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A Different Man
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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[An] absorbing story, splendidly written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, about an urban loner struggling with life.
Posted Oct 09, 2024
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3/5
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The Goldman Case
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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It is shot in a grainy documentary-style and is all the better for it, as it builds to a climax that is genuinely enthralling.
Posted Sep 25, 2024
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3/5
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The Substance
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Yet for all its dystopian grisliness, Oscar Wilde would have recognised this story, which echoes The Picture Of Dorian Gray, but of course has particular resonance in today's looks-obsessed society.
Posted Sep 25, 2024
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4/5
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His Three Daughters
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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Whether Jacobs wove this story out of personal experience or just his keen observation of other people, I don't know. Either way, he writes beautifully for women.
Posted Sep 25, 2024
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4/5
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The Critic
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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Tucker directs very adroitly, the period detail is meticulous and a fabulous supporting cast also includes Manville as Nina's interfering mother and Garai as Brooke's imperious daughter. But the movie belongs to McKellen.
Posted Sep 25, 2024
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3/5
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Reawakening
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Writer-director Virginia Gilbert doesn't quite succeed in keeping this wholly credible, but the excellent performances keep it on track.
Posted Sep 13, 2024
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4/5
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Speak No Evil
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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... An increasingly exhilarating ride.
Posted Sep 13, 2024
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4/5
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Queer
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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If there’d been a decidedly rakish gay theme in Greene’s novels about Latin America in the mid-20th century, this film would feel like being plunged into one of them. You can almost feel the heat, taste the chillis, smell the perspiration.
Posted Sep 06, 2024
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4/5
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Joker: Folie à Deux
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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The film is audaciously different in style from the original, not quite as electrifying, but bold and brilliant all the same.
Posted Sep 04, 2024
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2/5
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Maria
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Jolie’s ‘tour de force’ keeps all this watchable... But Maria too often slumps when it should sizzle.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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2/5
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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Beetlejuice was very much of its time: a camp, vampy, Reagan-era mickey-take of yuppies and consumerism. Hard as screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar strain to imbue this sequel with the same spirit, they don't really pull it off.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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The Instigators
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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A comedy heist thriller set in Boston that doesn’t thrill, isn’t especially funny, and come to think of it, doesn’t contain much of a heist, although I think the Boston locations are real.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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Borderlands
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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I suppose it’s even possible that some folk might look beyond the shamelessly derivative nods to other sci-fi films and find some originality in this movie. That’s the really challenging quest.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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3/5
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Babes
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Pamela Adlon’s mostly assured directing debut, Babes is also a comedy, occasionally genuinely uproarious and sometimes, frankly, too coarsely scatological to be even slightly amusing.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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3/5
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It Ends With Us
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Anyway, it doesn’t really matter that It Ends With Us is cheesier than a wheel of Camembert and shallower than a toddler’s paddling pool because, you see, there’s a twist on its way.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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Kensuke's Kingdom
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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With a top-notch voice cast and a script by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Kensuke's Kingdom promises rather more than it delivers.
Posted Aug 08, 2024
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2/5
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Harold and the Purple Crayon
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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An option for much younger children, Harold And The Purple Crayon is based on the book of the same name... Carlos Saldanha's film, alas, makes scarcely any attempt to recreate its spirit.
Posted Aug 08, 2024
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4/5
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Dìdi
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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A funny, poignant, piercingly well-observed coming-of-age drama that will appeal not just to older teenagers but to many grown-ups who still vividly remember the torments of those years...
Posted Aug 08, 2024
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5/5
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Chariots of Fire
(1981)
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Brian Viner
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Chariots Of Fire is one of the glories of British cinema...
Posted Aug 08, 2024
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2/5
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The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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My advice is to read the book instead. It's terrific.
Posted Aug 08, 2024
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3/5
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Deadpool & Wolverine
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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It is superhero cinema at its smirkiest...
Posted Aug 08, 2024
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4/5
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The Nature of Love
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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It's a funny, smart, sexy film.
Posted Jul 05, 2024
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5/5
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The Conversation
(1974)
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Brian Viner
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The Conversation gives a fascinating insight into America at that time, as well as showcasing movie-acting at its finest...
Posted Jul 05, 2024
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3/5
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MaXXXine
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Still, it's imaginative and energetic, with a cracking 1980s soundtrack that ends, neatly enough, with the Kim Carnes hit Bette Davis Eyes.
Posted Jul 05, 2024
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3/5
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Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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And yet it's genuine fun, all the same, and an ideal platform for Murphy, an evergreen 63, to show that as cocksure Axel Foley he still commands the screen with that matchless ability to play for laughs and thrills at the same time.
Posted Jul 05, 2024
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3/5
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Under Paris
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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In any case, it's done with Olympian panache, and if the film — which stars Bérénice Bejo — is in parts shamelessly derivative of Jaws, it is also audaciously original and, better still, great fun.
