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2020 releases

The Truffle Hunters documentary review: following a passion right into the ground

Thu, Aug 19, 2021
3 comments

One of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. Delightful in its simplicity and profound in its wisdom. Specific yet universal, it’s an empathetic portrait of charming subjects. It’s also really funny.

| 3 Comments

My Octopus Teacher documentary review: out of the way, human

Sun, May 09, 2021
3 comments

This otherwise gorgeous nature documentary is marred by the banal self-therapy of its human protagonist… and he is nowhere near as interesting as the manic pixie dream octopus who changes his life.

| 3 Comments

Nomadland movie review: ain’t that America

Thu, May 06, 2021
no comments yet

Come on down for a gen-u-ine American dystopia at the crossroads of end-of-empire and late-stage capitalism. Chloé Zhao’s outsider’s eye is hugely sympathetic but unhindered by knee-jerk patriotism.

| Leave a comment

One Night in Miami… movie review: the past, still prologue

Mon, Apr 19, 2021
no comments yet

An electrifying philosophical fantasia that imagines four towering figures of 1960s America arguing over how to navigate racism as Black men. Enraging, but also thrilling, bursting with cinematic joy.

| Leave a comment

The Tunnel (Tunnelen) movie review: fire in the mountain

Sun, Apr 11, 2021
no comments yet

As stuffed with soap-opera clichés as its cinematic precursors, but this is nevertheless a solid and diverting rescue procedural… and it’s somehow even more shocking for how mundane its disaster is.

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Synchronic movie review: Benson and Moorhead would have voted for Obama twice if they could have…

Fri, Apr 09, 2021
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Just because a tale is science fiction doesn’t mean that plausibility and cohesion are not required. Yet we can see the narrative strings pulling along the puppet-characters, and in an ugly direction.

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Irresistible movie review: are money and politics irretrievably entwined?

Sun, Feb 21, 2021
1 comment

This zingy satire is so perfectly, beautifully Jon Stewart: big and brash, raging with fury at the state of American politics but also underlain with hope that it might be changed for the better.

| 1 Comment

Tenet movie review: I have no time for it

Fri, Feb 05, 2021
8 comments

Washington and Pattinson have palpable charisma, but this cold puzzle offers no incentive to solve it. Throw in damsel-in-distress crap, and both my geek sensibilities and my feminism are offended.

| 8 Comments

Assassins documentary review: when a murder is not a murder

Fri, Jan 29, 2021
no comments yet

The story of the women duped into *checks notes* killing Kim Jong-un’s brother is more bonkers — and sad, and gripping — than we’ve heard. Utterly fascinating; the stuff of a Hollywood thriller.

| Leave a comment

Wonder Woman 1984 movie review: days of future past

Sat, Jan 16, 2021
5 comments

The retro pastel optimism is ironic, but the dark stuff slips by in subtext. This bold, colorful tale, recalling classic superhero films, could be happening in a parallel universe… a much nicer one.

| 5 Comments
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