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Film Review – All the Money in the World
The grandson of the world’s wealthiest industrialist and oil tycoon is kidnapped. Instead of paying the ransom though, the tycoon hires his best business negotiator to barter with the kidnappers into lowering the ransom. It’s a good setup and with the zeitgeist hovering around the…
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Film Review – Call Me by Your Name
“Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot.” The line, with all its burning honesty, comes later in the movie. It exists in a moment I won’t fully reveal, in a space where the 24 year old Oliver (Armie Hammer) and 17 year old…
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Film Review – Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Ever since A New Hope was released in 1977, every Star Wars film followed the same basic formula: operatic space battles between good and evil, with a central character being pulled in both directions, whose final choice could decide the fate of all. From the…
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Film Review – The Shape of Water
In their truest form, fairy tales, especially the ones that have lasted over time, have a dark undercurrent to them. They might be about something fanciful, but often there is something sinister lurking around the edges of the story in their original form. The Little…
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Film Review – Wonder Wheel
Woody Allen has become – very nearly without argument – the most prolific filmmaker of the last half century. Since the late 1960s, the writer/director has averaged a film a year. That is an insane pace. It’s a testament to his work ethic: some people…
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Film Review – The Disaster Artist
As we exited the screening of The Disaster Artist, my friend asked “Would that movie make sense to anyone who hasn’t seen The Room?” Neither of us are qualified to answer this, having seen the so-perplexingly-bad-it’s-good opus countless times before, but it did stick with…
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Film Review – Roman J. Israel, Esq.
Sometimes the most frustrating experience with a movie can be the clear signs of missed potential and dropped expectations. There’s usually a moment with an experience like that where one can see the point where the decisions that were made turn against the potential. In…
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Film Review – Coco
It’s a careful balancing act, making a movie that both celebrates a heritage in an entertaining fashion and yet doesn’t trivialize that same culture. It’s an especially tricky balance when creating an animated kid’s movie which usually trade in generalities or quickly referenced stereotypes. Representation…
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