A Mexican cartel leader undergoes gender-affirming surgery in Jacques Audiard’s really bad musical Emilia Pérez.
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Sorrentino: Parthenope (2024)
Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film, Parthenope, is one of the most alluring of his career – and that’s really saying something. It’s about a young woman, the Parthenope of the title, played by Celeste Della Porta, who is born into a wealthy Neapolitan family in the 1950s. Most of the film takes place in the 1970s, […]
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Sid and Nancy (1986)
Sid Vicious came out of the British working-class. He was rude, uneducated, violent, and profane. Unlike Keith Moon, who was one of the greatest drummers who ever lived, he wasn’t even a particularly good musician. Nancy Spungen came out of the American middle-class. She was an abrasive, emotionally needy substance abuser who wasn’t even particularly […]
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Anora
Anora makes it clear why no woman — no man — should marry the son of a Russian oligarch. In Sean Baker’s comedy the title character, played by Mikey Madison, meets Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn) at a Manhattan club where she’s a sex worker and after a dizzy weekend he plays Richard Gere to her […]
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Immaculate
Do you know what the term Twin Films means? According to Wikipedia, Twin Films are two films with the same or similar plots produced and released at the same time by two different studios. Examples of this would be: The Warriors and The Wanderers both released in 1979. The Howling and An American Werewolf in […]
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Saltburn wasn’t on my radar at all until it seemed to take my workplace by storm. ‘You like films don’t you, Alex? You might like Saltburn. It’s on Prime. Good but proper weird, don’t put it on if there’s any kids around.‘ I’d say that put it on my watchlist, but that doesn’t really mean […]
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In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
Nagisa Oshima’s controversial erotic art film, “In the Realm of the Senses,” as it is known in the United States, has two other titles. L’Empire des Sens (Empire of Senses) in France, and an original Japanese title, Ai no Corrida (Bullfight of Love). For once, I believe that the Americans got it right with their […]
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Mom, Is That You?!こんにちは、母さん
Just like Clint Eastwood, who is still making films at 93, 92-year-old Japanese filmmaker Yoji Yamada (山田洋次) is also proving that age is just a number. The man who brought the world the beloved TORA-SAN series has recently released his 90th work, MOM, IS THAT YOU?! It’s the third film in his “Mother” series that […]
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Only the River Flows 河邊的錯誤
If you’ve been watching the movies coming out of China over the past few years, you’ve no doubt noticed that many… okay, most… of them have a patriotic bent. Gone are subjects that the government has deemed to undermine national security, and that means no more movies about corrupt cops or government officials because they […]
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Green Room
In the Pacific Northwest, a punk rock band The Aint Rights are trying to make a name for themselves without the aid of social media, so they decides to play this venue in a secluded part of the area. Upon their arrival they notice that most of the people there are skinheads, so they play […]
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The Voices of the Silenced (2023)
Documentary film “The Voices of the Silences”, which won the Mecenat Award for Best Documentary when it was shown at the Busan International Film Festival in last year, is about one defiant old Korean Japanese woman and her old but valuable chronicles of her fellow Korean people in Japan. As her several old documentary films […]
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Successor 抓娃娃
It’s one of the biggest domestic releases in China this year. SUCCESSOR, which debuted on July 16, is closing in on US$500 million at the box office and this is even before its roll-out to other markets. The film is opening in Hong Kong this weekend and the big question is whether local audiences here […]
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The Beta Test Review
Bursting onto the scene in 2018 with the brilliant indie film Thunder Road, Jim Cummings returns with his brand new film that he stars, writes and directs in. The Beta Test is another dark comedy that follows Jordan, a Hollywood agent that receives a mysterious letter that invites him to a hotel to participate in […]
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TIFF ’24: ‘Babygirl’ Review
The media has played a major part in how men perceive women. Through commercials, television series and films, women have been objectified and hypersexualized to sell an ideal form of beauty only desired by men. Thankfully, power dynamics in the workplace have shifted over the years, but there is still a power […]
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A coming-of-age drama set in Kent, England, Bird tells the story of a rebellious twelve-year-old girl with an eye for the innocent beauty around her. Though unfamiliar with the works of writer/director Andrea Arnold, I was surprised to find a quiet calmness in her depiction of the female preteen experience. She manages to capture an […]
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A Different Man (2024)
Themes of ‘identity’ and ‘role-playing’ swirl intensely in this decent offering starring the Berlinale award-winning Sebastian Stan, who plays a disfigured man who begins to morph into a normal-looking person after an experimental clinical trial.
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I’m Still Here
In the battle for the most forgettable film title of the year, Walter Salles’s I’m Still Here (not to be confused with the Joaquin Phoenix mockumentary of the same title or the very similar I’m Not Here, Todd Haynes’s Bob Dylan biopic) is one of the clear favourites for a podium spot. It’s a relatively […]
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Renfield (2023)
A wildly entertaining, gory action-horror-comedy where Nicolas Cage as Dracula is everything you could have imagined. Renfield may seem like the the latest vampire offering from Hollywood, but it’s much more than that. Showcasing a new take on the character of Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage) and his devoted assistant/familiar R. M. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), this comedy-horror […]
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In the Mood for Love
I feel as if In the Mood for Love is just about impossible to write about. A lot of films benefit from a lot of analysis, making what you see on screen that much more clear and powerful, or perhaps even that much more expansive and mysterious in its ideas. I watched In the Mood […]
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Burn After Reading
Muhteşem kadro seçimiyle ‘burn after reading’ filmi; alkolik olduğu öne sürülerek CIA’deki işinden kovulan emekli ajan Ozzie Cox’ın, intikam almak için gizli bilgileri bir cd’ye kaydetmesiyle başlıyor. Cox ile boşanmak isteyen eşi Katie ise cd’yi gizlice alır ve gittiği spor salonunda unutur. Spor salonunun (ve benim gözümde filmin süper ikilisi) iki çalışanı Chad ve Linda […]
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