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In the Hand of Dante
(2025)
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Weiting Liu
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Schnabel’s empathy is melancholic and metatextual... It is through this lineage of shared visions and refracted selves that In the Hand of Dante culminates, unfurling from the canonical poet’s inner reveries into a sweeping mythos.
Posted Nov 26, 2025
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The Black Sea
(2024)
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Weiting Liu
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As we’ve seen many American characters going to other countries to “find themselves,” Khalid develops a truly equal relationship with Bulgaria and its people and eventually does find himself.
Posted Jan 31, 2025
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Look Into My Eyes
(2024)
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Weiting Liu
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What we as humans universally want regardless of fame or anonymity: to not feel alone in our pain, to have what we deserve—and that everything is going to be okay.
Posted Nov 04, 2024
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Brief History of a Family
(2024)
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Weiting Liu
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A genre-bending coming-of-age thriller, the film finds an unforeseen angle to dig up the subdued intergenerational psyche shaped by China’s one-child policy.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
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Ouroboros
(2017)
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Lydia Ogwang
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It's the film's own ephemerality that bolsters its lingering force, leaving us with a feeling rather than a message.
Posted Jun 18, 2018
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Bovines
(2011)
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Daniel Walber
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This small French documentary blends beautifully with the open air and erases the boundaries between cinema and the natural world.
Posted Sep 26, 2017
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The Missing Picture
(2013)
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Genevieve Yue
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However ambivalently the film treats the Khmer Rouge footage, it prompts Panh's memories, and allows his clay figures to come to a kind of solemn, unmoving life.
Posted Sep 26, 2017
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Kékszakállú
(2016)
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Daniel Walber
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[The end of Kkszakll is] a cinematic abyss beyond Balzs's dreams.
Posted Sep 26, 2017
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The Corporation
(2003)
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Saul Austerlitz
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The Corporation presents such a powerful case for increased regulation and awareness of corporate power that its occasional missteps-- such as its reliance on overused talking heads like Noam Chomsky's-- do not matter much.
Posted Sep 26, 2017
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I Am Cuba
(1964)
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Nona Willis-Aronowitz
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From the swaying palm trees in the beginning credits to the final victory march, the temperament of the revolution in I Am Cuba is uniformly passionate and determined.
Posted Sep 26, 2017
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The Eye
(2008)
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Sophie Gilbert
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The Eye isn't as bad as has been made out (if you like being frightened a lot) but it could be much better, and much smarter.
Posted Sep 26, 2017
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Cassandra's Dream
(2007)
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Sophie Gilbert
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It's hard to say what's most galling about this film, and even harder to find redeeming aspects.
Posted Sep 26, 2017
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65 Revisited
(2007)
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Sophie Gilbert
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The majority of the film is Dylan singing, and while it's magical in moments, it can also be lacklustre and boring.
Posted Sep 26, 2017
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I'm Not There
(2007)
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Sophie Gilbert
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Haynes is no ordinary filmmaker, and I'm Not There is no ordinary biopic. Tricky, powerful, sometimes ridiculous, it eludes definition.
Posted Sep 26, 2017
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Casa de los Babys
(2003)
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Lisa Rosman
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This movie looks and feels like the dutiful labors of a good man who should have vacationed at this gorgeous mythical land rather than filmed a movie at the site.
Posted Jul 25, 2017
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Coffee and Cigarettes
(2003)
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Lisa Rosman
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All laurels eventually become resting grounds, and with Coffee and Cigarettes, Jim Jarmusch rides his own coattails, with none of the panache that defined his earlier work.
Posted Jul 25, 2017
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Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
(2002)
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Lisa Rosman
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What's most intriguing about director Lone Scherfig's first post-Dogme 95 feature, the admittedly appealing Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, is where and how it falls short.
Posted Jul 25, 2017
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American Splendor
(2003)
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Lisa Rosman
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Underneath all this schtick pulses a restrained, pensive take on how the terrific loneliness of the modern human condition can be ameliorated through its narration. Misery loves company, in other words, especially if it's comically described.
Posted Jun 18, 2012
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The Shape of Things
(2003)
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Lisa Rosman
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All four actors, reprising their roles from the stage production, wear the slightly glazed expressions of those phoning in their performances.
Posted Mar 17, 2004
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The Passion of the Christ
(2004)
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Lisa Rosman
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Gibson is just like all the other hateful men who've been successful -- he's the right guy at the right weak moment.
Posted Mar 16, 2004
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Capturing the Friedmans
(2003)
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Lisa Rosman
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The result intersperses interviews with the family and its accusers with footage from the enormous store of home video and film that the Friedmans themselves shot over 30 years to poke at both the accuracy of the charges and the elusive nature of memory.
Posted Mar 03, 2004
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21 Grams
(2003)
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Lisa Rosman
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If all this sounds lofty, it sometimes is. But Rodrigo Prieto's taut cinematography cuts through the storyline's ether, as the very physically gifted actors inject it with much-needed flesh and blood.
Posted Mar 02, 2004
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The Matrix Reloaded
(2003)
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Lisa Rosman
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Matrix Reloaded [looks] as good as [its] politics, matching aesthetic and ideological innovations blow for blow.
Posted Nov 20, 2003
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Lost in Translation
(2003)
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Lisa Rosman
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In interviews, writer/director Sofia Coppola has said she wrote the part of Harris for Murray, and it makes sense. He's the perfect candidate to paint a portrait of resignation and still render it funny.
Posted Nov 20, 2003
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X2
(2003)
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Lisa Rosman
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This is a major Hollywood movie, I thought, and it's successfully sending up the oppressor, not the oppressed.
Posted Nov 20, 2003
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Adaptation
(2002)
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Lisa Rosman
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Right now, we are drowning in metaculture. We have enough analysis in lieu of action, enough pondering in lieu of producing -- enough futile idling at the gate. The last thing we need are metamovies, especially ones that put us down for watching them.
Posted Feb 11, 2003
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