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Joshua Polanski
Tomatometer-approved critic
Joshua Polanski is a film and culture writer based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His interests include the technical elements of filmmaking & exhibition, slow & digital cinemas, cinematic sexuality, as well as Baltic, East Asian, & Middle Eastern film.
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Event Horizon (1997) |
With inspirations varying from Hieronymus Bosch and Warhammer 40,000 to the literal architecture of the Notre Dame Cathedral and Fritz Lang, Paul WS Anderson’s ... Event Horizon [is] one of the great 20th-century space-horror films. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 22, 2024
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Western Union (1941) |
The film’s big development lacks the character specifics that would have interjected it with a dramatic force, so the “twist” feels more like a pointless contortion that prolongs things for another 10 minutes or so. - Midwest Film Journal
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| Posted Jul 22, 2024
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Light Light Light (2023) |
[Light Light Light] is a special queer film, in part because of how it rhetorically aims itself at teenagers and in part because of its artistic achievements. - Bay Area Reporter
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| Posted Jul 22, 2024
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Kati Kati (2016) |
Kati Kati is remarkable for the amount of its achievement in such a limited runtime. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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Death Race (2008) |
A full showcase of the director’s visual and thematic talents. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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Circus Columbia (2010) |
[Danis] Tanović ... makes no effort to hide the film’s political workings... Tanović’s direction makes their hatred feel groundless and pathetic. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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Space Sweepers (2021) |
Being flaunted as South Korea’s first space-opera, Space Sweepers (or Victory, in the English translation of the Korean title), is less operatic than myopic. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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Paper Lives (2021) |
Çağatay Ulusoy’s performance sets the standard to beat for the best performing categories in awards season. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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Nobody (2021) |
Nobody ... makes no false pretenses in its practical re-creation of the Wick franchise - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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The Disciple (2020) |
A beautiful Netflix original that takes seriously religious mysticism... [and] navigates the ephemeral and enchants the viewer in the process. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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Cruella (2021) |
Whether or not this intensely directed style works here, it’s a welcomed change from the recent corporate-productional feel of the most recent crop of Disney films. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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Oslo (2021) |
The intensely sickifying tint of Oslo... is a product of its Western production. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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The Ice Road (2021) |
The action itself is, technically speaking, good. But the stakes of the action are contrived, with cartoonish insurance agency antagonists who may as well have stepped out of a children’s movie like Sonic the Hedgehog or Detective Pikachu. - Boston Hassle
Read More
| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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Gunpowder Milkshake (2021) |
Gunpowder Milkshake is most entertaining when Laurent Demianoff’s fight choreography takes precedence over any dialogue. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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The Last Letter From Your Lover (2021) |
[The performances of the two leads are good but] do too little to ameliorate The Last Letter From Your Lover from the wounds of tropes and conventions. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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The Suicide Squad (2021) |
The Suicide Squad feels like the twilight of the age of superhero movies, making way for a new form of megablockbuster to exchange places. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) |
The Last Temptation of Christ ... is a movie that matters. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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Kubi (2023) |
Viewers would be wise to allow Kitano's vision to overwhelm them as thoroughly as possible. Then and only then can one properly evaluate and appreciate such a passion. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jul 19, 2024
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The Last Duel (2021) |
The tri-perspective story emphatically works. It also has the benefit of making room for three excellent performances from the leads. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 18, 2024
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Passing (2021) |
Its pure existence may be a sign of hope to cinephiles. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 18, 2024
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King Richard (2021) |
King Richard suffers from ... a conflict of interest. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 18, 2024
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Near Dark (1987) |
[Near Dark's] style so precisely matches the content that every directorial choice feels indelible. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 18, 2024
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Chungking Express (1994) |
Wong Kar-wai is one of the best filmmakers from one of the most significant film movements... And, in my opinion, Chungking Express is his best film. Supposing one plus one still equals two, that makes this one of the best films ever made - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 18, 2024
