Review: Jojo Rabbit

The attention-grabbing pitch for Jojo Rabbit — a little German boy near the end of World War II has an imaginary friend, and it’s Hitler — is ultimately secondary in importance to the film’s more serious, sentimental themes. That the film, adapted and directed by Taiki Waititi from Christine Leunens’ novel Caging Skies, uses dark […]

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REVIEW: Gemini Man

You’re familiar with the type of movie where a best-of-the-best secret agent is betrayed by his own government and must go on the run. Gemini Man is a very basic one of those with one twist: The assassin sent to kill our secret agent is his clone. Maybe this is on me for not finding clones […]

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REVIEW: The Addams Family

The animated reboot of The Addams Family, set in the present day, has everyone’s favorite spooky Goth family (or second-favorite if you were more of a Munsters person) in conflict with a new neighborhood that has popped up nearby called Assimilation, in which sameness is celebrated over individuality. The subdivision is owned (?) by one […]

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REVIEW: Lucy in the Sky

It’s a tale as old as time: Married astronaut begins torrid affair with recently divorced co-worker; co-worker breaks off relationship, gets new girlfriend; married astronaut puts on adult diaper to drive 900 miles to Florida (because of course Florida) to confront ex-lover’s new girlfriend, armed with pepper spray. Pour out one glass of recycled urine […]

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How The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Helped the Western Ride into the Sunset

Perhaps the most notable example of a prominent movie genre that disappeared almost entirely is the Western. Once inescapable — there were close to 100 Westerns released in 1949 alone — nowadays Westerns are usually seen as retro or niche. The fading prevalence of the genre was observantly foreshadowed by two films released 50 years […]

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REVIEW: Joker

Being the origin story of the title villain, Joker is technically a Batman prequel and technically a comic book movie, but director and co-writer Todd Phillips (The Hangover, Old School) doesn’t want you to think of it as those things. He’s going for a gritty Martin Scorsese vibe — The King of Comedy specifically (most of […]

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