(2023)
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Lisa Kennedy
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Watching this family interact is a reminder how rare it is to see so many American indigenous actors in a space, weaving the unique and universal into stories that expand our storehouse of their experience.
Posted Mar 24, 2023
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A Storm Foretold
(2023)
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Jessica Kiang
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Entertaining, at times jaw-dropping, yet deeply dismaying...
Posted Mar 23, 2023
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Late Night With the Devil
(2023)
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Dennis Harvey
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The resulting mix of vintage Me Decade showbiz cheese and “Exorcist”-y demonic doings is distinctive, not to mention deftly handled by the brothers as both writers and directors.
Posted Mar 23, 2023
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Furies
(2023)
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Richard Kuipers
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Despite a routine plot and some abrasive tonal shifts, this tale... is packed with exciting action and boasts fine performances from four killers bound by blood, bullets and all manner of deadly weapons.
Posted Mar 23, 2023
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The Black Pirate
(1926)
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Variety Staff
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The continuity has its lapses... and the heroics are strictly of the screen. But it's easy to watch, there is a distinct appeal to the Imagination, and It's Fairbanks. The youngsters should eat it up.
Posted Mar 22, 2023
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The Devil Horse
(1926)
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Robert F. Sisk
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The Devil Horse, reel for reel, is as filled with thrilling situations and incidents as possible. Yakima Canutt, the world's champ cowboy and a riding fool, is the young hero. What he lacks in movie looks he makes up for in his rough riding.
Posted Mar 21, 2023
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Steamboat Bill, Jr.
(1928)
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Jack Conway
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The old vaudeville stunt of a falling set... is twisted into a corking screen gag through the apparent thrill of seeing a whole side of a house fall, and Keaton remain standing upright, oblivious of danger because an open window fell around him.
Posted Mar 21, 2023
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Motherland
(2023)
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Jessica Kiang
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[A] handsome, bitter film...
Posted Mar 21, 2023
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The New Americans: Gaming a Revolution
(2023)
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Owen Gleiberman
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Timoner, who has become a more graphically energized filmmaker, has made a kaleidoscopic movie that has us hanging on the details of meme stocks, diamond hands (holding onto a stock no matter what), and cryptocurrency.
Posted Mar 21, 2023
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Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
(2023)
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Jessica Kiang
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The small, smoky, steamy miracle of this film is how it creates something so intangible, so lyrical, from the absolutely elemental: fire, wood, water and lots of naked female flesh.
Posted Mar 20, 2023
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Air
(2023)
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Peter Debruge
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Casting Davis was the smartest thing Affleck could have done, as the EGOT winner is to acting what Jordan is to sports: Her strength inspires, and she can move us to tears while making it look easy.
Posted Mar 20, 2023
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Raging Grace
(2023)
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Joe Leydon
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Paris Zarcilla, the British-born Filipino writer-director here making his feature debut, does an impressive job of infusing scary movie conventions with the potent urgency of a sharply observed social critique.
Posted Mar 19, 2023
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Full River Red
(2023)
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Richard Kuipers
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With a twist-packed plot to match its labyrinthine location, Zhang’s fast-paced film motors along nicely as an engaging “Knives Out”-style whodunnit before stumbling a little in the protracted final act.
Posted Mar 18, 2023
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Joy Ride
(2023)
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Peter Debruge
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The movie may not be “Bridesmaids”-level brilliant, but it’s got more than a couple hall-of-fame-worthy comedy set-pieces...
Posted Mar 18, 2023
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C+
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Monolith
(2023)
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Amy Nicholson
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Falls sway to the clickbait tropes it intends to send up: red herrings, a tone of suffocating gloom and a desperation to keep the audience on the hook.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Boston Strangler
(2023)
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Courtney Howard
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A distant cousin to Zodiac, with splashes of Seven mixed into its homages, this thriller falls short of its influences yet carves out a small space of its own.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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You Can Call Me Bill
(2023)
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Owen Gleiberman
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“You Can Call Me Bill” cuts engagingly between the wit and wisdom of William Shatner and a wealth of footage from his career...
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Evil Dead Rise
(2023)
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Joe Leydon
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Writer-director Lee Cronin has delivered his own imaginatively scary take on the “Book of the Dead” mythos with “Evil Dead Rise.”
Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Tetris
(2023)
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Peter Debruge
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Picture “Tetris” as a lo-fi version of John Le Carré’s “The Russia House.”
Posted Mar 16, 2023
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The Magician's Elephant
(2023)
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Michael Nordine
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While the movie itself is more whimsical than magical, it does have a few tricks up its sleeve.
Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Shazam! Fury of the Gods
(2023)
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Owen Gleiberman
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The real story here is that a superhero saga that seemed to hold out possibilities of lifesize quirkiness and delight winds up getting squashed into the shape of any other superhero franchise.
Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Bloody Hell
(2023)
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Dennis Harvey
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While imperfect, “Bloody Hell” does entertainingly offer food for thought via an important overall point made in non-preachy form...
Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Love to Love You, Donna Summer
(2023)
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Owen Gleiberman
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As “Love to Love You, Donna Summer” captures, the woman who made “I Feel Love” into an anthem lifted you to a place where you couldn’t help but feel it too.
Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Boys on the Side
(1995)
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Brian Lowry
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Given perennial complaints about the dearth of Oscar-worthy roles for women, Boys sends calendar-year ’95 off to an auspicious start, reinforcing Whoopi Goldberg’s dramatic credentials and Mary-Louise Parker’s rapid ascension toward major star status.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
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Problemista
(2023)
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Peter Debruge
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For all his funny ideas, it doesn’t feel like Torres has a consistent world view, and the movie is poorly organized and unwieldy as a consequence.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
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John Wick: Chapter 4
(2023)
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Owen Gleiberman
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“Chapter 4” feels like the first “John Wick” movie that wants to be a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western. It’s like Sergio Leone crossed with John Woo as seen in Times Square.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
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Northern Comfort
(2010)
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Alissa Simon
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Balancing empathy for his eccentric characters with overall entertainment value, the Columbia University-trained Sigurðsson shows that he has the chops to work internationally should he choose to.
Posted Mar 13, 2023
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Hypnotic
(2023)
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Peter Debruge
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This slick mix of special effects and practical ingenuity puts Affleck in a fun position, and the slightly grizzled star’s still got the clench-jawed charisma to pull it off.
Posted Mar 13, 2023
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Bottoms
(2023)
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Owen Gleiberman
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A high-school comedy that is brazenly gonzo, scaldingly and at times even dementedly over-the-top, and actually about something...
Posted Mar 12, 2023
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Sisi & I
(2023)
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Guy Lodge
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Consistently gets by on the eye-candy delights of Thomas W. Kiennast’s velvety, tactile 16mm lensing and scrumptious, magazine-ready design contributions.
Posted Mar 12, 2023
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B+
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If You Were the Last
(2023)
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Amy Nicholson
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A romantic comedy that revives the screwball formula where two people talk themselves silly — and we only had to go to the end of the solar system to make it happen.
Posted Mar 12, 2023
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A Disturbance in The Force
(2023)
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Joe Leydon
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Maybe it really wasn’t all that terrible. Or maybe it was. Either way, the tone is more affectionate than disparaging in Jeremy Coons and Steve Kozak’s documentary.
Posted Mar 12, 2023
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Self Reliance
(2023)
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Peter Debruge
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Coming up for connection, Johnson delivers a silly and frequently surprising why-we-need-people parable.
Posted Mar 12, 2023
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Flamin' Hot
(2023)
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Peter Debruge
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Americans love corn, and “Desperate Housewives” star-turned-director Eva Longoria serves it up rich and tasty in her feature debut, scripted by Linda Yvette Chávez and Lewis Colick.
Posted Mar 12, 2023
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Opponent
(2023)
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Guy Lodge
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Alami maintains suspense at both ends of his narrative without making a blank cypher of his protagonist, played with seething specificity by an electrifying Payman Maadi.
Posted Mar 12, 2023
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Appendage
(2023)
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Dennis Harvey
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Despite the grotesque premise, its attack is a little too blunt to make much impact, whether taken as thinly-veiled satire or straight fantasy thriller.
Posted Mar 12, 2023
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Money Shot: The Pornhub Story
(2023)
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Owen Gleiberman
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As “Money Shot” persuasively argues, pornography may be a hot-button topic, but the closer you look at it the more you realize that nothing about it is simple.
Posted Mar 12, 2023
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The Teachers’ Lounge
(2023)
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Jessica Kiang
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It delivers you directly into a sense memory of chalk dust and boredom, of fidgeting at your desk and gazing longingly through big windows that seem tauntingly designed for exactly that purpose.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
(2023)
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Owen Gleiberman
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It’s at once cheesy and charming, synthetic and spectacular, cozily derivative and rambunctiously inventive, a processed piece of junk-culture joy that, by the end, may bring a tear to your eye.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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The Dark Angel
(1935)
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Abel Green
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Miss Oberon is a revelation.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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What's Love Got to Do with It?
(2022)
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Guy Lodge
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James and Latif, both wholesomely appealing, don’t exactly burn up the screen either, but they fit together, in the romcom language that the film mostly speaks.
Posted Mar 10, 2023
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Our Body
(2023)
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Jessica Kiang
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Luxuriant in length but never less than compelling...
Posted Mar 10, 2023
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Chang Can Dunk
(2023)
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Peter Debruge
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“Chang Can Dunk” doesn’t go the way you’d expect, and that’s a good thing.
Posted Mar 10, 2023
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