When Marnie Was There
In 2014 the world got a little less interesting with the retirement of one of the greatest directors of the moving picture. Animation’s greatest auteur, Hayao Miyazaki, announced he was…
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Just Mercy
Reproductive justice. Climate justice. Food justice. Social justice. Append the word “justice” to any other word and you’ve got a ready-made brand platform for niche activism. As cultural forces shape…
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I lost my body (J’ai perdu mon corps)
J’Ai Perdu Mon Corps (I Lost My Body) played during the Milwaukee Film Festival in 2019. I only got to a couple films this year, but it’s always a joy…
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Under the Shadow (زیر سایه)
The “haunted house” trope – an abandoned Victorian mansion sitting alone in the middle of a great estate or a crumbling castle on a rain-swept hillside – has been urbanized…
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Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)
Let the Right One In is a foreign, art-house, vampire film starring a bunch of weird-looking Swedish kids. But also it’s a haunting look at isolation, childhood trauma and intimacy…
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A Dark Song
If occult magic had real power, what would it take to achieve it? If humanity could summon and control transcendent spirits, would the process be painless? Empowering? Academic? A Dark…
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
My Spider-Man was the 1981 “Spider-Friends” version, complete with invented sidekicks, incomprehensible Saturday morning subplots, shoddy animation, and a little dog too (spoiler: they were all killed off by a…
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A Quiet Place
A young family faces the horrors of an unearthly enemy where even the smallest sound means a gruesome death. Actor/director John Krasinski (yes, it’s a bearded Jim from The Office)…
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Coco
Pixar’s latest is a masterpiece of animation and storytelling with it’s characteristic warmth and humor wrapped in a no-cliches, culturally-specific narrative. The story takes place in Mexico, features an all-Latino…
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A Ghost Story
A shimmer of light against a dark wall, a softly shutting door in an empty room, a sudden wakefulness and knocking in the night. Why do houses become haunted? What…
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