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4/5
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My Favourite Cake
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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Plans have a way of going awry in this lovely, intimate, tragicomic tale of late-blooming love in the shadow of Iran’s repressive regime. In its gentle way, this is a subversive piece of film-making.
Posted Sep 16, 2024
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2/5
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The Critic
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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Despite reported reshoots and a fresh edit after the film’s coolly received premiere last year, its sour spirit and a cluttered, clumsy third act remain a problem.
Posted Sep 16, 2024
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3/5
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Reawakening
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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It's affecting enough, with both Harris and Stevenson capturing the wrenching, protracted grief of not knowing, but I found myself wishing that the film had maintained a sense of mystery.
Posted Sep 16, 2024
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3/5
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The Queen of My Dreams
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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This peppy first feature by Fawzia Mirza has a boisterous energy and toe-tapping use of music reminiscent of Maryam Keshavarz’s similarly themed, Sundance audience award-winning The Persian Version.
Posted Sep 16, 2024
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3/5
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Rebel Ridge
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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The film runs out of momentum, finding itself ensnared in a needlessly complicated web of intrigue and administrative shenanigans.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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3/5
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Starve Acre
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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Some pleasingly icky special effects add to the general sense of mouldering menace. Where the picture stumbles, however, is in its almost total lack of effective scares.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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4/5
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Apollo 13: Survival
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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Familiarity doesn’t lessen the impact of this excellent documentary by Peter Middleton.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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3/5
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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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Realistically, it was never going to match the instant cult appeal of the original, but it has a lot of fun trying.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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3/5
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Firebrand
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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It’s that rarest of releases: a picture that would benefit immensely from being far more lurid and overblown. It’s no coincidence that the element that works best -- Law’s gloriously monstrous Henry.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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4/5
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Night Courier
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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It's unlikely that you will have seen the city of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, shown with such textured complexity in a film before.
Posted Sep 03, 2024
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2/5
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Close to You
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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It’s clearly a passion project for Page, so why then does his performance feel so lifeless and inert?
Posted Sep 03, 2024
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3/5
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Paradise Is Burning
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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Not everything works in Mika Gustafson’s feature debut, but the performances, in particular that of the magnetic Delbravo, have an unpredictable, wayward energy.
Posted Sep 03, 2024
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4/5
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Sing Sing
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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Colman Domingo is at the peak of his considerable powers in Greg Kwedar’s inspirational, fact-based prison drama Sing Sing.
Posted Sep 03, 2024
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2/5
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Widow Clicquot
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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For all the stirring proto-feminist messaging, this is a curiously uninvolving piece of storytelling.
Posted Aug 26, 2024
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4/5
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Blink Twice
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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The actor-to-director path is fraught with pitfalls, but I am happy to report that Kravitz is very much the real deal. The picture is visually rich and the use of sound gave me chills.
Posted Aug 26, 2024
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3/5
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The Mountain Within Me
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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This is a film that is precision-engineered to hit the commercial sweet spot between extreme-sports mountain-climbing adventure docs such as Free Solo, The Alpinist and Touching the Void and feelgood tales of overcoming adversity. And as such, it works.
Posted Aug 26, 2024
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4/5
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Between the Temples
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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The complexity and the layers of partially healed emotional scars that underpin [Carol Kane's] sunny, goofy performance in Between the Temples make this a career-best contender for the 72-year-old actor.
Posted Aug 26, 2024
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4/5
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Kneecap
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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Rich Peppiatt, making his feature debut after directing one of the band’s videos, brings a manic, irreverent energy to the film, incorporating scrawled animation that looks like toilet-door graffiti brought to life. But the driving force is the band.
Posted Aug 26, 2024
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2/5
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Jackpot!
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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With Paul Feig directing, this should be a brash, exuberantly violent blast of chaotic hilarity. But enthusiastic mugging and gurning from the cast can’t hide a feeble, flailing screenplay that clings to its single idea like a lifebelt.
Posted Aug 19, 2024
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3/5
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Only the River Flows
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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Offbeat flashes of humour punctuate this stylishly enigmatic, Jean-Pierre Melville-inspired crime picture, but the momentum flags a little in a convoluted final act.
Posted Aug 19, 2024
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4/5
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Hollywoodgate
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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[A] fascinating, chilling film.
Posted Aug 19, 2024
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4/5
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Alien: Romulus
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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The taut set pieces are so dynamic, the tension so stickily uncomfortable, the sound design so jarring and full of screaming metal, that you barely notice that the connective tissue between the action scenes strains to hold them together.
Posted Aug 19, 2024
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4/5
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Daughters
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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Co-directed with a supreme assurance that falls just on the right side of slickness by music video director Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, Daughters feels like the fortuitously alchemic combination of two very different but complementary voices.
