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Trap
(2024)
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Sam Adams
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Trap repeatedly crosses the boundary between performer and fan, the viewer and the viewed, but it doesn’t really want us to think about what that means. We’re just meant to lie back and watch.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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Deadpool & Wolverine
(2024)
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Sam Adams
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Dotted in among the quips and Easter eggs is the superhero equivalent of Toy Story 2, a mournful goodbye to the things we once held dear, even if some of those things weren’t that great to begin with.
Posted Jul 31, 2024
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Twisters
(2024)
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Dana Stevens
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Chung directs action with visual clarity and, just as importantly, a vivid sense of drama.
Posted Jul 20, 2024
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Fly Me to the Moon
(2024)
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Dana Stevens
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The biggest problem with this ponderous comedy is the lack of balance among the many conflicting tones it aims to strike.
Posted Jul 11, 2024
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Fancy Dance
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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One of those small-scale indie films that examine social issues through the micro-lens of individual lives, so that the audience gets a sense of the systemic problems that impact the characters’ choices without the director ever having to mount a soapbox
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Inside Out 2
(2024)
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Dan Kois
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Anxiety might not be pleasant, but as Inside Out 2 will remind both teenagers and their parents, that doesn’t make it any less essential a part of growing up.
Posted Jun 14, 2024
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Hit Man
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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For all its gritty genre elements, Hit Man is at heart a cozy hangout movie, a minor but thoroughly enjoyable entry in the Linklater canon.
Posted Jun 08, 2024
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In a Violent Nature
(2024)
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Rich Juzwiak
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Like a swift axe to the skull, In a Violent Nature is blunt and makes no excuses for itself. How refreshing.
Posted Jun 08, 2024
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Atlas
(2024)
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Sam Adams
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J. Lo may be fighting for the very existence of the human race, but there’s nothing at stake between you and the screen.
Posted Jun 07, 2024
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
(2024)
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Dana Stevens
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Furiosa never skimps on the other main features one comes to a Mad Max movie for: deranged production design and thrilling action.
Posted May 20, 2024
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Megalopolis
(2024)
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Sam Adams
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Megalopolis is the product of man who has tried to put everything he knows or thinks into one climactic work. And whether or not it all fits, it’s exhilarating to watch him try.
Posted May 20, 2024
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
(2024)
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Dana Stevens
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Despite its impressive attention to craft—including exquisite motion-capture work by the groundbreaking digital-design studio WETA—Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes never fully establishes its reason for being.
Posted May 10, 2024
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Challengers
(2024)
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Dana Stevens
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Challengers may not be this director’s most psychologically insightful movie—the characters can at times feel like chess-piece contrivances rather than fully rounded individuals—but it’s almost certainly his most entertaining and fastest-paced.
Posted Apr 23, 2024
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Civil War
(2024)
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Sam Adams
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Purposeful though it may be, Garland's squishiness can read only as a failure of nerve. A more successfully political movie wouldn't be so wary of aiming at real targets.
Posted Apr 15, 2024
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The Greatest Hits
(2024)
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Nadira Goffe
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If The Greatest Hits is any indication, I guess they just don’t make time-travel movies like they used to.
Posted Apr 12, 2024
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Civil War
(2024)
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Dana Stevens
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Civil War often leaves the audience feeling trapped in an all-too-realistic waking nightmare, but when it finally lets us go, mercifully short of the two-hour mark, it sends us out of the theater talking.
Posted Apr 09, 2024
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Música
(2024)
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Nadira Goffe
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For all that creativity and technical wizardry, the most impressive thing about Música is that, if you’ve been paying attention to Mancuso’s work, nothing present in the movie is entirely new.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
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Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
(2023)
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Sam Adams
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It captures what it’s like to live in this chaotic and deadening world so well it might be the movie of the year, and last year, and next year too.
Posted Mar 22, 2024
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Love Lies Bleeding
(2024)
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Dana Stevens
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Above all, for reasons that are hard to describe without sending the reader to see the film, which I would emphatically do, Love Lies Bleeding left me asking what Rose Glass will do next.
Posted Mar 08, 2024
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Dune: Part Two
(2024)
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Dana Stevens
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Even those who, like me, came into the theater more or less Dune-indifferent may find themselves wanting another chapter...
Posted Feb 28, 2024
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This Is Me... Now: A Love Story
(2024)
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Nadira Goffe
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It’s an absurd, chaotic, indefinable mess. I loved it.
Posted Feb 16, 2024
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Bob Marley: One Love
(2024)
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Jack Hamilton
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One Love doesn’t know how to begin exploring this artist and his art in any way that even begins to be interesting.
Posted Feb 15, 2024
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Madame Web
(2024)
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Sam Adams
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It’s a travesty, a disaster, a blight on the history of superheroes and cinema itself. I enjoyed the hell out of it.
Posted Feb 14, 2024
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Love Me
(2024)
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Sam Adams
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The plot can be surprisingly predictable at times, but Love Me finds a new way to poke at an age-old question, one that is apparently destined to resonate long after we’re gone.
Posted Jan 26, 2024
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I Saw the TV Glow
(2024)
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Sam Adams
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I Saw the TV Glow is unnerving, unsettling, and engrossing, the kind of movie best watched on the border between waking and sleep.
