Popular reviews

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  Review by Chris Evangelista ★★★ 3

  Jessica Chastain snorting coke and wearing sexy shoes, that's cinema, baby.

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  Review by Patrick Willems ★★★

  Oh so it’s The White Lotus: Morocco

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  Review by B E R T ★ 1

  What a misfire this is. A drama film that actually has the script of a comedy, a comedy that isn’t funny, just awkward. It’s trying to go for a White Lotus/ Triangle of Sadness type of satire and fails massively. The best part of this was Matt Smith and Caleb Landry Jones as a bitchy gay couple, actually the cinematography was nice too, and the Aussie character having her luggage in a Coles reusable bag was hilarious, the rest, pretty bad.



  Glad I saw this for free, thanks to Universal for the hookup even though the film was below sub-par.

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  Review by sara ★★ 1

  two stars for jessica chastain literally doing whatever the fuck she wants in this movie

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  Review by Cinematic Underdogs ★★★★ 7

  John Michael McDonagh (Cavalry, The Guard, War on Everyone) has added another effective deconstruction of Western “morality” and classism to his resume. This may be his best film yet. I must admit I was primed to like this — having spent a month circling the salty ramparts of Essaouira, the opulent bazaars of Marrakech, the Saharan sands of Merzouga, the labyrinthine medinas of Fez, the baby blue corridors of Chefchaouen, and the tattered Interzone of modern day Tangiers. That said, my firsthand familiarity with the topography, the tensions between local vendors & the petite bourgeoisie, the contrasts between dusty encampments & elaborately palatial/arabesque riads, the stringent customs of nomadic Berbers, the soothing mint teas/hearty tajines, and the subtle exploitations by the French…

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  Review by Matt Neglia ★★★

  THE FORGIVEN has an intriguing setup in a gorgeous setting but John Michael McDonagh’s screenplay on class, privilege, fate & forgiveness lacks the punch & bite of his previous films. Ralph Fiennes’ story is more compelling than Jessica Chastain’s while Ismael Kanater outshines them both. A slight disappointment considering what this could’ve been.

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  Review by JBird ★★★ 1

  Ralph Fiennes and his wife Chastain,
  Will do their best to explain.
  But she's in the habit,
  Hangs out with Abbott,
  Who's kind of hard to abstain.

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★½ 2

  Like a lot of John Michael McDonagh films, The Forgiven forces us to spend time with bad people. It's a prickly film that looks at society's monsters, namely the privileged and uncaring. It consists mostly of posh characters being loathsome or irritating. However The Forgiven is perhaps not as cynical as it initially appears. At times it appears destined to fall into the trope of white characters in Africa discovering their morality, but the film seems to be more subtle. It is not so much the redemption of a bad man but a long re-evaluation of who he is. The central arc is impressively done and carefully executed. It all culminates in a horribly obvious ending, but for a good…

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  Review by Logan Van Winkle ★★ 3

  During a scene where Ralph Fiennes and Ismael Kanater were talking about Elvis, I could hear Jailhouse Rock blasting from the next theater over. That was the most interesting moment in this movie.

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  Review by Jason Huang (黃擎元) ★★ 2

  Gorgeous looking film, and I am a sucker for all them NEON LIGHTS, but man, I felt like this amounted to very little. John Michael McDonagh and his brother (the Oscar-winning[?] Martin McDonagh) have a very similar sense of humor, but this one just didn't get me to laugh as much as brother Martin's films.

  And it didn't have to be a comedy either, but the plot just felt kind of hollow to me. Two hours of people chilling at a beautiful town while Ralph Fiennes' character tries to atone for his sins elsewhere. I barely have anything to say about it because it just didn't resonate much with me. Sad about this one, to be honest.

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  Review by joshrowley ★★★★ 3

  Dark; humorous; interesting; pointed; smart; truthful; unpredictable; well-acted; well-scored; well-shot; well-written.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★½ 3

  49/100

  Alternate Ending review. Filmmakers, please stop using the lyrics of your needle drops (a diegetic one, here) to communicate characters' emotions. Let Fiennes just show us that he is tired, he is weary, he could sleep for a thousand years.