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4/5
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The Vourdalak
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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... Delightfully skewed. The movie puts the dead in deadpan.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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4/5
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The Goldman Case
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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It makes for pulsing cinema.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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4/5
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His Three Daughters
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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... A film about death in a poky apartment that turns out to brim with light and life.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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3/5
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The Substance
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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A film where nothing is not spelt out in letters big enough to see from space ends up numbingly repetitive.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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Speak No Evil
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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A dark comedy of middle-class manners is given oomph by McAvoy’s portrait of a certain type of big English personality. But we also get a spiky fable about parents and parenting, which leads in turn to flat-out scares.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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5/5
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My Favourite Cake
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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A lovely and bittersweet comedy of moments seized in the autumn of life.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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4/5
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The Critic
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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Put bluntly, [McKellen] is a vicious bastard — but irresistible fun.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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Friendship
(2024)
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Nicolas Rapold
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Robinson’s foot-in-mouth persona is presented with perfect comic timing and written with inventive absurdism, but this is also a satirical portrait of suburban humiliations and swaggering beta males that surpasses many po-faced dramas on that subject.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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Relay
(2024)
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Nicolas Rapold
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Director David Mackenzie brilliantly turns the streets and apartments of New York into a workaday battleground...
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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Heretic
(2024)
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Nicolas Rapold
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Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who also co-wrote A Quiet Place, preserve a riddling sense of dark mysteries rather than solely relying on gore.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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4/5
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Lee
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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Lee, starring Kate Winslet, is the biopic of Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, the singular woman who took indelible pictures of the Second World War... The result tells something like the truth. It makes for a far better film.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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On Swift Horses
(2024)
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Nicolas Rapold
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The handsome stars and tony production values of On Swift Horses are put in the service of something that at times can feel even rarer — ordinary emotional truths.
Posted Sep 09, 2024
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Conclave
(2024)
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Nicolas Rapold
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The genuinely unpredictable drama unfolds amid the monumental architecture and ethereal murals of the Vatican, and Berger likes to make us privy to arcane details of the conclave, such as the way ballots are handled.
Posted Sep 09, 2024
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3/5
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Rob Peace
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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The movie takes shape as an uplifting multiplex entertainment.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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3/5
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Apollo 13: Survival
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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Not just a documentary, it is a juddering collage of archive footage, some never seen before, subtly laced with artful reconstructions. Life and death hang in the balance amid vintage buzz and crackle.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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3/5
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Firebrand
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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Catherine is an ethical Machiavel, wrangling the king to noble ends. But the movie is vague about what those are, and oddly brisk about her groundbreaking role as a published woman writer.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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2/5
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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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In Burton’s heyday, the madcap pace was a blast. Now the execution is at once chaotic and eager to please, the movie spinning you in place until you get dizzy while demanding to know if you’re having fun yet.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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3/5
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Joker: Folie à Deux
(2024)
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Raphael Abraham
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Joker still has a trick up its sleeve — even a serious subtext. The best moment comes late on in an incendiary scene...
Posted Sep 04, 2024
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3/5
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The Room Next Door
(2024)
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Raphael Abraham
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The film gets better as it goes along. Moore in particular brings a welcome warmth to the screen as the empathetic Ingrid, bolstered by the gentle presence of John Turturro...
Posted Sep 03, 2024
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5/5
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The Brutalist
(2024)
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Raphael Abraham
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It is the boldest and best film so far at this year’s Venice Film Festival: a life writ large on the screen that deserves such maximalist treatment.
Posted Sep 03, 2024
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4/5
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Babygirl
(2024)
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Raphael Abraham
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Many of us wondered whether the erotic thriller was even still viable in the moral minefield of 2024. Babygirl proves that the form may have matured, but it still has some moves.
Posted Sep 03, 2024
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4/5
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Queer
(2024)
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Raphael Abraham
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This complex churn of emotions demands much from Craig, and he proves equal to the task. It is a pleasure to see him so loosey-goosey after his tightly controlled 15-year turn as 007 and he gives possibly his finest performance to date.
Posted Sep 03, 2024
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3/5
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Maria
(2024)
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Raphael Abraham
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Overall, there is too much tell, not enough show in this picture of a caged songbird.
Posted Aug 30, 2024
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4/4
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Sing Sing
(2023)
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Stephanie Bunbury
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Mixing real actors and amateurs can be messy, but thanks to a script by Kwedar and Clint Bentley that plays to everyone’s strengths, it works seamlessly here.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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3/5
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Touch
(2024)
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Stephanie Bunbury
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An old-school weepie smothered in a syrupy string score, Touch is an unexpected offering from Icelandic action director Kormákur, who has made his name pitting humans against nature: the Himalayas in Everest, the sea in Adrift, a rogue lion in Beast.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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4/5
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Paradise Is Burning
(2023)
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Jonathan Romney
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Paradise Is Burning exudes joy, but also a sense of imminent collapse — and decidedly no cuteness.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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4/5
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The Count of Monte-Cristo
(2024)
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Stephanie Bunbury
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Nothing here is remotely believable, which is the pleasure of it. Sit back and abandon yourself to the full weight of Dumas’s 18 volumes of derring-do, related not perfectly but with an infectious energy.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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5/5
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Black Dog
(2024)
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Jonathan Romney
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Black Dog registers as an existential fable about isolation, redemption, the possibility of making connections against the odds. It is also a crime thriller and a dazzling piece of landscape cinema.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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4/5
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Between the Temples
(2024)
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Jonathan Romney
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Schwartzman is very affecting as a perplexed, tragicomic galoot and Kane is a marvel.
