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1/4
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Here
(2024)
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Rex Reed
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'Here' is a soulless, meandering bore, proving that nostalgia and tech tricks can’t save a story with nowhere to go.
Posted Nov 08, 2024
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3.5/4
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Juror #2
(2024)
|
Rex Reed
|
Nicholas Hoult shines in a career-defining role, while Eastwood’s direction delivers relentless tension and moral complexity in a film that could mark a spectacular swan song.
Posted Nov 04, 2024
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4/4
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A Real Pain
(2024)
|
Oliver Jones
|
As a director, Eisenberg holds a preternatural understanding of when to exhale when it all gets to be too much, whether it’s Benji’s antics, David’s brittleness or the enormity of the Holocaust.
Posted Oct 30, 2024
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1/4
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Venom: The Last Dance
(2024)
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Dylan Roth
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This sort-of concluding chapter to the Venom trilogy skates by on Tom Hardy's charm, with things simply happening, one after another, generating zero suspense.
Posted Oct 25, 2024
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3/4
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Conclave
(2024)
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Oliver Jones
|
Ralph Fiennes is mesmerizing as a cardinal leading the process of choosing a new pope—which plays out like an Agatha Christie locked-room mystery.
Posted Oct 23, 2024
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3.5/4
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Goodrich
(2024)
|
Rex Reed
|
Keaton’s nuanced performance in this smart, tender comedy proves that Hollywood still has room for complex, emotionally rich leading men.
Posted Oct 21, 2024
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3/4
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Joy
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
It’s not a flashy movie, and the vintage aesthetic sometimes feels unnecessarily dour, but it makes for good storytelling that embraces both our past and present concerns at once.
Posted Oct 21, 2024
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3.5/4
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Anora
(2024)
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Dylan Roth
|
Like Mikey Madison’s title character, Anora is pretty, messy, witty, wild, and highly competent, one of the funniest, saddest, and best films of the year.
Posted Oct 18, 2024
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2/4
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Smile 2
(2024)
|
Dylan Roth
|
For fans of the first film, it’s more of the same, and for any casual horror viewers who are up for a funhouse thrill this October, it’ll do the trick.
Posted Oct 16, 2024
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1.5/4
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Lonely Planet
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
Dern does her best with the script she’s given, but she and Liam Hemsworth have no chemistry.
Posted Oct 12, 2024
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2.5/4
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The Apprentice
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
Donald Trump has been such inescapable figure in American culture that the question is what could a serious movie about him actually have to say at this point? As it turns out, the answer is somewhere in between “a lot” and “nothing new.”
Posted Oct 12, 2024
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2.5/4
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We Live in Time
(2024)
|
Oliver Jones
|
Is Crowley’s soft scramble of a romantic drama—the Brooklyn director’s attempt to escape movie jail after The Goldfinch’s box office and critical drubbing—equally successful? Yes, but only in individual bites, not as a whole meal.
Posted Oct 11, 2024
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4/4
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Blitz
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
McQueen—a director who understands we can only look forward by looking back—gives us a new lens through which to examine WWII in this masterful film.
Posted Oct 09, 2024
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2.5/4
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Saturday Night
(2024)
|
Oliver Jones
|
A game and well-chosen gang of actors must rescue moments of truth from a cheesy script in this nostalgia drenched look at the first days of SNL.
Posted Oct 08, 2024
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1/4
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Joker: Folie à Deux
(2024)
|
Dylan Roth
|
Joker: Folie à Deux is a product of wild, aimless ambition, the sort of mad swing that would be laudable if it weren’t so absolutely awful. It falls flat as a musical, as a courtroom drama, as a romance and as a character piece.
Posted Oct 04, 2024
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2/4
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Hold Your Breath
(2024)
|
Oliver Jones
|
Sarah Paulson shines in this horror thriller set in 1930s Oklahoma. But the movie's compendium of tired horror tropes does not.
Posted Oct 02, 2024
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4/4
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Lee
(2023)
|
Rex Reed
|
Enough cannot be said about the film or Kate Winslet—irritating, admirable, challenging, sometimes unlikeable, always heroic—as she elevates the complex personality conflicts of Lee Miller into a cohesive, resplendent, three-dimensional whole.
