More is much more in Babylon, Damien Chazelle’s mammoth period ode to a Hollywood in transition circa 1927 and plunge into gleeful debauchery, mad invention and wild excess. In a movie bound to divide audiences, adventurous cineastes will love Chazelle’s go-for-broke, enfant terrible provocation…
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A now-familiar skeptics’ refrain tends to follow James Cameron during the run ups to his often game-changing pictures—they are too expensive and rife with cost overruns that will bankrupt their studios; their onset dynamics are ruled by “king of the world” megalomania; that he…
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It’s been some time since filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has resembled the promise of his early auteur status, cemented by his striking 1998 debut puzzle Pi and peaking more than a decade later (and ago) with 2010’s diabolical Black Swan. Say what you will, but…
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Could Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, about the artistic birth of and influences on perhaps the most populist American film director of all time, clinch the Best Picture Oscar come next March? Current thinking is that the picture, and its popular director, are well…
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Luca Guadagnino’s spellbinding Bones and All, a tender, terrifying young love story between—bear with me—a pair of cannibal paramours, is deeply sensitive and shocking in the extreme. That proves quite a combo in a film Guadagnino has delivered with a most original mash-up of…
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As a wickedly funny sendup of haute cuisine, celebrity chefs and foodie culture, the slickly entertaining The Menu is an enjoyable takedown of pretentious restauranteurs and their willing, wealthy patrons—and a clever horror satire that doesn’t miss a beat, or more appropriately, a course.…
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Filmmaker Elegance Bratton delivers a distinctive, compelling film from a formative life chapter, and one offering no easy resolutions.…
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As adolescents, how well can we ever really know our parents or their personal circumstances? Filmmaker Charlotte Wells charts exquisite father-daughter chapter in understated coming-of-age drama.…
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Gray, who shares a formative chapter in the film that depicts a loss of innocence—here about the way the world works for those who have, and do not have, privilege—has made his most personal and perhaps most accessible film.…
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Fueled by a vision and command evidenced in each frame, it is an immediately recognizable masterwork and high-bar piece of acting like nothing else onscreen in an American film this year.…
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