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On Swift Horses
(2024)
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Caryn James
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It is a story of subterfuge, secrets and recognitions hardly ever spoken out loud. And it works much better as an idea than as a film.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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4/5
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The Last Showgirl
(2024)
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Caryn James
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She comes with every nepo-baby advantage, but The Last Showgirl proves that Gia Coppola has a true artist's eye and her own rich, distinctive style.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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5/5
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Hard Truths
(2024)
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Caryn James
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Leigh's strategy of taking us into his characters' world without prelude or explanation, letting the revelations and backstory waft out, help make his films feel authentic.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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2/5
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Joker: Folie à Deux
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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Depending on how you look at it, this demythologising exercise is either daring or it's irritatingly smug, but it's definitely not much fun.
Posted Sep 04, 2024
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3/5
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Queer
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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Craig's soul-baring, skin-baring turn aside, Queer is a proudly artificial curio, from its anachronistic placement of Nirvana and Prince songs on the soundtrack to its use of studio sets that look like they've been painted by Edward Hopper.
Posted Sep 04, 2024
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4/5
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The Room Next Door
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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The Room Next Door isn't a weighty philosophical work – as mature as it is, it still has glimmers of cheeky humour and campy melodrama. But it develops into a sweetly heartfelt reflection on ageing...
Posted Sep 04, 2024
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3/5
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Wolfs
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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A throwback to the days when Hollywood stars didn't all play superheroes, and could be spotted in bromantic comedy thrillers instead, Wolfs is reminiscent of Midnight Run and 48 Hrs.
Posted Sep 04, 2024
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3/5
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The Order
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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That is, he's a cop-movie cliché, but Law's fiery glaring and swearing make him fun to be around, anyway.
Posted Sep 04, 2024
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4/5
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Babygirl
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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Reijn's raw, jagged, indie-style film has all the scenes you would expect if Babygirl were a standard Hollywood neo-noir thriller but each time Reijn explores the undignified reality behind the glamour.
Posted Aug 30, 2024
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3/5
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Maria
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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Knight has written countless lines of spikily witty, quotable dialogue, and it's never a chore to watch a beautiful actor wearing beautiful outfits in beautiful Paris locations.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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4/5
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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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The nicest surprise is that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that rare thing, a big-budget comedy which is actually funny.
Posted Aug 28, 2024
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3/5
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Blink Twice
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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As cluttered as it is, though, Blink Twice is stylish and savage enough to gain a cult following. And it is undoubtedly the work of a skilled writer-director, rather than an actor who is having a go at directing.
Posted Aug 21, 2024
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4/5
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Alien: Romulus
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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[Álvarez] has triumphed with a clever, gripping and sometimes awe-inspiring sci-fi chiller, which takes the series back to its nerve-racking monster-movie roots while injecting it with some new blood – some new acid blood, you might say.
Posted Aug 14, 2024
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3/5
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Deadpool & Wolverine
(2024)
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Caryn James
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Overall it is middling, but sure to make enough money to keep ketchup and mustard coming back well into their 90s.
Posted Jul 25, 2024
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4/5
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Sing Sing
(2023)
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Caryn James
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The film has been sharply edited for maximum effect, but that doesn't undermine the sincerity and lack of self-pity that runs through these moving, naturally expressed answers, improvised in the men's own words.
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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3/5
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Twisters
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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Twenty-eight years on from the release of Jan de Bont's Twister, Hollywood's powers-that-be have decided that this lucrative piece of intellectual property should be taken out for another spin, but they haven't done anything surprising with it.
Posted Jul 10, 2024
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3/5
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A Quiet Place: Day One
(2024)
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Caryn James
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As an emotional journey Day One has its moments. For a supposedly scary movie, it's a little bit sloppy.
Posted Jun 27, 2024
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3.5
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Mean Girls
(2024)
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Scarlett Harris
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If "not your mother's Mean Girls" means it's a departure from the problematic jokes that were a hallmark of the noughties, then it certainly delivers on that promise for Gen Z.
Posted Jun 27, 2024
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2/5
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Bad Boys: Ride or Die
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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The plot is nonsensical, the grenade-dodging stunts are even more nonsensical, and the internal logic is non-existent... But the film is fun enough in its chaotic, grungy, rough and ready way.
Posted Jun 06, 2024
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4/5
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Anora
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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Anora fizzes with energy and laugh-out-loud moments, but it isn't recommended for anyone with high blood pressure.
Posted May 28, 2024
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The Apprentice
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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The Apprentice is destined to be berated by many as too flattering or too unflattering, but it's a cleverly composed snapshot of its subject at a specific time.
Posted May 22, 2024
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1/5
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Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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But a film – certainly a Western – needs to have a plot, a bit of credible characterisation, and a structure that preferably includes a beginning, middle and end. Horizon doesn't have any of those.
Posted May 20, 2024
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4/5
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The Substance
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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The Substance comes to feel like a slow and superficial waste of an intriguing premise. But the delirious last half-hour makes it all worthwhile.
Posted May 20, 2024
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3/5
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Kinds of Kindness
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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His fans will be intoxicated by this triple shot of pure, unfiltered Lanthimos. And they can rest assured that, at the very end, he puts in one of his trademark wacky dance routines.
Posted May 20, 2024
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1/5
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Megalopolis
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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It's like listening to someone tell you about the crazy dream they had last night – and they don't stop talking for well over two hours.
Posted May 17, 2024
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3/5
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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You soon reach the point where you're sick of sand, sick of explosions, sick of off-puttingly sadistic violence, and sick of thunderous drums bashing away on the soundtrack, and yet the film keeps piling on more and more and more of them.
Posted May 15, 2024
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2/5
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
(2024)
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Caryn James
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Behind the impressive CGI, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the definition of generic, all two hours and 25 minutes of it.