Posted Jan 19, 2024
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Godzilla Minus One
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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It’s the rare kaiju movie that cares this deeply about the inner lives and motivations of the people scurrying out of the way of the monster’s ginormous thudding feet.
Posted Jan 09, 2024
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The Color Purple
(2023)
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Nadira Goffe
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The Color Purple is still entertaining and deeply heartfelt (I had a face full of tears by the end), with some awards-worthy acting and singing (and, yes, dancing). I just wish it retained a greater sense of gravitas.
Posted Dec 25, 2023
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The Zone of Interest
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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The director’s rigor is as unblinking as the score by Mica Levi is haunting, and Hüller and Friedel fearlessly explore the hollowed-out inner lives of two people who are at once shockingly evil and painfully ordinary.
Posted Dec 13, 2023
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Tótem
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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Avilés takes her time letting the audience get to know, and grow to care for, every odd, flawed, and flailing member of Sol’s extended clan...
Posted Dec 13, 2023
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Theater Camp
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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Achieves the rare trick of creating a fictional work-within-the-work that is supposed to be really good, and actually is.
Posted Dec 13, 2023
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Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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At the center of it all is an affectionate portrait of the Troisgros family, who have been restaurateurs for generations. They pursue their life’s mission with a zeal that’s inspiring and, at times, amusing...
Posted Dec 13, 2023
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Anatomy of a Fall
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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An example of how a movie can succeed in multiple genres at once...
Posted Dec 13, 2023
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Poor Things
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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Though its disparate storylines don’t all cohere, making for a slightly lumpy third act, Poor Things is a kinky delight to watch, a movie about the search for pleasure that serves up plenty of it along the way.
Posted Dec 07, 2023
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RENAISSANCE: A FILM BY BEYONCÉ
(2023)
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Nadira Goffe
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In embracing what it means to be mortal—and, by extension, human and imperfect—Beyoncé found a way, in this Renaissance era of hers, to celebrate life and liberation.
Posted Dec 05, 2023
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The Boy and the Heron
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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It left me intellectually and aesthetically dazzled, and profoundly grateful for this late-life glimpse into the autobiography of one of film’s great living artists.
Posted Dec 04, 2023
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Maestro
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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Cooper’s sophomore film far outshines the common run of contemporary biopics in its artful construction and attention to emotional nuance.
Posted Nov 22, 2023
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Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
(2023)
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Dan Kois
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I don’t know how long the boys can keep tapping the well of their surreal imaginations before they become exhausting. But I do know that The Treasure of Foggy Mountain made me laugh so hard I missed a number of jokes.
Posted Nov 17, 2023
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Napoleon
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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Napoleon’s vision of a violent period in the past... belongs in the tradition of Scott’s crowd-pleasing swords-and-sandals epic of a generation ago. It is with regret that I relate that, this time around, I was not entertained.
Posted Nov 17, 2023
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The Holdovers
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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For me, it stands as a minor if beautifully crafted film in the context of Payne’s entire oeuvre, but a potential classic of the miserable-holiday subgenre.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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Killers of the Flower Moon
(2023)
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Joel Robinson
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A length of three and a half hours is more than justified. Besides, the masterful performances by everyone involved help to keep you locked in.
Posted Oct 24, 2023
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The Pigeon Tunnel
(2023)
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Laura Miller
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[A] cagey, brilliant film...
Posted Oct 20, 2023
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Killers of the Flower Moon
(2023)
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Dana Stevens
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Killers of the Flower Moon is a cathedral of a movie, cavernously huge in ambition and scale, yet oddly intimate in its effect on the viewer.
Posted Oct 12, 2023
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Poison
(2023)
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Sam Adams
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It works the way a good short story does, outlining a situation or state of being and then leaving us to imagine the rest.
Posted Oct 03, 2023
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The Rat Catcher
(2023)
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Sam Adams
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[The] visual presentation and rapid-fire dialogue make [it] instantly recognizable as Anderson's, but [the] tone takes him into territory so unexpected it might be disorienting if his hand were not so sure.
Posted Oct 03, 2023
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The Swan
(2023)
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Sam Adams
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[The] visual presentation and rapid-fire dialogue make [it] instantly recognizable as Anderson’s, but [the] tone takes him into territory so unexpected it might be disorienting if his hand were not so sure.
Posted Oct 03, 2023
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The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
(2023)
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Sam Adams
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Anderson has said it was the story’s nesting-doll structure that drew him to Henry Sugar in the first place... and he realizes its concentric narratives with dazzling fluidity.
Posted Oct 03, 2023
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Expend4bles
(2023)
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Jody Rosen
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If Expend4bles turns out to be a swan song, it’s a fitting one, since it so neatly encapsulates the series’ formula.
Posted Oct 02, 2023
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Dumb Money
(2023)
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Alex Kirshner
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As a retelling, it’s solid. But as an illustration of how unserious and unimpressive the smartest guys in the financial room can be, it hits a bull’s-eye.
Posted Sep 15, 2023
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Y tu mamá también
(2001)
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David Edelstein
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It’s an exhilarating trip.
Posted Sep 09, 2023
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Traffic
(2000)
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David Edelstein
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Traffic has three overlapping narratives, none terribly novel, but the shivery camerawork and odd juxtapositions keep you off-balance.
Posted Sep 06, 2023
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