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2/5
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The Fire Inside
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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It’s all undercut by surprisingly flat cinematography from music video veteran Rina Yang, a tepid strings-and-piano score by Tamar-kali, and generally lackadaisical pacing from Morrison.
Posted Dec 27, 2024
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1.5/5
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Sonic the Hedgehog 3
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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There’s no coherence here, each scene sitting in disjointed discomfort with the next.
Posted Dec 20, 2024
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2.5/5
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The End
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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As actual modern technocrats dream of escaping environmental catastrophe by fleeing to Mars, Oppenheimer’s staid vision of the splendid isolation of the upper class is nowhere near as ambitious as it needs to be.
Posted Dec 12, 2024
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The Brutalist
(2024)
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Kimberley Jones
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A film that is novelistic in the best of ways -- in its thematic ambition, its finesse with the interiority of these complex characters. But the experience of The Brutalist is an intensely cinematic one.
Posted Dec 12, 2024
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3.5/5
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All We Imagine as Light
(2024)
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Kimberley Jones
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Small in its movements and thoughtful in its observations, All We Imagine As Light is quietly resonant.
Posted Dec 12, 2024
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3.5/5
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Flow
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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In the subtle subtext of having a solitary creature like a cat find companionship in a boat full of animals who have lost their pack, their flock, or their herd, we will find a tender story about knowing where we are meant to be.
Posted Dec 05, 2024
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2.5/5
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Queer
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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So much of Queer appears gorgeous but superficial, sketched out and there only to respond to Lee.
Posted Dec 05, 2024
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4/5
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Bird
(2024)
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Kimberley Jones
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What struck me more was the film’s interpretation of Bailey’s coming of age not as something to be mourned or that comes on too soon. Instead, it’s an activation.
Posted Dec 04, 2024
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2/5
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Gladiator II
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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Scott’s increasingly leaden direction can’t add any nuance, and instead sloppily lumps together the po-faced grandeur of Quo Vadis and the unhinged debauchery of Caligula.
Posted Nov 21, 2024
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3.5/5
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A Real Pain
(2024)
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Kimberley Jones
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These characters have become so dear; I longed for something more climactic, more cathartic for them. Still, for the time we have with them, they make terrific company.
Posted Nov 14, 2024
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3/5
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Invader
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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At a raw and rare 70 minutes, Invader is Keating challenging himself to deliver the leanest, sparest home invasion imaginable.
Posted Nov 13, 2024
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3/5
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Heretic
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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Fortunately, as directors Beck and Woods have become deviously adept at giving the audience what they want – rock-solid scares.
Posted Nov 07, 2024
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The Seed of the Sacred Fig
(2024)
|
Alejandra Martinez
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It's worth watching just to be a witness to the transgressive and courageous possibilities of the medium.
Posted Oct 30, 2024
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The Last Showgirl
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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Las Vegas may demolish its own history, but The Last Showgirl will break your heart by showing you a woman clinging to the rubble of her life.
Posted Oct 30, 2024
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Blitz
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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Blitz is also burdened by a surprisingly leaden script filled with paper-thin Cockney stereotypes.
Posted Oct 30, 2024
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Time Travel Is Dangerous
(2024)
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Kimberley Jones
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The Eighties aesthetic runs throughout, and spiritually, Time Travel Is Dangerous! is something of an 8-bit charmer, full of practical effects and the anything-goes wackiness that engined action-comedies of the era.
Posted Oct 28, 2024
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4/5
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Anora
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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This is an undeniable star-making performance for Madison, who finds the grace and charm and stupidity and selfishness and wild-eyed wonder of Mikey, a tough survivor who falls for the oldest fairy tale in the book.
Posted Oct 24, 2024
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2/5
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Venom: The Last Dance
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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Somehow, The Last Dance is simultaneously 20 minutes too long for the script they have and 30 minutes too short for the story they want to tell.
Posted Oct 24, 2024
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3.5/5
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Look Back
(2024)
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Kimberley Jones
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The heady buzz of creation. The stillness of grief. The heart-expanding-five-times-its-size joy of a perfect day with a friend. It’s all there. I just wanted more of it.
Posted Oct 17, 2024
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4/5
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We Live in Time
(2024)
|
Richard Whittaker
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Watch ’em and weep, kids.
Posted Oct 17, 2024
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3.5/5
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Smile 2
(2024)
|
Richard Whittaker
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Parker Finn takes the intriguing but somewhat prosaically expressed conceit of his 2022 surprise smash and makes Smile 2 bigger and scarier in all the right ways.
Posted Oct 17, 2024
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3.5/5
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The Apprentice
(2024)
|
Richard Whittaker
|
The Apprentice undoubtedly humanizes Trump, but not in a way that softens him. If anything, it makes his nightmarish ascent and oafish brutality easier to grasp and even more terrifying.
Posted Oct 10, 2024
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2.5/5
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Piece By Piece
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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Piece by Piece is an interesting sprint through three decades of cultural relevance and relatively scandal-free living. If Pharrell’s happy, then it seems we have to be too.
Posted Oct 10, 2024
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3.5/5
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Terrifier 3
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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Leone’s growing mythology allows the wild turns in worldbuilding to make the wait for Terrifier 4 all the more deliciously torturous.
