In Theaters
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JoJo Rabbit (PG-13)
Parodying Hitler is nothing new. Charlie Chaplin played him in The Great Dictator (1940), long before Look Who’s Back (2015), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Mein Führer: The Really Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler (2007), and the countless memes that subtitled Hitler’s bunker tirade in Downfall (2004). Before the U.S. had entered WWII, mocking Hitler for two […]
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1917 (R)
When I was about 13, my father rented (from an establishment called Blockbuster) an odd little film called Rope. He is an Alfred Hitchcock aficionado and had discovered that this was one of Hitch’s lesser known films, which he had yet to see. In the days before IMDb and easy internet access, information like this was […]
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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (PG-13)
An early scene in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a fitting metaphor for the film as a whole. Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac), fleeing TIE Fighters in the Millennium Falcon, escape their pursuers by “lightspeed skipping” – a dangerous maneuver (or so we’re told, though it goes smoothly enough for our […]
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Black Christmas (2019) (PG-13)
Further proof that studios think that any intellectual property is better than having no intellectual property, Black Christmas, the second remake of the original film, actually doesn’t benefit from its namesake since it bears very little of that infamous, incredible proto-slasher from 1974. The idea to update what was an incredibly socially relevant and quite subversive […]
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The Irishman (R)
Roger Ebert once said that “No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.” In other words: length is not indicative of quality, but together, the two get along just fine. Few names are as ubiquitous with lengthy runtimes as Martin Scorsese, who, since the 1970s, has been making films that […]
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Frozen II (PG)
Firstly, let it be known that our fearless editor had to reach out to see if anybody was willing to see Frozen II over its opening weekend. I chose to fall on the sword. Not because I was hopeful that Walt Disney Animation’s latest would be worthwhile – no, I knew going in that I was […]
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Ford v Ferrari (PG-13)
Let’s get this one thing straight: there’s nothing magical about 7000 rpm. I own an Infiniti G37 that redlines at 7500 rpm and I’ve been over 7000 rpm a couple of times. Nothing special happened. In fact, it’s usually when I’m trying to get on the freeway and the automatic gearbox shifted down a gear […]
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Dr. Sleep (R)
In Dr. Sleep director Mike Flanagan manages to weave together disparate threads skillfully, delivering a film about hauntings and reconciliation that is both faithful to its origins and strong enough to stand on its own.
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Parasite (R)
“You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all,” muses Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) in Parasite, the latest film from Korean maestro Bong Joon-ho. It’s an apt sentiment: the movie is so full of wild energy it feels as if it could throw control to the winds and spin off the rails […]
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The Lighthouse (R)
Unlike many of his modern peers, there’s something appreciable about Robert Eggers’ unfussy approach to the horror genre. The Witch might just be the most frightening horror film of this decade – incredible, given that it feels pulled from a different era of filmmaking altogether. But what made that film work wonders in its bid to […]
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Joker (R)
Joker is a movie no one knew they wanted, least of all a diehard Batman fan such as myself, but it’s a deeply moving, disturbing tragedy about the world modernity built. It might be the most culturally important film to arrive in a long time. It does a Taxi Driver impression arguably better than Taxi […]
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Ad Astra (PG-13)
Ad Astra is a story of fathers and sons. It is about the way men are out of touch with their feelings because kindness and intimacy were never modeled for them. It is about confronting the emptiness of space and reckoning with our place within the universe. It is exactly the film I feared it […]
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It: Chapter 2 (R)
As Stephen King writes his way through his fifth decade, he holds the most credible claim to the title Greatest Horror Writer of the 20th Century. Others may have reached greater heights (say, for instance, William Peter Blatty), but those who did cannot match King’s prolific output. Those who have published comparatively often (this time we […]
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Overcomer (PG)
Overcomer, the latest film from Alex Kendrick and his brother Stephen, continues the filmmaking tradition begun with 2006’s Facing the Giants – movies made with evangelical Christian faith as both the heart and goal of the narrative. What Overcomer also continues is the increase in filmmaking skill evidenced by the Kendrick Brothers. The first act […]
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Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (R)
Mistah Kurtz – he dead. This bleak pronouncement closes Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, and opens T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem, The Hollow Men. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film, Apocalypse Now, completes the circle by following the outline of Conrad’s novella – a voyage up a river to find a madman named Kurtz – and […]
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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (PG-13)
As humans, we are predisposed to relate through stories. Considering that some of the earliest forms of recording history itself came from cave drawings and hieroglyphics, which recorded events through broad illustrations that predate storybooks, it makes absolute sense that a proclivity towards storytelling is something ingrained into our subconscious. Maybe that’s why we’re able […]
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Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood (R)
“Quentin Tarantino used to love people.” That, at least, is the complaint Joshua Gibbs once leveled against the last couple decades of the man’s work. It was an elegant summary. Whatever their strengths, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and the like are populated primarily by types, resembling action figures more than human beings. The complaint – “Quentin Tarantino […]
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Midsommar (R)
Apparently the horror genre needed to be saved. That’s what I keep hearing whenever people refer to modern era horror directors like Jordan Peele and Ari Aster. As if the genre has never truly been smart or introspective or about society at large. Of course the genre is mostly looked down upon as some cheap form […]
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Spider-Man: Far From Home (PG-13)
There is nothing damagingly, damningly wrong with Spider-Man: Far From Home that would render it unwatchable. But neither is there much to commend it. To be sure, the film is uproariously funny, and the performances are engaging. The film even exceeds expectations in its action sequences. Because the set-pieces are staged live on location in European cities, instead of in wide-open spaces with bland computer-generated backgrounds, the tussles between Spider-Man, Mysterio, and the Elementals have a sense of tactility, geographical clarity, and human stakes that MCU battles have often lacked. I will also grant that the film has two show-stopping, jaw-dropping sequences that are among the MCU’s finest moments of visual storytelling. But the MCU has almost always been funny, and often to its detriment.
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Annabelle Comes Home (R)
Annabelle Comes Home does not attempt to rewrite the rules of a good horror movie. It does not even attempt to rewrite the rules of a good Conjuring movie. Instead, the film shows its merits by demonstrating the continuing vitality of both jump scares and horror movies where unabashed good stares evil in the face without flinching. There is a future for this franchise indeed.