Familiarity proves a slight problem for A Quiet Place: Day One, an origin story preceding the first two hit films and depicting the arrival of the deadly alien race bent on decimating humanity. The problem this time is mainly one of sameness—here we have…
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You have to hand it to Yorgos Lanthimos. After taking the Oscar season by storm with his ribald liberation saga Poor Things, the celebrated writer-director has returned to his anarchic origins with the misanthropic Kinds of Kindness, a marathon of twisted deadpan and gleeful…
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A taxi driver and his passenger unexpectedly bond in writer-director Christy Hall’s Daddio, starring Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson on an extended trip from JFK to Midtown, one yielding plenty of talk and transformation. It’s a two-character “small” picture with a few bigger ideas…
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Jeff Nichols’ new film The Bikeriders charts the birth and rise of a fictional 1960s-era Chicago motorcycle club named the Vandals, as seen through the eyes of three compelling actors: Tom Hardy as the gang’s founder and leader, Austin Butler as his young protégé…
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Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, a thundering paen to the birth of American motorcycle culture, is high-gear style and attitude eclipsing a story stuck in neutral. Inspired by Danny Lyon’s 1968 photography book of the same title—which chronicled the circa 60s Chicago exploits of biker…
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The construct of identity—things we believe ourselves to be, limiting notions of what we could become and the potential for self-evolution—power Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, a feather-light comedy about a mild-mannered college professor who moonlights as a phony hit man, only to fall hard…
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