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A Family Affair
Reviews A Family Affair As mundane as its title, with characters whose…
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Find Me Falling
Reviews Find Me Falling When many of us think of vacationing on…
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Prom Dates
Reviews Prom Dates “Prom Dates,” about a couple of teenage best-bud girls…
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Robot Dreams
Reviews Robot Dreams Pablo Berger’s “Robot Dreams” is a lovely fable about…
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Suspense
The Ring
Reviews The Ring Rarely has a more serious effort produced a less serious result than in “The Ring,” the kind of dread dark horror film where you better hope nobody in the audience snickers, because the film teeters right on the edge of the ridiculous. Enormous craft has been put into the movie, which looks just great, but the story goes beyond contrivance into the dizzy realms of the absurd. And although there is no way for everything to be explained (and many events lack any possible explanation), the movie’s ending explains and explains and explains, until finally you’d rather…
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Documentary
Madu
Reviews Madu It’s recess at a small school in Nigeria and the boys are kicking around an empty water bottle in an improvised game of soccer. Except for one. Anthony Madu on the far side of the playground, is performing a private ballet. One of his classmates asks, “Why is he dancing like a girl?” Anthony is dancing because that is who he is. When he is not dancing, his body is shy, uncertain. When he dances, he is sure, elegant, graceful. “Madu” is a documentary about what happened when a brief 2020 video of Anthony dancing barefoot in the…
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Suspense
The Truth About Charlie
Reviews The Truth About Charlie Regina Lambert has been married for three months. She returns to Paris to find her apartment vandalized and her husband missing. A police official produces her husband’s passport–and another, and another. He had many looks and many identities, and is missing in all of them. And now she seems surrounded by unsavory people with a dangerous interest in finding his $6 million. They say she knows where it is. Thank goodness for good, kind Joshua Peters, who turns up protectively whenever he’s needed. This story, right down to the names, will be familiar to lovers…
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Documentary
On the Adamant
Reviews On the Adamant At first glance, the barge docked on the Seine in Paris near the foot of the Charles de Gaulle bridge seems to be ordinary enough. In fact, the ship, the Adamant, has, since 2010, been the location for a bold attempt by French medical practitioners to provide a new and more emphatic method of caring for those suffering from mental illness that stresses the humanity of the patients involved while avoiding the kind of stigmatization that too often went along with such attempts in the past. This is the focus of “On the Adamant,” a quietly…
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Horror
You Can’t Stay Here
Reviews You Can’t Stay Here Todd Verow’s thriller “You Can’t Stay Here” takes viewers into the heart of the Ramble, Central Park’s hook-up hot spot immortalized in William Friedkin’s “Cruising,” for a strange mystery loosely inspired by real events. It’s 1993, and the AIDS crisis is still at its deadliest. Despite the risk and the constant nuisance of police harassment, gay men continue to find community and each other in the sun-strewn wooded haven hidden in plain sight. Rick (Guillermo Díaz), a budding photographer, finds peace, affection, and subjects to photograph in the Ramble, including kind souls like Hale (Becca…
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Documentary
Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces
Reviews Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces There’s nothing worse than watching a bio-doc about a revolutionary, unique, creative voice that reduces the life story of its subject to the basic beats, using standard techniques instead of embracing that which made this person’s story worth telling in the first place. Director Morgan Neville (“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) likely struggled with this potential trap when approaching the life of Steve Martin, a man who has defied easy categorization his entire life. From his breakthrough days on the comedy stage, when he somehow merged an old-fashioned sense of humor with…
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Action
Role Play
Reviews Role Play Emma (Kaley Cuoco) lives a double life. She has a loving husband, Dave (David Oyelowo), and two beautiful children, but she also moonlights as a secret assassin. Her frequent “business trips” lead to emotional and physical distance from her family, forgotten anniversaries, and desperate attempts to reconnect. When Emma and Dave decide to spice up their life, meeting at a hotel as supposed strangers for a sexy role play opportunity, an accidental clash of Emma’s personal and private life sends them both into a tailspin. As Dave is at home, forced to reckon with this onslaught of…
