A well-acted courtroom drama, with a little formal showboating and pretensions towards philosophical character study, but nothing more than that.
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The Zone of Interest 2023
The most interesting thing I have seen anyone do with the medium in quite a while, creating a shadow film in which every image has a dark twin, and challenging us not to zone in on what’s before us and tune out of formless noise.
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Ghost World 2001
You can take your Juno, your Scott Pilgrim, even your Heathers, and chuck them in a skip, because Ghost World just does it all so much better. Well, all of it that's worth doing. I'm beginning to think this melancholy, bitingly hilarious crystallisation of teen ennui might be the only film I'll ever really need.
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Sideways 2004
Wine is probably the most boring subject on Earth, so how come Payne’s film about a lonely, bitter best man (Paul Giamatti) taking the soon-to-be-groom (Thomas Haden Church) on a week-long tour of vineyards is so bloody good? Perhaps because of Giamatti’s astonishing characterisation, which imbues an arrogant, self-destructive, self-hating pseud with a completely disarming humanity. Or perhaps because it’s not really about wine at all, but love and friendship and the choices that people make that end up deciding…