Posted Aug 19, 2024
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3/5
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It Ends With Us
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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For a film that dips its Manolo-clad toe into the murky waters of domestic abuse, it’s unexpectedly aspirational, almost frothy in tone.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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2/5
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The Instigators
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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It should be pulpy fun powered by car chases and zippy repartee, but The Instigators is a dispiriting and predictable drag of a movie.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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5/5
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A Storm Foretold: Roger Stone and Die
(2023)
|
Barbara Ellen
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At one point, Guldbrandsen is shown on CCTV suffering a cardiac arrest in the gym, seemingly induced by the myriad pressures of making the documentary. The result of his sacrifice is a jaw-drop of a watch.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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4/5
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Tuesday
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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There’s a real elegance and economy to Pusić’s direction, in the first half at least... Her tight grip on this fatalistic fairytale loosens a little as the film unfolds, but there’s no question that this is a remarkable and assured first feature.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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1/5
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Borderlands
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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Video game movie adaptations have spewed out some serious clunkers over the years. But even by the lamentable standards of the genre, Eli Roth’s reshoot-plagued Borderlands is abysmal.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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Def Jam's How to Be a Player
(1997)
|
Philip French
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An inept sexist comedy.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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8 Heads in a Duffel Bag
(1997)
|
Philip French
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It's about as funny as being a guest at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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The Myth of Fingerprints
(1997)
|
Philip French
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The actors, however, give substance to rather nebulous characters.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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One Night Stand
(1997)
|
Philip French
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Some dramatic cracks are papered over with music (by Figgis himself), though much is casually unconvincing.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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A Merry War
(1997)
|
Philip French
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Everything that makes this imperfect book worth reading has been lost in turning it into a light period comedy.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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The Tango Lesson
(1997)
|
Philip French
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This is a monumentally humourless, self-regarding picture.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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Under the Skin
(1997)
|
Philip French
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Avoiding sentimentality and glibness, this is a fine, spare piece of film-making.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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Alien Resurrection
(1997)
|
Philip French
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This brilliantly designed movie uses revulsion and disgust as its chief weapons.
Posted Aug 06, 2024
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Lovers
(1991)
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Philip French
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Lovers has a powerful sense of time and place. The sexual scenes are less explicit than is currently fashionable but much more erotic.
Posted Aug 05, 2024
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Waterland
(1992)
|
Philip French
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As adapted by Peter Prince and directed by American Stephen Gyllenhaal, the film is a frequent embarrassment.
Posted Aug 05, 2024
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Alien 3
(1992)
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Philip French
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Despite the injection of new ideas, the known characteristics of this Alien can only lead to the repetition of familiar shocks. But Weaver brings her customary authority to Ripley and the technical side of the movie is well up to standard.
Posted Aug 05, 2024
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2/5
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Harold and the Purple Crayon
(2024)
|
Ellen E Jones
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Perhaps the film is more usefully read as a caution against wasteful consumerism in the age of Amazon deliveries. When you can summon an item as soon as think of it, what value does anything have?
Posted Aug 05, 2024
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3/5
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A Place Called Silence
(2024)
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Ellen E Jones
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There are tonally jarring comic caricatures... These, plus an abundance of suspenseful set pieces and proper plot twists, keep us adequately entertained. Unless, of course, you’ve already seen the 2022 original.
Posted Aug 05, 2024
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4/5
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Alma's Rainbow
(1994)
|
Ellen E Jones
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Alma’s Rainbow has matured into a worthwhile watch, with appropriately colourful costumes, a curvy jazz score and plenty of hard-won womanly wisdom to impart.
Posted Aug 05, 2024
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4/5
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Atomic People
(2024)
|
Barbara Ellen
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While Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer sought to capture the crushing horror of causing mass death, Atomic People gives voice to those at the sharp end.
Posted Aug 05, 2024
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4/5
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Dìdi
(2024)
|
Ellen E Jones
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The boy does not become a man, or an artist, overnight. Nor even over the course of one transformative and cinematic summer.
Posted Aug 05, 2024
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3/5
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Kensuke's Kingdom
(2023)
|
Ellen E Jones
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This is all nobly intended, with impeccable credentials and expertly crafted, but the fear remains that... Kensuke’s Kingdom will fall squarely into the category of “Films Parents Think Their Kids Ought to Enjoy”.
Posted Aug 05, 2024
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4/5
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I Saw the TV Glow
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
|
With its shapeshifting disquiet, I Saw the TV Glow is too languidly weird, too unmoored from genre conventions to be neatly categorised. But there’s not a frame in Jane Schoenbrun’s suffocating second feature that isn’t drenched in dread and unease.
Posted Jul 29, 2024
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4/5
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About Dry Grasses
(2023)
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Wendy Ide
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Tiptoes around the edge of being suffocatingly verbose, and there are scenes that could stand a tighter edit. Still, the meaty, novelistic writing and exceptional quality of the performances make for a rich and engrossing viewing experience.
Posted Jul 29, 2024
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3/5
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Deadpool & Wolverine
(2024)
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Wendy Ide
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A film can be obnoxious and simultaneously very funny, and Deadpool & Wolverine is frequently hilarious. But it’s also slapdash, repetitive and shoddy looking, with an overreliance on meme-derived gags and achingly meta comic fan in-jokes.
Posted Jul 29, 2024
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Target
(1985)
|
Philip French
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Target might be a lightweight assignment, but Penn works through its dramatic dilemmas with a proper moral seriousness.
Posted Jul 25, 2024
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Rosa Luxemburg
(1986)
|
Philip French
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Its defects, however, are outweighed by a performance of intelligence and depth by Barbara Sukowa in the title role.
Posted Jul 24, 2024
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