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Suspense
The Recruit
Reviews The Recruit ‘The Recruit” reveals that the training process of the Central Intelligence Agency is like a fraternity initiation, but more dangerous. At one point would-be agents are given a time limit to walk into a singles bar and report back to the parking lot with a partner willing to have sex with them. Uh, huh. As for the Company’s years of embarrassments and enemy spies within the ranks? “We reveal our failures but not our successes,” the senior instructor tells the new recruits. Quick, can you think of any event in recent world history that bears the stamp…
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Horror
Destroy All Neighbors
Reviews Destroy All Neighbors A few names stand out during the opening credits for “Destroy All Neighbors,” a neurotic horror-comedy about annoying neighbors and a self-described “serial manslaughterer.” There’s Rich Zim, who animated the trippy opening credits sequence, which sends viewers barreling down a long, ever-mutating tunnel of ear wax, eyeballs, microchips, trees, etc. Then there’s special make-up effects supervisor Gabriel Bartalos, whose credits include collaborations with cult-certified artists ranging from Matthew Barney to Frank Henenlotter. There are also the headlining stars, Jonah Ray Rodrigues (co-host of “Mystery Science Theater 3000”) and Alex Winter (co-director of “Freaked”), who also co-produced…
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Documentary
The Synanon Fix
Reviews The Synanon Fix Rory Kennedy is a phenomenal interviewer. We’ve seen this before in her other projects like the Oscar-nominated “Last Days in Vietnam,” and it’s the main strength of her new project, HBO’s 4-part “The Synanon Fix.” Her skill set in making people feel comfortable allows former members of the self-help group that turned into a cult to speak so candidly about their time in the organization, to the point that some admit things on-camera that they surely never have before. These men and women are remarkably open about not just what Synanon meant to their recovery but how…
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Action
Fighter
Reviews Fighter Politics simultaneously are and aren’t the thing in “Fighter,” a Bollywood military drama that takes heavy inspiration from “Top Gun: Maverick.” Released in time for India’s Republic Day, “Fighter” explicitly recalls both the 2019 Pulwama attack that, in real life, left 40 Indian military police dead in Kashmir, as well as the successive Balakot air strike that, depending on who you believe, either killed no one or a bunch of anti-Indian extremists. Using these real-life events as the pretext for a saber-rattling crowd-pleaser isn’t surprising given the rise of nationalist sentiments both in Hindi-language pop cinema and Modi-era…
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Suspense
Phone Booth
Reviews Phone Booth “Phone Booth” is a religious fable, a show biz fable, or both. It involves a fast-talking, two-timing broadway press agent who is using the last phone booth in Manhattan (at 53rd and 8th) when he’s pinned down by a sniper. The shooter seems to represent either God, demanding a confession of sins, or the filmmakers, having their revenge on publicists. The man in the cross hairs is Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell), who we’ve already seen striding the streets, lying into his cell phone, berating his hapless gofer. Why does he now use a pay phone instead of…
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Horror
Founders Day
Reviews Founders Day Advertising “Founder Days” as a “bold political slasher” gives too much credit to the movie itself, which follows a post-“Scream” killing spree that precedes a small town’s mayoral election. The movie’s sense of politics boils down to a trite post-Wes-Craven moral relativity, where the incumbent mayor and her obnoxious opponent both sloganeer and campaign in ways that make them seem inauthentic and performative. The rest of the movie thankfully focuses on hormonal teen protagonists, whose dialogue could admittedly be more polished and whose deaths could definitely be grislier. A couple of pedal-to-the-floor melodramatic twists suggest that “Founders…
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Documentary
Girls State
Reviews Girls State One girl was asked about a significant Supreme Court case and picked “the one with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.” Someone thought it was a good idea to have the opening night icebreaker activities include a bracelet station and cupcake decorating. And yet, the worst political judgment in “Girls State,” the documentary follow-up to the award-winning “Boys State,” is the decision of the Governor of Missouri to appear at the ceremonial swearing-in for the high school boys’ gathering, ignoring the girls’ meeting at the same time and in the same location. It is not the only disparity between…
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Action
Argylle
