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3.5/4
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The People's Joker
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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She ostensibly plays a cinematic supervillain in The People’s Joker, but as the story of the film—and, finally, the film itself—reaches ever-wider audiences, Vera Drew has come into focus as a cinematic superhero...
Posted Apr 08, 2024
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3.5/4
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Home
(2008)
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Peter Canavese
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Darkly funny, haunting, and perhaps hopeful...there's a keen sense of absurdism (and in Agns Godard's brilliant photography a sort of surrealist realism, if there is such a thing) in the circumstances. [Blu-ray]
Posted Mar 29, 2024
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3.5/4
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Oppenheimer
(2023)
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Peter Canavese
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Despite his film having prestige written all over it, Nolan the theoretical cineaste has rewritten the rules of the prestige picture...[with] his epic reconstruction and deconstruction of the Manhattan Project and the man who organized it.
Posted Jul 19, 2023
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3/4
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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
(2023)
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Peter Canavese
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It comes down to the extended climax to make or break Dead Reckoning...and happily, the finale delivers with what could be the most impressive train shenanigans since Buster Keaton's The General.
Posted Jul 05, 2023
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3/4
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The House That Screamed
(1970)
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Peter Canavese
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This early slasher movie and somewhat Psycho rip-off is also an artful and unnerving gothic horror picture in its own right. [Blu-ray]
Posted Jun 20, 2023
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4/4
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
(2023)
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Peter Canavese
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[Spoiler-free review:] Mangold has practically worked a miracle: an experience that delivers everything a fan should want from an Indiana Jones movie... Congratulations, Disney. I can't wait to get on this ride again.
Posted Jun 16, 2023
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3/4
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The Flash
(2023)
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Peter Canavese
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For all its flaws, The Flash proves strong on character where it counts as it serves up its MCU-style comedy, tragedy, and wow-factor visuals...In the final equation, the Scarlet Speedster gives us a largely enjoyable run for our summer-movie money.
Posted Jun 08, 2023
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2.5/4
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Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
(2023)
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Peter Canavese
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Offers too much sensational spectacle, melodrama, and high-stakes sci-fi adventure ever to bore its audience, but its echoes of exhausted blockbuster tropes ring hollow.
Posted Feb 14, 2023
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2.5/4
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You People
(2023)
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Peter Canavese
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A tightrope act to have a conversation about race when your priority is to get laughs. Great cast, but by its climax you feel like the movie's the hammer and you're the nail.
Posted Feb 03, 2023
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3/4
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Cairo Conspiracy
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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A political movie of religious intrigue, well-acted and directed with a good script and great visual appeal.
Posted Feb 03, 2023
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3.5/4
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Retrograde
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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History on film. Well edited, bleak...vital journalism.
Posted Nov 18, 2022
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3/4
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My Best Friend's Exorcism
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Charmingly and frighteningly nostalgic, touching on feminist social satire.
Posted Oct 13, 2022
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2.5/4
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The Greatest Beer Run Ever
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Tonally shifty, overlong, repetitive and as history simplistic, but well-made and an interesting effort to reach across the aisle from the socially liberal to the socially conservative.
Posted Oct 13, 2022
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2.5/4
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God's Creatures
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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A deliberately paced, bleak, and unsettling morality play that never really gets much traction, spins its heels, and ultimately fails to find a way to make its material interesting.
Posted Oct 12, 2022
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3/4
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Hellraiser
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Not as hardcore as the in-your-face, bloody, gory, sweaty, dirty, puss-y, oozing, festering, nightmarish 1987 original, but still honors Clive Barker's concept with a stronger, more-interested-in-world-building narrative.
Posted Oct 12, 2022
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3/4
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture
(1979)
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Peter Canavese
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The most ambitious of all the Star Trek films—philosophical and metaphysical on a grand scale.
Posted Oct 09, 2022
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3.5/4
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Blow Out
(1981)
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Peter Canavese
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Brian DePalma's 'earwitness' thriller may just be his best film—strong direction, a good script and self-reflexive in clever meta ways that were before its time. [Criterion 4K]
Posted Oct 03, 2022
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3/4
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Catherine Called Birdy
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Pretty low-key but enjoyable enough medieval coming-of-age comedy boasts a cheeky, naughty sense of humor and a period story complicated by class and the limited mobility of gender.
Posted Oct 03, 2022
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3/4
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Meet Cute
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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A sci-fi romantic light comedy anchored by two charming lead performances which is less interested in laughs than it is in presenting an allegory of damaged people trying to hold on to love and happiness.
Posted Oct 03, 2022
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2.5/4
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Hocus Pocus 2
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Marginally improved...and Midler, Parker and Najimy still play their characters with the hammy gusto of 1966 Batman villains.
Posted Oct 03, 2022
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3.5/4
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The Story of Film: A New Generation
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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If you love movies, you definitely want to be in this discussion.
Posted Sep 29, 2022
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3/4
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See How They Run
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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A spirited, meta, frothy and amusingly arch mystery comedy for theater nerds with a snappy script and a smashing cast.
Posted Sep 29, 2022
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3.5/4
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The Silent Twins
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Effective in its refusal to spell out diagnoses or adopt a specific analytic take. Instead, it invites interpretation.
Posted Sep 29, 2022
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3.5/4
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God's Country
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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A dark, timely and endlessly fascinating mood piece. Thandiwe Newton is perfection in a deep-dive character study that explores several interesting triangular conflicts.