Posted Sep 30, 2024
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1/4
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Never Let Go
(2024)
|
Rex Reed
|
ever Let Go never manages to answer any of a number of recurring questions adequately, and the movie makes no more sense than one of those head-scratchers by M. Night Shyamalan, which it annoyingly resembles.
Posted Sep 30, 2024
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4/4
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The Wild Robot
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
The Oscar for Best Animated Feature is The Wild Robot’s to lose. The film, from DreamWorks Animation, is a deeply moving, beautifully crafted example of what an animated movie can be when the medium is treated with reverence.
Posted Sep 25, 2024
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2.5/4
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Omni Loop
(2024)
|
Laura Babiak
|
Mary-Louise Parker and Ayo Edebiri make for a winning duo of women in STEM, but the movie has a frustrating penchant for heavy-handedness.
Posted Sep 18, 2024
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3/4
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Speak No Evil
(2024)
|
Rex Reed
|
James Watkins' remake of 'See No Evil' services the original well, thanks to a totally galvanizing centerpiece performance by James McAvoy.
Posted Sep 13, 2024
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3.5/4
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My Old Ass
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
My Old Ass is a success because it’s so earnest, allowing these ideas to resonate with subtle humor, emotional heft and, most importantly, self-acceptance. It’s also very good encouragement to go pop a few ‘shrooms in the woods.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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2/4
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The Thicket
(2024)
|
Rex Reed
|
Juliette Lewis steals the show in a bleak, action-heavy Western that lacks the depth to match its gritty visuals.
Posted Sep 06, 2024
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3.5/4
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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
Tim Burton's sequel to his 1988 classic is a hilariously strange and charismatic voyage through Hollywood’s best creative minds and most skilled special effects magicians.
Posted Sep 04, 2024
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1/4
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Across the River and Into the Trees
(2023)
|
Rex Reed
|
Liev Schreiber and Venice can't save this lifeless adaptation of Hemingway's least beloved work.
Posted Sep 03, 2024
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1.5/4
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AfrAId
(2024)
|
Dylan Roth
|
AfrAId is a poignant, artistic statement—evidence that humans are just as capable of mediocrity as the machines that will replace us.
Posted Sep 02, 2024
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3.5/4
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Daughters
(2024)
|
Oliver Jones
|
More than anything, Daughters—along with Greg Kwedar’s remarkable current release Sing Sing—speaks to the absolute societal and spiritual imperative of investing in rehabilitation, within prisons and outside their walls.
Posted Aug 19, 2024
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1/4
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The Union
(2024)
|
Rex Reed
|
This contrived, pointless, blindingly boring vehicle is a pathetic, desperate attempt to keep Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg’s careers alive.
Posted Aug 17, 2024
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3/4
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Alien: Romulus
(2024)
|
Dylan Roth
|
It’s a shallower product than either of its inspirations, but it also has its own, distinct energy. It doesn’t totally jettison the franchise’s 45 years of baggage, but when it does, what’s left is a damn good monster movie.
Posted Aug 14, 2024
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1/4
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Jackpot!
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
Awkwafina is a lottery winner in a future version of Los Angeles. John Cena is her protector from the hordes who want to kill her for the money. And this movie is a tedious amalgam of things you’ve already seen.
Posted Aug 14, 2024
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2.5/4
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Skincare
(2024)
|
Laura Babiak
|
The movie does a great job of stoking its protagonist's particularly female paranoia, but its plot ultimately falls apart.
Posted Aug 14, 2024
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2/4
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Close to You
(2023)
|
Rex Reed
|
I guess you could call it a brave, bold performance, but when you think about it you realize Page has no other choice if he wants to be both honest and a working artist with a viable future.
Posted Aug 13, 2024
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3/4
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It Ends With Us
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
This dark and melodramatic story could easily have taken a turn into Lifetime territory. But Lively and her director/co-star Justin Baldoni keep it on track.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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1.5/4
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Trap
(2024)
|
Dylan Roth
|
As expected, there are borderline ridiculous twists as likely to provoke laughs as gasps, but while some recent M. Night joints have left me wondering whether or not the storyteller is in on the joke, this time he definitely knows what he’s doing.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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1/4
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The Fabulous Four
(2024)
|
Rex Reed
|
The movie is an unsalvageable mess, but the most appalling problem is its premise that women will do anything to be admired.
