What is the role of objective truth—if any—in a modern moment when reputations and livelihoods can be instantaneously demolished without tangible evidence, and belief in alternative facts has been emboldened? And what are the spoils of idealism against such a rigged court of public…
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Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is an austere exercise with a single idea—that evil deeds can be compartmentalized while their perpetrators lead otherwise innocuously guilt-free lives—stretched out for 106 minutes. Deploying a theme applicable to many of history’s villains, Glazer’s glacial treatise on…
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In Jonathan Glazer’s icily austere The Zone of Interest, German musician and actor Christian Friedel was tasked with a dauntingly antithetical assignment in playing real-life Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss: to convey an architect of doom as a mild-mannered family man. No, these were not…
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Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard superbly navigate challenging psychological terrain in a tough, hopeful picture.…
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While 2023 proved tumultuous for a movie industry grappling with striking actors and writers, the existential threat of A.I. and shrinking box office for once sure-thing blockbusters, it turned out to be a very good year for moviegoers, who were treated to socially observant…
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Ferrari, Michael Mann’s moment-in-time biopic starring Adam Driver as an aging Enzo Ferrari in the 1957 crosshairs of heated personal and business dramas, is a sum of its parts picture enlivened by a thrilling recreation of the thousand-mile Mille Miglia car race, worth seeing…
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With The Boys in the Boat, George Clooney’s ninth directorial outing, the actor turned filmmaker has crafted a handsome, appealingly traditional throw-back movie with a reverence for both historical context and bygone true life sports movies done well a few decades ago. A late…
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In her 2020 Sundance-winning The Forty Year-Old Version, New York playwright Radha Blank wrote and directed a close-to-reality self-portrait of a Black writer and artist in a state of continual invention. Her dilemma? The Broadway purse strings, held by affluent, liberal white producers and…
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In Paul King’s sunny, funny Wonka, Timothée Chalamet steps into the very big Roald Dahl-Gene Wilder shoes belonging to the world’s most famous chocolatier for a pleasing, throw-back musical of genuine sweetness. It turns out those shoes fit quite well, and far better than…
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This year’s prize for movie audacity goes to Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’ fiercely realized, exuberantly funny liberation odyssey starring Emma Stone in a career-high performance as an instantly iconic screen character, one created as a companion for man but whose appetite for self-discovery challenges…
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