Posted Sep 29, 2022
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3/4
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Sidney
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Perhaps the definitive documentary on Sidney Poitier, touching upon his cultural significance and challenging position as a transitional and transformative cultural figure.
Posted Sep 29, 2022
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3/4
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Buried: The 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche
(2021)
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Peter Canavese
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A highly interesting document of a pretty potent story told in its entirety.
Posted Sep 29, 2022
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2.5/4
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Goodnight Mommy
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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A mixed bag, but there are definitely moments where the performances, direction and photography sync up for an effectively moody atmosphere.
Posted Sep 26, 2022
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3.5/4
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The Woman King
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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The diffuse storytelling somewhat dilutes the film's themes but Viola Davis, a Terence Blanchard score and an inherently interesting milieu are all good reasons to see it.
Posted Sep 26, 2022
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3.5/4
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Confess, Fletch
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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A triumphant re-thinking of the Fletch franchise with a flat-out great script, confident direction and a stand-out star performance.
Posted Sep 22, 2022
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2/4
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Clerks III
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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The weakest of the three. It fails at taking its own emotional logic that seriously; the drama is embarrassingly schmaltzy and the humor hacky. Feels like a parody of itself.
Posted Sep 12, 2022
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3/4
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Private Desert
(2021)
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Peter Canavese
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A melancholic and poetic queer romance that teases out some interesting ambiguities about the nature of the story's relationship.
Posted Sep 12, 2022
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2.5/4
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I Came By
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Hugh Bonneville as a posh but psychotic killer with serious daddy issues. So-so script but enjoyable enough as a pulse-pounding thriller.
Posted Sep 12, 2022
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3/4
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Pinocchio
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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There's an overabundance of unnecessary concessions to modern taste in this effects-driven, CGI-animated remake, but it moves along pretty nicely—and they haven't broken it.
Posted Sep 12, 2022
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2.5/4
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Out of Office
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Lightweight, flimsy and sitcomedic in the style of The Office, but its cast of funny people being funny is enough for a recommendation.
Posted Sep 12, 2022
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3/4
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Peter von Kant
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Ozon's gender reversal of Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant straddles camp, but it's colorful and makes a bit more of the obsessive relationship between artist & muse.
Posted Sep 12, 2022
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1/4
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The Delta Force
(1986)
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Peter Canavese
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A dated and morally dubious propaganda film. [Blu-ray Special Edition]
Posted Sep 03, 2022
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1.5/4
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Samaritan
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Well shot, but it doesn’t really go anywhere interesting—a wafer-thin plot, simplistic, and repetitive. It’s all theatrics and no theater.
Posted Sep 03, 2022
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|
.5/4
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Me Time
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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A very strange mix of family sitcom and R-rated bro-down buddy comedy. A witless string of dumb comic set pieces and an unfunny slog.
Posted Sep 03, 2022
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1/4
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The Invitation
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Comes on like an old Hammer horror picture, but then becomes full of old-hat psychological horror theatrics lacking a single original or interesting idea or performance.
Posted Sep 03, 2022
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2.5/4
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Katrina Babies
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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A lot of this feels a bit like therapy in front of the camera, but the subject matter is so compelling that, if approached from an emotional rather than intellectual standpoint, it definitely holds one’s interest.
Posted Sep 03, 2022
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3/4
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Burial
(2022)
|
Peter Canavese
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A tense and compelling World War II thriller and a leisurely shoot-‘em-up made all the more unsettling by its deliberate pace, interesting ideas and timely sociopolitical parallels.
Posted Sep 03, 2022
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3/4
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Loving Highsmith
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Highsmith's prose, alternately earthy and soaring, best reveals the breadth of her personality, but the perspectives of her lovers humanize her to a more relatable degree...
Posted Sep 01, 2022
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3/4
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The Territory
(2022)
|
Peter Canavese
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In the efficient and consistently engrossing 84 minutes of The Territory...Alex Pritz illuminates the terrible plight of Brazil's Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people, a worrisome situation with implications for all of humanity.
Posted Sep 01, 2022
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2.5/4
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Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
(2022)
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Peter Canavese
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Worth seeing through to the bitter end...finds its soul when Ebo allows the satire to curdle into tragedy and the very real pain of its characters.
Posted Sep 01, 2022
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2.5/4
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Paradise Highway
(2022)
|
Peter Canavese
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Ambition...effort...well-intentioned...some genuinely affecting grace notes on occasion, but it's also shameless.
Posted Aug 27, 2022
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1/4
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Sniper: Rogue Mission
(2022)
|
Peter Canavese
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A chintzy, corny, cheesy men-with-guns movie peppered with low-wattage humor and a lot of action movie cliches.
Posted Aug 27, 2022
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3.5/4
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Spin Me Round
(2022)
|
Peter Canavese
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An endangered species—an indie comedy with an original idea, which arrives at an extremely funny comic climax. Great Pino Donaggio score.
Posted Aug 23, 2022
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2/4
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Secret Headquarters
(2022)
|
Peter Canavese
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Basically a less creative and less idiosyncratic Spy Kids produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (that might tell you something).
Posted Aug 23, 2022
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2/4
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Infinite Storm
(2022)
|
Peter Canavese
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The characters and their interdynamics simply aren't that interesting during the rescue, so somehow it all comes off as dull. But there is Watts (and who wouldn't follow her anywhere?)
Posted Aug 23, 2022
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3/4
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Beast
(2022)
|
Peter Canavese
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The real draw here is actually the photography by Oscar-winning cinematographer Philippe Rousselot.
Posted Aug 23, 2022
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