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4/5
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The Corridors of Power
(2022)
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James Jackson
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... It’s as rigorous and authoritative — and indeed riveting — an examination of America’s response to human-rights atrocities as you could ask for.
Posted Aug 08, 2024
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4/5
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It Ends With Us
(2024)
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Kevin Maher
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Guilty pleasure alert! This is a goodie!
Posted Aug 08, 2024
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1/5
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Borderlands
(2024)
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Kevin Maher
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This film, instead, is lazy bricolage, cobbled together by so-called creatives who appear not to care and by some who should clearly know better.
Posted Aug 08, 2024
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8 Heads in a Duffel Bag
(1997)
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Geoff Brown
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With Joe Pesci squawking and Tom Schulman directing, it is nowhere near as funny as it should be.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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A Merry War
(1997)
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Geoff Brown
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The result, bar the odd moment of muted humour, is the most pointless British film of the year.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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One Night Stand
(1997)
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Geoff Brown
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Figgis, as director, writer and composer, treats the subject with such refinement that the characters come close to seeming genuine human beings.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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Under the Skin
(1997)
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Geoff Brown
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Samantha Morton, all of 20, throws herself wholeheartedly into the complex part.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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The Tango Lesson
(1997)
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Geoff Brown
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You emerge from the cinema moved and exhilarated, with an un-English urge to dance away with the night, a rose between the teeth.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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Alien Resurrection
(1997)
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Geoff Brown
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We experience the usual gore in a brilliant but cold-hearted spectacle. It is frustrating, for somewhere within the big-budget compromises of Alien Resurrection a far better, quirkier, movie is struggling to break free.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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Atomic People
(2024)
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Carol Midgley
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The general tone of this thoughtful film was one of concern for humanity. These people, documenting the past to safeguard the future, cared desperately about a world they will soon depart.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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4/5
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Kensuke's Kingdom
(2023)
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John Bleasdale
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There are moments of real splendour, especially in the evocations of the seascapes and the island.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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4/5
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Dìdi
(2024)
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Ed Potton
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Asian-Americans are becoming more prominent in popular culture and Didi, a semi-autobiographical tale written and directed by the Taiwanese-American film-maker Sean Wang, is insightful on racial self-loathing as well as bigotry.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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4/5
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A Story of Bones
(2022)
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John Bleasdale
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A Story of Bones is of global historical significance, told at a human level that will at once move and outrage you.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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4/5
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The Neverending Story
(1984)
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Ed Potton
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The effects look cardboardy by today’s standards but the puppets and animatronics are great, especially Falkor, the dog-like “luck dragon”.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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3/5
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Harold and the Purple Crayon
(2024)
|
Ed Potton
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The film will probably play best with 7 to 12-year-olds and its wholesome message about the importance of creativity is surely one we can all get behind.
Posted Aug 01, 2024
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4/5
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A Storm Foretold: Roger Stone and Die
(2023)
|
Ben Dowell
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The abiding sense is that this isn’t just a nation sharply split on political lines, but a country divided by blinding, fathomless hatred.
Posted Jul 31, 2024
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Under the Cherry Moon
(1986)
|
David Robinson
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It is fast and featherweight, and the diminutive Prince is funny, cheekily charming and pretty as a picture.
Posted Jul 30, 2024
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Rosa Luxemburg
(1986)
|
David Robinson
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The strength and success of the film is the central portrait: Barbara Sukowa convincingly develops the character.
Posted Jul 30, 2024
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Aliens
(1986)
|
David Robinson
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Another showpiece for the technical mastery of the model-makers and special-effects people of Pinewood. This kind of future fantasy grows ever closer to the past and to fairy-tales.
Posted Jul 30, 2024
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3/5
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NBC's Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony in IMAX
(2024)
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Carol Midgley
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This was a ceremony that showed great imagination but which was partly thwarted by the gamble on staging it outside. If this had all been done indoors it would have had far more impact.
Posted Jul 29, 2024
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4/5
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I Saw the TV Glow
(2024)
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John Bleasdale
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[A] richly entertaining though deeply melancholic work.
Posted Jul 26, 2024
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2/5
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Robin and the Hoods
(2024)
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John Bleasdale
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The cast are game but the story is predictable and the director, Phil Hawkins, never quite manages to convincingly move between the imaginative fantasy of the kids and actual life.
Posted Jul 26, 2024
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4/5
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Chariots of Fire
(1981)
|
Ed Potton
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Never, with the possible exception of Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, has running looked so cinematic.
Posted Jul 26, 2024
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4/5
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Deadpool & Wolverine
(2024)
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Ed Potton
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Ebulliently directed by Shawn Levy, this is a hyperactive cheese dream that brings together two of Marvel’s best characters and a supporting cast who will have nerds frothing at the mouth.
Posted Jul 23, 2024
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4/5
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Shayda
(2023)
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Kevin Maher
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This debut fiction feature from the Australian-Iranian documentary director Noora Niasari proves a worthy vehicle for the incendiary talents of Zar Amir Ebrahimi.
Posted Jul 19, 2024
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4/5
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Thelma
(2024)
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Kevin Maher
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The tone from the debut feature writer and director Josh Margolin is exquisitely well-judged, offsetting deeply felt melancholy with wry humour.
