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Before Dawn

Before Dawn is a slow trudge through the horrors of war. In some respects, this makes sense. The film follows a handful of young soldiers from Australia sent to fight on the Western Front, believing...

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Revisit: American Movie

If you approached your first viewing of American Movie with no prior knowledge of the film, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a mockumentary. The cult documentary’s subject, Milwaukee-based...

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Crossing

In 2013, Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park erupted into large-scale protest as demonstrations against proposed gentrification efforts escalated, following a police crackdown, into a full-blown uprising...

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Crumb Catcher

There’s something about home invasion movies that easily make them some of the scariest films in the horror genre. Perhaps this is because instead of relying on murderous monsters or vengeful ghosts,...

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Holy Hell! Shaun of the Dead Turns 20

George A. Romero’s groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead not only defined the modern zombie archetype but possessed a subtext that alluded to the televised horrors of the Vietnam War and racial...

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Deadpool & Wolverine

Last year’s horror-comedy slasher Thanksgiving both parodied and embodied the genre. Though it was a fun watch, one could argue that simply being self-aware about the tropes you parody doesn’t give you...

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The Fabulous Four

Raunchy girls trip movies have been stretched to every niche, sometimes delivering fun viewing experiences that don’t always take themselves too seriously. But a thin line exists between light-hearted...

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Dìdi

One of the funny things about getting older is that you eventually get to witness the times you grew up in become the subject of a nostalgic coming-of-age film by a promising, young filmmaker. Its...

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Oeuvre: Paul Thomas Anderson: Phantom Thread

Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 masterwork Phantom Thread gleams with the meticulous craftsmanship of the fashion world it portrays. Set in the 1950s London fashion scene, it stars Daniel Day-Lewis as the...

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The Last Breath

A colleague of mine has always maintained something crucial and smart about digital visual effects in the movies: It doesn’t entirely matter whether some computer creation is realistic, if it is...

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Starve Acre

Britain and folk horror: it’s as arguably as iconic a pairing as Italy and splattery nightmare-logic terror. From the early ‘70s foundations like Robin Redbreast, The Blood on Satan’s Claw, and The...

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Revisit: Hackers

The promise of the unknown embedded within the cutting edge of technology will inevitably lead filmmakers to explore what that technology is capable of. Just look at two of the greatest space-age films...

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The Arctic Convoy

The Arctic Convoy is a throwback to World War II films popular when the conflict was still in progress that were designed to get audiences more invested in the war effort with their modestly scaled...

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Only the River Flows

After being selected in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Only the River Flows became an arthouse hit in China. Although a surprise at the time, it’s not difficult to see...

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Criminally Overrated: Death in Venice

Directed with wistful melancholy, Death in Venice wants us to sympathize with a snobby pervert. But unlike Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, the most successful attempt at humanizing this particular kind of...

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Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa

In 1993, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa became the first Nepali woman to summit Mount Everest. After three failed attempts at reaching the top of one of the world’s most dangerous mountains, she finally made it....

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Kneecap

In the foreground of Kneecap, there is the story of some musical underdogs, who band together to form the hip-hop group of the title. This story is told with a sense of relative familiarity, as the...

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Oeuvre: Paul Thomas Anderson: Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is made up of complicated and interesting characters, but at times, the film can be off putting to watch—though this discomfort is cloaked almost too well in a...

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Detained

There is such a devious sense of uncertainty at the start of Detained that it’s a shame co-writer/director Felipe Mucci’s film turns out to be as patently ridiculous as it is. Movies this ridiculous,...

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The Instigators

Casey Affleck is a fine comic actor, and maybe the funniest thing he has ever done was this Dunkin Donuts Commercial when he hosted Saturday Night Live. In less than two minutes, Affleck packs a lot of...

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