Reviews Argylle “Argylle,” the stumbling, overcooked action flick from director Matthew Vaughn, begins with a kind of joke. Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill) infiltrates a Greek-set club where he encounters a blonde LaGrange (Dua Lipa), bedecked in a glittering gold dress. They engage in a sultry dance before she escapes under a hail of bullets fired by a gaggle of baddies. With the help of his team—a tech guru (Ariana DeBose) and sidekick (John Cena)—he escapes, chasing LaGrange down narrow streets in a set piece ripped from James Bond. When he finally catches up with her, Argylle and LaGrange exchange banal…
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Drama
Ride
Reviews Ride In 1991, country superstar Garth Brooks crooned, “Well, it’s bulls and blood/It’s the dust and mud/It’s the roar of a Sunday crowd/It’s the white in the knuckles/The gold in the buckle/He’ll win the next go-’round.” The lyrics, about the ups and downs of a man who dedicates everything to the rodeo lifestyle, rattled around in my head as I watched the opening sequence of writer-director-star Jake Allyn’s feature film debut “Ride.” As we follow a beat-up old cowboy walking through the bowels of a stadium and out towards the rodeo ground, it is as if the song had…
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Documentary
Kim’s Video
Reviews Kim’s Video “Kim’s Video” reaches so hard for quirky profundity that it falls on its face. It’s a real shame because there’s an interesting story buried in this frustrating film. From the ‘80s to when it closed in the ‘00s, Kim’s Video was a vital force for the love of independent cinema. It curated a culture that valued art above everything else, including whether or not some of the VHS tapes they were renting were 100% legal. Personally, my working at video stores in the ‘80s and ‘90s cultivated my love for the form, and I regret the fact…
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Action
The Tiger’s Apprentice
Reviews The Tiger’s Apprentice At first glance, the existence of “The Tiger’s Apprentice” would seem to be a grand advance for the cause of Asian representation in animated cinema based on the casting alone—giving voice to the characters is a Who’s Who of celebrated Asian actors that includes Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding, Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, Bowen Yang and Greta Lee. Based on the resulting film, it seems as if the filmmakers spent so much time and energy recruiting the undeniably impressive cast that they had little left to invest in the film itself. The end result is a movie…
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Suspense
Identity
Reviews Identity It is a dark and stormy night. A violent thunderstorm howls down on a lonely Nevada road. A family of three is stopped by a blowout. While the father tries to change the tire, his wife is struck by a passing limousine. Despite the protests of the limo’s passenger, a spoiled movie star, the driver takes them all to a nearby motel. The roads are washed out in both directions. The phone lines are down. Others seek shelter in the motel, which is run by a weirdo clerk. Altogether, there are 10 guests. One by one, they die.…
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Horror
Sunrise
Reviews Sunrise “You know what he feeds on? Fear.” Generic dialogue and lack of character depth kills the sometimes promising “Sunrise,” which works best when it has a grit that reminds one of the best vampire flicks of all time, “Near Dark,” but that doesn’t happen nearly enough. Once again, we’re in a dark corner of the world, a place where hate is allowed to grow, and not all of the monsters are supernatural. The best elements of “Sunrise” play with that latter idea, arguing that racism and violence are more terrifying than bloodsuckers, but the film too often feels like…
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Drama
Tiger Stripes
Reviews Tiger Stripes In Amanda Nell Eu’s coming-of-age tale, “Tiger Stripes,” a young girl in Malaysia undergoes the mortifying experience of puberty, but with a twist. Not only is she trying her parents’ and teachers’ patience, showing off her new bra strap to classmates at her all-girls school, and getting her period, but she’s also developing an inexplicable rash, her nails and hair are falling off, her eyes glow red in the dark, and she’s repressing new uncontrollable urges. Growing up is hell, and it doesn’t get any easier when magical realism enters the frame. Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) is a…
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Documentary
It’s Only Life After All
Reviews It’s Only Life After All There’s a lot of ground to cover in “It’s Only Life After All,” a documentary about the Indigo Girls. The duo (Amy Ray and Emily Saliers) have been performing together, after all, for 40 years. The phenomenon of the Indigo Girls is well worth exploring, but director Alexandria Bombach gets bogged down in the weeds, relying so heavily on Ray’s personal collection of archival footage that she misses the opportunity to dig into the deeper meaning of their career, cultural context and impact. There are interviews with audience members who often speak through tears…
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Action
Madame Web