Posted Jun 24, 2024
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4/5
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Something in the Water
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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It's very well done, with some spectacular overhead shots — whether from helicopters or drones is hard to say these days — that convey brilliantly the nightmare of what it must be like to be stranded at sea.
Posted Jun 24, 2024
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2/5
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Federer: Twelve Final Days
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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A behind-the-scenes documentary that is really just an 88-minute rhapsody... enjoyable enough, if you revere the lachrymose tennis icon, but still too adoring by half.
Posted Jun 24, 2024
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1/5
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Megalopolis
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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On the whole, it's a desperately portentous affair, which makes you wonder whether the cast truly believed in the material, or whether they were content just to be working for the great Francis Ford Coppola?
Posted May 17, 2024
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5/5
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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[Furiosa] is stunning on the eye, decidedly loud on the ear, and a thousand-watt jolt to the spirits. I loved it.
Posted May 15, 2024
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3/5
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The Fall Guy
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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... Its big achievement is in putting Gosling and Blunt together for the first time. They have proper screen chemistry.
Posted May 03, 2024
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There’s Still Tomorrow
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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A picture of tremendous, sometimes whimsical charm and not a little mischief, filmed in black-and-white in the style of great works of Italian neorealism such as Rossellini's 1945 masterpiece, Rome... to which it would make a perfect companion piece.
Posted Apr 27, 2024
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2/5
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Ordinary Angels
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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It's billed as a 'faith-based' film, which usually means saccharine or maudlin, but Swank gives it a measure of credibility.
Posted Apr 27, 2024
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4/5
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Challengers
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Challengers is not a classic, and might not even be one of Guadagnino's best three movies, but it's bright, sexy, witty and fun...
Posted Apr 27, 2024
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1/5
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Back to Black
(2024)
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Peter Hoskin
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All of the usual sins of biopics are committed here – only more so. We rush so quickly from Winehouse's becardiganed early years to her mid-noughties pomp to her alcohol-induced demise that we barely get to know her and those around her.
Posted Apr 09, 2024
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1/5
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The Trouble with Jessica
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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All this is presumably meant as a satire on the middle classes, but actually the big middle-class joke is the film itself: clunkily theatrical, with horrible, complacent characters...
Posted Apr 05, 2024
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4/5
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The First Omen
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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It's a nuttily compelling premise, what you might call the Devil and the Holy See, and Arkasha Stevenson's film realises it splendidly.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
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2/5
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Monkey Man
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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On the other hand, the way Monkey Man all but fetishises extreme violence raises the suspicion that the other stuff is just an excuse for him to unleash his inner Bruce Lee.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
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4/5
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Scoop
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Scoop is never more electrifying than when it finally arrives at the only part of the story we already know intimately, the interview itself, with all its extraordinary minutiae... It is very carefully and convincingly recreated.
Posted Apr 04, 2024
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1/5
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Irish Wish
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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It's ghastly from start to finish, but there is some vague fun in counting the Emerald Isle cliches, which pile up like empty Guinness glasses in Scruffy Murphy's bar.
Posted Mar 15, 2024
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4/5
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Copa 71
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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A terrific documentary, Copa 71 sets the record straight...
Posted Mar 15, 2024
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3/5
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Red Island
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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This engagingly quirky (and visually stunning) French-language drama is set on a French air force base in Madagascar in the early 1970s, where the former colonisers continue to assert their control over the now-independent.
Posted Mar 01, 2024
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4/5
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Dune: Part Two
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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It was terrific, but exhausting, laboriously introducing us to the inter-planetary empire Herbert imagined, and the various dynasties grappling for power or simply survival.
Posted Mar 01, 2024
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3/5
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Bob Marley: One Love
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Is this love? And worship, yes.
Posted Feb 12, 2024
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4/5
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The Iron Claw
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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Wonderfully acted across the board, The Iron Claw is a tremendous drama about one benighted family, but it also makes us think about our own clan dynamics.
Posted Feb 12, 2024
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4/5
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Migration
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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It's all extremely jaunty and colourful, with some great flights of fancy and smart one-liners to keep adult chaperones happy (I loved Awkwafina's 'sorry for busting your bills').
Posted Feb 02, 2024
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3/5
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Argylle
(2024)
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Brian Viner
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Clocking in at just under two-and-a-half hours, it does start to feel like a bit of an endurance test after a while. But in the nick of time the whole spectacle is lifted by a couple of genuinely exhilarating, laugh-out-loud action sequences.
Posted Feb 02, 2024
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4/5
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American Fiction
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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American Fiction reminded me strongly both of The Producers (1967) and Tootsie (1982), which is never a bad thing. But, while there are some hilarious moments, it is a darker film than either.
Posted Feb 02, 2024
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4/5
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All of Us Strangers
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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I found heaps of resonance in All Of Us Strangers, yet watched in admiration rather than adoration, tremendously engaged but not enormously moved.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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3/5
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The Color Purple
(2023)
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Brian Viner
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There are certainly a few splendid scenes, although the greatest thing about this over-long musical might be the producers: Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Quincy Jones.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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