Category: Movies
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Rudolf and Hedwig are the king and queen of Auschwitz, in The Zone of Interest
Sure, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is a distressing movie, but have you read the Wikipedia page on the Höss family? Spoiler: they turned on each other, and at least some of the kids didn’t turn out so great. A half-formed thought I should probably keep to myself before wondering out loud: I had…
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Charlie is afraid, in Orion and the Dark
A better title might be “Orion is Afraid”, or maybe “Charlie is Afraid”. What odd timing, for Orion and the Dark to come out so close to the similarly-themed-if-pitched-at-a-very-different-audience Beau is Afraid. Were Charlie Kaufman and Ari Aster comparing notes, over a few cups of coffee? Other than its general theme of anxiety, the unusual structure is…
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Rewatching Them! through an eerie haze of nostalgia
Gordon Douglas’ Them! (1954) is far more polished, slick, and straight-faced than its b-movie premise (and exclamation point!) would suggest. The subplot involving a traumatized orphan is genuinely distressing to watch, James Whitmore gives a rather modern haunted performance, and some of the effects are surprisingly gruesome. From a giant monster crushing a human torso…
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Albert Brooks navigates a secular afterlife in Defending Your Life
I sometimes find it perversely pleasing to hate a much-liked movie — one enshrined in The Criterion Collection, no less. Nice to know I am not yet a total victim of the monoculture! I do respect one positive aspect of Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life that many reviewers single out: it is indeed refreshing to…
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Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is not very loving, as love letters go
Like most filmmakers and movie buffs, Babylon director Damien Chazelle would appear to have mixed feelings about Hollywood.
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All Quiet on the Western Front isn’t likely to change many minds about war
Edward Berger’s lavish, gruesome All Quiet on the Western Front is very clear that war is bad, but could do more to condemn today’s warmongers.
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Robin Williams is the mumbling sailor man in Robert Altman’s slacker Popeye
Robert Altman applies his trademark style to a kids’ comic strip movie, and the results are about as strange and incongruous as you might expect.
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The hot mess Don’t Worry Darling is too much and not enough
Olivia Wilde’s Twilight Zone-esque thriller Don’t Worry Darling briefly dominated the discourse, for all the wrong reasons.
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NYC’s indie bands survive Napster, 9/11, gentrification, and their own demons, in Meet Me in the Bathroom
Weathering turn of the century New York City with The Strokes, TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, and The Moldy Peaches.
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The long-forgotten comic book villain Black Adam makes for a quickly-forgotten movie
Jaume Collet-Serra’s dreadful Black Adam is damning evidence that Hollywood has forgotten why kids like superheroes in the first place.