No longer the Cynic.
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Beyond the Hills 2012
Following his landmark Palme d'Or win for 2007's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and preceding his shared Best Director win for Graduation, Cristian Mungiu found just as much success at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012 with Beyond the Hills, not only scooping up the Best Screenplay award for himself, but also netting his pair of leading performers the prize for Best Actress. With a style as unapologetically direct and unapproachable as Mungiu's, it's a wonder that the…
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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 2022
Multiverse films are (thankfully) not as widespread as the same MCU that has invested quite a bit of stock into them lately, but in the past 6 months, the number of good multiverse films has impressively doubled. That figure seems less impressive when that doubled figure amounts to a whopping two films, but in the first half of 2022, Everything Everywhere All at Once ecstatically joined the lonely ranks of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Of course, the Spider-Man film that…
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Triangle of Sadness 2022
No one has ever accused Ruben Östlund of being "too quiet" with his satirical voice, and with the increasing obviousness of his targets (his last one literally being the world of high art), it was only a matter of time before the Swedish observer of human behaviour and culture would turn his trigger towards the inherent vapidity of the modelling world. In actuality, Triangle of Sadness merely uses its dead-eyed model couple as a gateway to examine a broader section…
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One Fine Morning 2022
Mia Hansen-Løve constructs her stories like she’s transcribing a laidback Sunday afternoon into film form. It’s the kind of Sunday afternoon where you go for a walk, visit your parents, and maybe get some last-minute work done between naps and casual extramarital affairs. With a title like “One Fine Morning,” you would expect Hansen-Løve to keep up that Sunday afternoon (morning) vibe, but while these unhurried quotidian activities do make up the bulk of this runtime, this mundane schedule also…
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Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom 2019
Let this be a lesson to all you self-proclaimed Oscar pundits out there: no matter how airtight the perceived top 5 list for International Feature may be, always expect whichever committee votes on these nominees to throw in at least one curveball to fuck with everybody! This year, I learned that lesson the hard way when perhaps the easiest slam dunk category of the year was upended with the untimely demise of Asghar Farhadi's best movie in almost a decade.…
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Stars at Noon 2022
Muted reactions to Claire Denis’s latest equally muted “romance” may leave some hesitant to venture into her second(!) film of 2022, but for all intents and purposes, Stars at Noon checks all the Denis boxes. More precisely, Stars at Noon checks off several boxes very specific to Denis’ past work. A character motivation that strongly echoes White Material; a tender dance scene at a bar with heavy shades or 35 Shots of Rum; and the colonial/political background reminiscent of… pretty much…