Posted Jul 29, 2024
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4/4
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Dìdi
(2024)
|
Oliver Jones
|
Set in the early days of social media's takeover, Sean Wang's debut feature about a Taiwanese American kid growing up in the East Bay perfectly captures the emotional jumble of boyhood.
Posted Jul 27, 2024
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1.5/4
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Deadpool & Wolverine
(2024)
|
Dylan Roth
|
Despite being right in the demographic crosshairs for its incessant geek culture references, I found myself as exhausted with this film as I have been with any other installment in the lackluster Multiverse Saga.
Posted Jul 23, 2024
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2/4
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Twisters
(2024)
|
Rex Reed
|
The sets, lighting design, and computer-generated special effects are superb, enhancing the viewer’s fascination with the subject matter. By comparison, the humans in Twisters are so unimportant and so undeveloped they seem like interlopers.
Posted Jul 23, 2024
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2/4
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Fly Me to the Moon
(2024)
|
Rex Reed
|
It’s not a bad formula, but 'Fly Me to the Moon' has such severe narrative limitations it runs out of energy before the epic space vessel leaves the ground.
Posted Jul 15, 2024
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0/4
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Longlegs
(2024)
|
Rex Reed
|
The worst thing is Nicolas Cage in his most hysterical, unhinged, over-the-top performance since he played Dracula like a vaudeville act.
Posted Jul 15, 2024
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3/4
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Touch
(2024)
|
Oliver Jones
|
A widower retraces his youth and finds that devastating truths can lurk below even our fondest recollections in this romantic drama from Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur.
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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3/4
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Sing Sing
(2023)
|
Laura Babiak
|
Sing Sing fights the good fight, but it’s more than just an important social issue film. Thanks to its incredible performances and deeply felt depiction of life in prison, it’s a powerful drama that will stick with you.
Posted Jul 10, 2024
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3/4
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Fly Me to the Moon
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
The movie, brought to life in part thanks to the efforts of its star and producer Scarlett Johansson, is a charming, cute possible history, invoking rom-com tactics and old-fashioned appeal in a way that is fairly successful.
Posted Jul 09, 2024
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2.5/4
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MaXXXine
(2024)
|
Dylan Roth
|
Though it’s a neat throwback that features a few memorable performances, MaXXXine imitates its period setting a little too well, prioritizing style and adding little substance to the series.
Posted Jul 08, 2024
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1.5/4
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Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
(2024)
|
Oliver Jones
|
This isn't an Eddie Murphy blockbuster. It's a prime example of a risk-averse mega-company using existing IP to hedge their bets on their investment.
Posted Jul 03, 2024
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1.5/4
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A Family Affair
(2024)
|
Emily Zemler
|
This fantasy where everyone gets what they want is made awkward and uncomfortable by the lack of chemistry between its stars.
Posted Jul 01, 2024
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2/4
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Daddio
(2023)
|
Rex Reed
|
Every woman I’ve ever known would start looking for an escape from a cabbie who turns as embarrassingly intimate as this one does—just as an impatient audience is likely to do with this movie.
Posted Jun 29, 2024
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3/4
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What You Wish For
(2023)
|
Rex Reed
|
Nick Stahl is a skillful master of how to move the gore with exactly the right pace to exude charm in spite of his character’s ongoing toxicity. He gets what he wishes for and ends up with more than he bargained for.
Posted Jun 27, 2024
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2/4
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Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
(2024)
|
Oliver Jones
|
The often bewildering and somewhat underwhelming first installment of Kevin Costner's Western epic is long on characters but short on story.
Posted Jun 27, 2024
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3/4
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A Quiet Place: Day One
(2024)
|
Dylan Roth
|
What could have been an over-inflated expansion of a successful small-scale horror story is instead a worthy successor and a strong film in its own right. If every profitable movie must spawn a franchise, then this is exactly how it should be done.
Posted Jun 27, 2024
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