Posted Aug 22, 2024
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3/5
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Cuckoo
(2024)
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Jonathan Romney
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Cuckoo is also of course the aptest name for an entertainment that, while it doesn’t entirely gel, not only embraces its wayward delirium but lovingly hugs it within an inch of its life.
Posted Aug 22, 2024
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2/5
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Widow Clicquot
(2023)
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Jonathan Romney
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Bryce Dessner, from rock band The National, also contributes an austere score mixing spare strings and a convent-like choir. Overall, though, Widow Clicquot is distinctly lacking in verve.
Posted Aug 22, 2024
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Blink Twice
(2024)
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Stephanie Bunbury
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Kravitz and co-writer ET Feigenbaum are more interested in landing laughs than barbs about evil billionaires; as the film becomes bloodier, it also gets funnier.
Posted Aug 22, 2024
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3/5
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Faye
(2024)
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Dan Einav
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[Faye] doesn’t shirk accountability or invalidate the experiences of co-stars who say they feared her, but invites a reappraisal of the sexist notion that she was a belligerent prima donna.
Posted Aug 22, 2024
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4/5
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Only the River Flows
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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Fittingly, as pure cinema, Only The River Flows is a knockout: eerie and dreamlike. An overture of kids at play is a marvel. Another scene is a dead ringer for gaudy maestro Brian De Palma. And, oh: it never stops raining.
Posted Aug 15, 2024
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4/5
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Hollywoodgate
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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What goes unseen? Ordinary Afghans. But then, the film’s sharpest insight is tied up with what is missing from the picture: none of the Taliban want Nash’at to record the actual people they govern.
Posted Aug 15, 2024
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3/5
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Jackpot!
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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A different movie would turn that high concept into dark social comment. Director Paul Feig instead whips up a dayglo melee of axe battles, absurdist pop culture references and countless blows to many testicles.
Posted Aug 15, 2024
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Jaws 2
(1978)
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Nigel Andrews
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In Jaws 2 the shark sits up and begs to have its unreality noticed. With its lifeless eyes and autopilot movements, it looks as if it would be more at home patrolling your bath-tub.
Posted Aug 14, 2024
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2/5
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Alien: Romulus
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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Let the callbacks and homages begin — and then never end.
Posted Aug 14, 2024
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3/5
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The Instigators
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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Liman, Affleck and Damon move with confidence through the blunders and bad luck, settling into a relaxed groove of comic bickering.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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3/5
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Tuesday
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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The film is fantastical, but the ache at its heart is real, and stays with you.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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3/5
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Radical
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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Christopher Zalla is never other than smart and sensitive, while drawing fine performances from his young cast — a sweet echo of this model relationship between teacher and student.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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2/5
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Borderlands
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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Has Roth botched an attempt to make a multiplex hit from an edgy nugget of intellectual property? Almost certainly yes. But there are faint, stubborn signs of something more interesting: Blanchett’s charisma unkillable, an occasional lairy oomph.
Posted Aug 08, 2024
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3/5
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Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes
(2024)
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Fiona Sturges
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The Lost Tapes paints a vivid and unsettling picture of life in the spotlight, but it’s by no means the whole story.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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4/5
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A Story of Bones
(2022)
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Danny Leigh
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The fate of those remains becomes an absorbing story in itself, as well as being a microcosm of the painful wider debate about the unresolved legacy of the Atlantic slave trade.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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3/5
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Kensuke's Kingdom
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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The script simplifies Morpurgo’s novel too much to give anyone over eight much to chew on. Still, an essential sweetness shines through — and there’s even a faint late echo of Oppenheimer, for any adult who lasts the journey.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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4/5
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Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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Lucy Walker has form for telling enlightening stories at extreme heights... Here again, compelling raw material is nimbly shaped. Walker’s lens is wide enough for nuance.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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3/5
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Dìdi
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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The highest drama unfolds in the evolving shorthand of online conversation, for which the film has a very sharp eye.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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4/5
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I Saw the TV Glow
(2024)
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Danny Leigh
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Many moments unnerve, and a few may even alienate, but the sum is grandly and potently itself.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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4/5
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About Dry Grasses
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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Cinephiles will rejoice at the arrival of an art-house event movie, and the return of Ceylan’s painterly eye and stark philosophy. His grip can be hypnotic.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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4/5
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The Echo
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
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These kids look after younger siblings and elderly relatives, though amid the chores they seem entirely at ease before the camera, a tribute to their trust in Huezo. Made without voiceover, her film feels like the purest naturalism, but it has a twist.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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