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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A Quiet Place Part II, the Covid-delayed sequel to 2018’s surprise horror hit A Quiet Place, is the rare sequel that (almost) equals its predecessor, a skillfully calibrated exercise in tension with a few new ideas and enough scares to sustain its tightly coiled…
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Michel Franco’s sociopolitical nightmare New Order edges toward an uncomfortable, close-to-reality plausibility where social hierarchies erode amidst a working-class revolt and descent into barbarism. The French-Mexican production is a visually arresting thriller that is cruel, crude and pointed – harrowing and intriguing, undone by…
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What happens in a marital separation when one person moves on and the other is still committed? The power of the superb heartland drama The Killing of Two Lovers comes from its point of view on a failing marriage, told from the perspective of…
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A farce borne of humiliation that achieves the tension of a tautly constructed horror film, Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby is a smart comedy of errors about a young collegiate returning home for a pressure cooker Jewish funeral only to contend with a cavalcade of…
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