As Roger Ebert frequently asserted, the first and most important question to ask of a film is what its makers intended, and the second is how well they executed upon said intentions. This, of course, does not allow for questioning whether what was intended/executed…
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No Time to Die is a smashing piece of entertainment, a movie so much fun to watch—extravagant in the usual James Bond ways that provide immeasurable movie comfort—and such a generous swan song for star Daniel Craig that you’d have to be a bitterly…
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In the opening scene of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, an unrecognizable Jessica Chastain is an early 90s Tammy Faye Bakker, primping before a mirror in preparation for an interview. As she explains, both her lips and eyes are lined with permanent ink, and…
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Excellent intentions and important subject matter are toppled by overwrought melodrama in the busy immigration polemic Blue Bayou. It gives one no pleasure to declare that a film so ambitious, timely and good-hearted—about family separation and deportation due to draconian (lack of) immigration policy—plays…
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The inside of his motel room must be shrouded in pristine white cloth, which he retrieves, impeccably folded, from his suitcase, never overpacked and containing but a handful of neutral, fitted suits. At the nightly poker table he recedes, an enigma with a winning…
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With the latitude of fantastical contexts, the best genre filmmaking examines social and philosophical considerations to deliver salient observations on the human condition. In just American cinema, we might look to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Arrival and…
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Documentarian Heidi Ewing’s astonishing narrative debut I Carry You With Me, as thematically ambitious and fully realized a film as we will see this year, is an artistic and emotional knockout love story, transcending decades and demarcations, told with poignant empathy. Ewing, whose 2006…
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An expansive, splashy, eminently entertaining piece of movie musical elation, the big screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s celebrated In the Heights is a winning movie that marries an endearing, contemporary narrative and music with inspired, classically mounted production numbers that often soar, courtesy of…
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What can possibly be done in a supernatural possession film that hasn’t already been? From demonic children speaking in guttural voices to athletic bodily contortions to spectral GI apparitions to ghost hunting in other dimensions, we’ve seen it all, and many times. There is nothing…
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