Posted May 08, 2024
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3/5
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Challengers
(2024)
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Caryn James
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Perfectly pleasant to watch, it never becomes thoroughly engrossing, as the characters often slip from enigmatic to thinly-written. It isn't bad, but it is underwhelming.
Posted Apr 12, 2024
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2/5
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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
(2024)
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Caryn James
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For fans longing to see Titans, as the Monsterverse creatures are called, go at each other – again and again and again – it's fine. For anyone else, it's just another Kong movie, with Godzilla himself a kind of sideshow.
Posted Mar 28, 2024
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2/5
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Road House
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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Watching this mindless yet overcomplicated film feels like sitting in on a script meeting at which the writers throw around ideas for characters, scenes and subplots but don't get around to developing any of them.
Posted Mar 21, 2024
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3/5
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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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... Losing momentum as it goes, Frozen Empire raises the increasingly frustrating suspicion that Kenan and Reitman couldn't choose which of their various story ideas to use, and so decided to use them all.
Posted Mar 20, 2024
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5/5
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Chinatown
(1974)
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Jonathan Crocker
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Absolutely the finest thing that Nicholson, Polanski, Towne and producer Robert Evans will ever produce. Unforgettable.
Posted Mar 08, 2024
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5/5
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Saving Grace
(2000)
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Michael Thomson
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The script has been worked on to great effect so that the timing of the comedy is just right, the punchlines are delivered in all the proper places, and there is breathing space in between the bouts of increasing comic madness.
Posted Mar 05, 2024
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3/5
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Dune: Part Two
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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You might expect a big-budget space opera to exhilarate you and move you, and on those terms Villeneuve's sprawling, pretentious folly has to count as an abject failure. But if you want to feel awestruck, that's another matter.
Posted Feb 21, 2024
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2/5
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Argylle
(2024)
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Nicholas Barber
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Everywhere you look, there are details that need to be added, plot holes that need to be filled, and jokes that need to be improved.
Posted Jan 31, 2024
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5/5
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All of Us Strangers
(2023)
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Caryn James
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The film becomes more heart-wrenching as it moves on. How could it not? But every imagined scene remains full of authentic emotion.
Posted Dec 23, 2023
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2/5
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Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
(2023)
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Nicholas Barber
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The trouble is that Momoa's selling point as an actor is how natural and physical he is, whereas nothing in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom seems real.
Posted Dec 21, 2023
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4/5
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The Color Purple
(2023)
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Caryn James
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Straight through to the big finish with a spiritual song and a warm family reunion, The Color Purple is shameless in its wish to be loved by audiences. That may be calculated, but the strategy works in this vivid, alternate take on a classic story.
Posted Dec 19, 2023
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2/5
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Rebel Moon: Part One - A Child of Fire
(2023)
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Nicholas Barber
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The film may not be up to much, but the story behind it proves that even the most far-fetched childhood dreams really can come true.
Posted Dec 15, 2023
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4/5
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Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
(2023)
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Nicholas Barber
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... The filmmakers balance the shiny surfaces and high-tech devices of a futuristic 1960s science-fiction adventure with enough old-fashioned, analogue elements to ensure that Dawn of the Nugget is unmistakably the work of Aardman.
Posted Dec 13, 2023
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2/5
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The Iron Claw
(2023)
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Caryn James
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Despite its committed and physically bulked-up actors – including Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White and Harris Dickinson as three of the brothers – The Iron Claw is a flat narrative that spells things out in broad, neat terms.
Posted Dec 12, 2023
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3/5
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Wonka
(2023)
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Nicholas Barber
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Dahl's novel bristled with the author's annoyance at the nuisances of contemporary life... [but] the film ignores the gravitational pull of reality. Relentlessly wacky and over-the-top, everything in it is too contrived to care about.
Posted Dec 04, 2023
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4/5
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Leave the World Behind
(2023)
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Caryn James
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Leave the World Behind is not especially original; there are too many other apocalyptic movies around for that. But the film... is especially timely.
Posted Nov 28, 2023
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4/5
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Napoleon
(2023)
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Nicholas Barber
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It's an awe-inspiring achievement, although it may leave you with a greater appreciation of Scott's leadership skills than of Napoleon's.
Posted Nov 15, 2023
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4/5
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Dream Scenario
(2023)
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Caryn James
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Although you can enjoy Dream Scenario simply as a comic story, the true sign of its ambition and accomplishment is that it operates on many levels beyond that.
Posted Nov 07, 2023
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4/5
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Saltburn
(2023)
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Nicholas Barber
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Saltburn does seem a bit half-hearted. For that matter, it also lacks the focused anger of Promising Young Woman. Still, if you see it as a lurid pulp fantasy rather than a penetrating satire, then Saltburn is deliriously enjoyable.
Posted Oct 10, 2023
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2/5
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The Exorcist: Believer
(2023)
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Nicholas Barber
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A film that was shaping up to be an intelligent and respectful homage to The Exorcist descends to the depths of a cheesy, straight-to-streaming rip-off.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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3/5
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Foe
(2023)
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Caryn James
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Foe plays to the strengths of its actors, two of the most natural and subtle on screen, and is endlessly engaging even though it eventually stumbles into head-spinning narrative problems.
Posted Oct 02, 2023
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5/5
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The Creator
(2023)
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Nicholas Barber
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Edwards' ambitious, immersive film should prompt the intoxicating awe that you might have got from The Matrix and Avatar – the feeling that you're seeing a rich vision of the future unlike any that has been on the big screen before.
Posted Sep 26, 2023
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4/5
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The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
(1994)
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Victoria Luxford
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A very human drama, well acted, and very good fun!
Posted Sep 21, 2023
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