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Don't Look Up (2021) |
The film suffers in that the human moments aren’t nearly human enough. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 18, 2024
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Dog (2022) |
Channing Tatum’s Dog is too mature—in comedic material if not always in theme—to completely fit into ... [the genre] expectations [and this] is probably the best thing that can be said about the defiantly mediocre film. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 18, 2024
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The Sky is Everywhere (2022) |
[Josephine Decker's] bold film grammar is innovative, in part, because Christian-Buddhism has never been taken seriously by a visual artist before. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Yaksha: Ruthless Operations (2022) |
By sidestepping [the] basic moral conflict, Yaksha is artistically hollow. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Anatolian Leopard (2022) |
The political metaphor mostly hits...as a pandemic-era film, such reflection on political incompetence isn’t that great of a reach for any audience, Turkish or American alike. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Top Gun: Maverick (2022) |
It’s a good thing it looks good ... because the plot is bare-thin. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) |
[Irm] Hermann gives the best performance of the film—and she does so without saying a single word. In my opinion, it’s one of the best performances in Fassbinder’s legendary run, - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Hustle (2022) |
Built from the ground up on the back of cameos, the atmospheric creating factor of the guest appearances separates Hustle from the completely “just because” ones in superhero movies. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Glasshouse (2021) |
The sci-fi elements of The Shred just didn’t work with the period-piece aesthetics. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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The Sea Beast (2022) |
Any movie with a giant purple crab can’t possibly be that bad. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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The Gray Man (2022) |
For myself, star performances and expensive grand sets are two non-negotiable ingredients of a blockbuster. The Russo brothers’ newest film has both. (And maybe it’s just a two-ingredient genre film, but that’s perfectly fine with me). - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Bullet Train (2022) |
There’s no reason the adaptation couldn’t have either cast Japanese actors or completely rid itself of the origin country by putting the train somewhere else entirely. Both options would have been better than what resulted. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Luck (2022) |
The super-polished [animation] style actually works for me…and possibly for the first time since Pixar’s early films. In a utopian world demarcated by luck, the polish sells the look. Luckiness should be slick and cool - Boston Hassle
Read More
| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Carter (2022) |
There are some regretfully great action pieces here—the spinning helicopter fight being the best among them—but the spectacle is calculatedly capricious beyond redemption. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Beast (2022) |
In light and dark, dry and wet, peaceful and pouncing, the critters— entirely CG from my understanding—might be the most realistically rendered animals since 2019’s Lion King. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Seoul Vibe (2022) |
[Seoul Vibe] falls short of the high bar it sets with its references to John Woo and Edgar Wright. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Cobra (2022) |
Once the globetrotting stops, so does the fun. Cobra becomes almost impossible to watch in all its carelessness. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Drunken Master II (1994) |
[Jackie] Chan is at his damn finest. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022) |
In The Greatest Beer Run Ever, [war] sort of is made for television. The filmmakers try to have their PBR-flavored cake and eat it too—and that just doesn’t fly in a movie about the lies and deception of mass murder that was Vietnam. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Amsterdam (2022) |
A moralizing version of [a] great political thriller ... I suspect that sounds like an ill-advised way to spend an evening. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege (2021) |
Little Palestine is ... a testament to the power of digital cinema. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Farha (2021) |
[Darin J. Sallam] found one of the world’s future great talents. I can’t overstate this: what [Karam] Taher does with her Farha is nothing short of canonical. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 14, 2024
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Huda's Salon (2021) |
Huda’s Salon ... is an impatient film working in a genre where sometimes patience is the key. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 14, 2024
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Bikechess (2024) |
The world [Assel] Aushakimova builds is so strange that if it weren’t for her employment of a social naturalism style, Bikechess almost wouldn’t make any sense. - In Review Online
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| Posted Jul 14, 2024
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Boycott (2021) |
Boycott is concerned about first-amendment rights more than anything else. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 14, 2024
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Salma's Home (2022) |
Professional, slick, hilarious, and built around an economic cast, Salma’s Home feels like high-quality Turkish television at times. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 14, 2024
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Slither (2006) |
Slither might be [James Gunn's] most blatant refusal of the action-movie trope[s]. - Boston Hassle
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| Posted Jul 14, 2024
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