Reviews Madame Web “Madame Web” is not the unmitigated disaster that its clunky trailer or its calendar spot in February would suggest. It’s a low-stakes superhero origin story with a thoroughly amusing Dakota Johnson performance at its center. But the feature debut from longtime television director S.J. Clarkson gets visually chaotic within its (literally) explosive conclusion, and much of the dialogue along the way consists of leaden exposition. Sometimes that can be used to comic effect, as Johnson’s Cassie Webb must repeatedly explain to people the bizarre things that are happening to her, her exasperation growing each time. But often the information dumps in the script credited to Clarkson & Claire Parker…
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Suspense
The Dancer Upstairs
Reviews The Dancer Upstairs John Malkovich’s “The Dancer Upstairs” was filmed before 9/11, and is based on a novel published in 1997, but has an eerie timeliness in its treatment of a terrorist movement that works as much through fear as though violence. Filmed in Ecuador, it stars Javier Bardem as Augustin, an inward, troubled man who left the practice of law to join the police force because he wanted to be one step closer to justice. Now he has been assigned to track down a shadowy terrorist named Ezequiel, who is everywhere, and nowhere, and strikes at random to…
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Horror
The Seeding
Reviews The Seeding “The Seeding,” a bleak horror movie about a hiker who gets trapped in the desert, starts by making you flinch. We see extreme close-ups of a toddler’s bloody face as it chows down on a human finger. The kid snacks on the digit for a moment, then the camera suddenly pulls back to show him stumbling around the desert. Shot in Utah, “The Seeding” benefits greatly from its evocative location photography, credited to director of photography Robert Leitzell. The movie’s eerie ambience also barely compensates for its creators’ otherwise wispy approximation of psychosexual dread, which is often…
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Drama
Bodkin
Reviews Bodkin Netflix’s new comedic thriller “Bodkin” opens with the show’s protagonist, Gilbert Power (Will Forte), stating, “When I started this podcast, I didn’t expect to solve anything. I didn’t expect it to change my life.” It sets up the characters’ preoccupations well, and also exposes the main problem with the genre their fictional series is embedded in. The series follows American true crime podcast host Gilbert and his researcher Emmy (Robyn Cara), who team up with journalist Dove (Siobhán Cullen) to uncover the mysterious disappearances that plagued the Irish town of Bodkin decades prior. As these amateur detectives continue…
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Documentary
Food, Inc. 2
Reviews Food, Inc. 2 “My relationship with food is complicated …very complicated. Because I have Type 1 diabetes,” says Larissa Zimberoff, author of the investigative book Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change the Way We Eat and one of the many interview subjects in the documentary “Food, Inc. 2” a sequel to, you guessed it, 2008’s “Food, Inc.” “I think most of us love food, but we don’t have to think about it every day, every hour,” Zimberoff continues. I don’t want to make light of her condition, but I sometimes actually ask my wife “What are you thinking…
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Action
Land of Bad
Reviews Land of Bad There are two heroes in the frustrating military actioner “Land of Bad,” and one of them’s more convincing than the other. During a hostage extraction mission gone bad, both heroes fight the kind of terrorists who behead a hostage in an establishing scene and then later philosophize about the real difference between us and them (it’s a doozy). “Land of Bad” is most compelling when it sticks to hero #1, the capable but inexperienced Air Force Sergeant J.J. “Playboy” Kinney (Liam Hemsworth). Hemsworth’s a believable man of action, thanks in no small part to strong action…
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Comedy
Art College 1994
Reviews Art College 1994 It’s weirdly funny to see a year mentioned in the title of “Art College 1994,” an animated Chinese college dorm rom-com about young people and their greatest loves, themselves. You could easily imagine this feature-length cartoon taking place in another time or place without losing much of either its specificity or universality. Swap out a Nirvana poster or a multi-tiered tape-deck stereo, and you’ll still have an unsentimental and quietly unsparing portrait of idealistic undergrads at a pivotal moment when they start to realize how small they are in the world that awaits them after graduation. Director/co-writer…
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Action
Red Right Hand
Reviews Red Right Hand “If you’re gonna survive in these hills, you’ll have to get used to a little blood,” purrs Big Cat (Andie MacDowell), an Appalachian drug kingpin just before she has her goons feed a Sheriff’s deputy to her guard dogs. That’s the dime store pulp novel vibe of “Red Right Hand,” from first-time screenwriter Jonathan Easley and directors Ian and Eshom Nelms, exploring similar themes as their 2017 film “Small Town Crime”. The Kentucky-set crime thriller stars Orlando Bloom as Cash, an ex-junkie whose burned red hand was the price he paid to leave Big Cat’s gang.…
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