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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The masterstroke of the dementia drama The Father, co-adapted by director and playwright Florian Zeller and the great Christopher Hampton, is one of perspective. A byzantine puzzle about an octogenarian in mental decline, it puts us directly in senility’s way courtesy of a sterling…
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According to a recent New York Times calculation, the per prisoner cost of Guantanamo Bay detention is approximately $13 million—a hefty sum for the thirty-nine existing detainees from more than fifty nationalities, the majority from the Middle East. And while the debate over closing…
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The primary reason (perhaps the only one) to see French Exit is a glorious Michelle Pfeiffer, one of the few remaining great American movie stars, in an ace performance that sustains a sometimes too precious picture that is an altogether mixed bag. Picture opens…
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