Film

Film Review: “Amar Singh Chamkila” — A Spirited Showbiz Biography

April 14, 2024
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“Amar Singh Chamkila” doesn’t hit the compelling heights of “Highway” and “Tanasha,” but the director Imtiaz Ali successfully infuses — within the limits of the musical biopic — a buoyant, rebellious spirit.

Film Review: “La Chimera” — A Celebration of Etruscan Grit and Glory

April 12, 2024
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If “La Chimera” is a bit harder to penetrate than the director-writer’s previous works, it boasts some captivating passages and raises pertinent questions about art, history, globalism, and national identity.

Film Review: “The Beast” Is a Bungle

April 11, 2024
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Who would predict that this perfectly calibrated tale would be yanked out of its early 20th century setting and become dystopian science-fiction?

Film Review: “Civil War” Crimes — A Boutique Catastrophe

April 10, 2024
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In this dreamworld, the politics don’t matter. It’s the artfully gruesome spectacle that counts — that and the hackneyed Hollywood storyline about the hardened veteran mentoring the neophyte through an initiation into the harsh realities of the profession.

Film Review: “Farewell, Mr. Haffmann” — Selling the Family Jewels

April 6, 2024
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This is a tense morality play, with twists odd enough (and a palette dark enough) to sustain a noir-inflected thriller of almost two hours.

Doc Talk: Wicked Queer at 40 — Embracing the Imagination

April 5, 2024
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Transformative narratives shape the documentaries in the 40th annual Wicked Queer Film Festival.

Film Reviews: April’s Streaming Docs

April 5, 2024
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By Neil Giordano A selection of notable documentaries currently in the digital universe: Christian missionaries, high school athletics, and a trio of filmmakers who mess with Texas. A familiar story — a young man on a quixotic quest that ends in tragedy — takes a new turn in National Geographic’s The Mission (Hulu, Disney+), a…

Film Review: “Femme” — Dominating the Dominator

April 5, 2024
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“Femme” proves that finessing the depiction of a toxic romance can lead to some ugly places.

Film Review: “No Other Land” — In The West Bank, Seizing Land and Smashing Cameras

March 29, 2024
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Watch “Five Broken Cameras” as “No Other Land” finds its way to festivals beyond Berlin. By then, the forced displacement of people in the West Bank will look gentle compared to the relentless siege of Gaza.

Film Review: “Asphalt City” — Paramedics on the Mean Streets

March 29, 2024
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The director did his research: he rode with EMTs so the Asphalt City’s grim vision is real and convincingly ramped up.

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