Posted Oct 10, 2024
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3/5
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Saturday Night
(2024)
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Kimberley Jones
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The glibly entertaining Saturday Night presents like we’re all friends – the clubhouse vibes make for a fun hang...
Posted Oct 10, 2024
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4/5
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The Outrun
(2024)
|
Kimberley Jones
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Ronan, and her empathic director, catch without words the sensation of when someone who has been buried under unfathomable pain and grief and trauma discovers they still have the capacity for joy. I
Posted Oct 03, 2024
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3/5
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Joker: Folie à Deux
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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If you wept for him in the first film, Phillips uses the second to ask why – and the answer may be deeply awkward for some people.
Posted Oct 03, 2024
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Bring Them Down
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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Andrews does get the broad strokes and details of this kind of rural life right enough to still remain engaging.
Posted Oct 01, 2024
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Better Man
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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It’s a monumental technical achievement, expressive and haunting, especially in those moments when that nervous little monkey boy that became an insecure monkey man is menaced over and over again by his own former selves from the crowd.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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3.5/4
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The Wild Robot
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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The edges of love may be messy, but as The Wild Robot understands and expresses beautifully, we’re all more than our programming.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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2/5
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Lee
(2023)
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Kimberley Jones
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While that may have been true to Miller’s nature, the gritted-teeth one-noteness of it is exhausting.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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The Rule of Jenny Pen
(2024)
|
Marjorie Baumgarten
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The knockout performances make the The Rule of Jenny Pen worth seeing, but there is not much more substance propping up this endeavor.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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2.5/5
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Megalopolis
(2024)
|
Marjorie Baumgarten
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Though the film is a jumble that oftentimes leaves its top-notch cast unmoored and renders its science-fiction elements somewhat anemic... Megalopolis is truly one from the heart, an outpouring from one cinephile to his tribe.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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3/5
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Wild Eyed and Wicked
(2023)
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Richard Whittaker
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It's not a complete or radical reinvention, but by quietly inserting symbolism and imagery that wouldn't feel out of place in Excalibur or The Legend of Robin Hood, Foxwood gives a shining valor to Lily's ride into battle with her ghosts.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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Bone Lake
(2024)
|
Richard Whittaker
|
Bone Lake is wickedly fun rather than measuredly incisive.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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AJ Goes to the Dog Park
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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AJ Goes to the Dog Park doesn’t feel like a movie so much as two creative friends getting together and having fun exploring a comedic person.
Posted Sep 24, 2024
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Memoir of a Snail
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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In this charming, funny, tear-inducing, and instantly recognizable world, and through the (in)actions of Grace, Elliot tells a gentle, touching, bitter-but-ultimately-sweet fable with a warming message: It’s OK to leave your shell behind.
Posted Sep 23, 2024
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What Happened to Dorothy Bell?
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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Character study beats out simple scales here. However, it’s the style of What Happened to Dorothy Bell? that really distinguishes it.
Posted Sep 23, 2024
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Apocalypse Now Redux
(1979)
|
Marc Savlov
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196 minutes of some of the finest filmmaking.
Posted Sep 22, 2024
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The Draft!
(2023)
|
Richard Whittaker
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The payoff is all part of the fun, as Fuadi and his cast push Indonesian horror into a new direction.
Posted Sep 20, 2024
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4/5
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The Substance
(2024)
|
Richard Whittaker
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An excoriating, stomach-churning, and utterly brilliant assault on how society discards women when they reach this age.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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3/5
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My Old Ass
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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My Old Ass is all about the heart, not the head.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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3.5/5
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Seeking Mavis Beacon
(2024)
|
Kimberley Jones
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Seeking a woman denied a voice, Jones has made herself the star of her own film, doing all sorts of things, like roller skating and consulting a tarot reader, that will make doc purists clutch their pearls, a sidelong pleasure of the piece.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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3.5/5
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Will & Harper
(2024)
|
Kimberley Jones
|
Harper and Will both come off like good eggs, and the tears wept on both side are liable to goose sincere tears of your own.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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3.5/5
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The Critic
(2023)
|
Kimberley Jones
|
A mostly effective thriller with a lot of meat on the bone.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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2/5
|
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
(2024)
|
Richard Whittaker
|
Sometimes, the dead should just stay buried.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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2/5
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The Paragon
(2023)
|
Richard Whittaker
|
There are some traces of their low budget tokusatsu lunacy in Dutch and Lyra’s adventures in hyperdimensional consciousness, but it’s played out with a droll restraint that can be a little much.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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3.5/5
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His Three Daughters
(2023)
|
Kimberley Jones
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Lyonne’s presence is outsized but her performance is exquisitely controlled; there’s real sleight-of-hand magic in her transition from punchline to a fully fleshed-out person.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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2/5
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1992
(2024)
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Richard Whittaker
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Vromen may have meant to create a politically-tinged period piece about one of the most combustible moments in American history, but the only element of Nineties Americana he really resurrects is the mediocre amoral crime flick.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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2/5
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Slingshot
(2024)
|
Richard Whittaker
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Unfortunately, even Affleck can’t fill the vacuum in between all the predictable beats and the insufferable series of twists and reveals that undercut any empathy for the characters.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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