Posted Jul 19, 2024
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4/5
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Twisters
(2024)
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Kevin Maher
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True, there's probably not a single subsequent plot development that's unexpected or especially remarkable. But when the material is handled with such aplomb, and played so effectively by the leads, it hardly matters.
Posted Jul 17, 2024
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Denise Calls Up
(1995)
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Geoff Brown
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So much is funny, and the central conceit so timely and resonant, that this very modern romantic deserves the most kindly attention.
Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Rainbow
(1996)
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Geoff Brown
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Hoskins may not get the film's pacing right, but he knows enough to hire a distinguished photography to deliver the necessary tricks.
Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Twister
(1996)
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Geoff Brown
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Downgrading the players for technology's greater glory is nothing new for executive producer Steven Spielberg, or his co-scenarist Michael Crichton. But the damage is more extensive in Twister.
Posted Jul 16, 2024
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4/5
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Longlegs
(2024)
|
Tom Shone
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From the outside, Oz Perkins’s Longlegs looks like just another serial killer flick, but it’s that rarity: a horror film that gives you a bona fide case of the heeby-jeebies.
Posted Jul 15, 2024
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3/5
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Fly Me to the Moon
(2024)
|
Tom Shone
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Johansson fires ace after ace; Tatum stands there like a tree, watching them sail past... Fly Me To the Moon is not bad, but it’s unlikely to send you into orbit either.
Posted Jul 15, 2024
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When Harry Met Sally...
(1989)
|
David Robinson
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Rob Reiner's direction is feather-light, precisely paced and with fine appreciation of the sharp New Yorkisms of the dialogue.
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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3/5
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Despicable Me 4
(2024)
|
Ed Potton
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Yet it’s saved by the trademark mischief and exuberance of Illumination, the French animators who are as integral to the franchise as Steve Carell’s vaguely Slavic voice acting.
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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1/5
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In a Violent Nature
(2024)
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Kevin Maher
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The hook, this time, is that debut feature director Chris Nash uses some formal arthouse devices to reframe the horror movie antics we’ve repeatedly witnessed...
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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4/5
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The Commandant's Shadow
(2024)
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Kevin Maher
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There is rich and fascinating material here, resonant indeed for all families everywhere, and for the dubious stories they tell about themselves.
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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4/5
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Eno
(2024)
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Kevin Maher
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The structural shenanigans are, it transpires, the least impressive element of a movie that functions best as a 90-minute masterclass in arts, philosophy and self-deprecation from a peerless raconteur.
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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5/5
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Unforgiven
(1992)
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Kevin Maher
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A better modern western has yet to be made.
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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2/5
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Fly Me to the Moon
(2024)
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Kevin Maher
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The deception plot proceeds apace, but there’s nothing at stake, Harrelson’s Berkus is no threat, and the romance between Kelly and Cole is a mixture of fake conflicts and false starts.
Posted Jul 10, 2024
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Brats
(2024)
|
Hugo Rifkind
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What elevates all of this from navel-gazing bitterness is McCarthy’s increasing awareness that, much as he may have wished otherwise, he really was part of a cultural moment.
Posted Jul 05, 2024
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2/5
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MaXXXine
(2024)
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Kevin Maher
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None of it holds together particularly well, and West seems unduly impressed by the vintage Tinseltown milieu, as if aiming, by association only, for some of that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood magic.
Posted Jul 05, 2024
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2/5
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Kill
(2023)
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Kevin Maher
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It’s initially vile, but by its sheer leaden, unthinking, repetition it eventually becomes even worse than that. Boring.
Posted Jul 05, 2024
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5/5
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The Conversation
(1974)
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Kevin Maher
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Coppola makes everything feel strange and alien via jagged cuts and documentary-style framing.
Posted Jul 05, 2024
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3/5
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The Nature of Love
(2023)
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Kevin Maher
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A film that’s somehow sensitively enough directed by Chokri to make this extramarital relationship fizz and crackle beyond the usual smutty clichés.
Posted Jul 05, 2024
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4/5
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The Castle
(2023)
|
James Jackson
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Instead, the pair become more like components of a bigger mood piece, one helped by a beguiling orchestral score and the mansion’s shadowy interiors and misty outdoor vistas — a documentary defined less by eccentricity than a soulful quality.
Posted Jul 03, 2024
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2/5
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Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
(2024)
|
Kevin Maher
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Remember when Martin Scorsese said that streaming platforms were transforming cinema into meaningless commercial content and then everyone pilloried him for it? Behold, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
Posted Jul 03, 2024
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Jaws
(1975)
|
David Robinson
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Even if the special attractions of the subject can be identified, Jaws could hardly have been the hit it is if it weren't into the bargain an exemplary bit of filmcraft and story-telling.
Posted Jul 02, 2024
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3/5
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A Family Affair
(2024)
|
Kevin Maher
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King, enviably sporting the complete range of facial expressions, carries much of the movie’s emotional weight, and even more so when Solomon’s script, in the final third, cleverly exposes Zara’s self-obsession. It could have been so good.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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4/5
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Rose
(2022)
|
Kevin Maher
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Balancing out the bleakness, however, is Oplev’s compassion and his depiction of the tenderness, rather than the prejudice, that Inger’s condition elicits from others.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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5/5
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Network
(1976)
|
Kevin Maher
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Everything about the movie is thrilling and flawless.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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