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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A
Paterson
“Say it! No ideas but in things. Mr. Paterson has gone away to rest and write.” – William Carlos Williams, Paterson (1946-1958) Why is Adam Driver a leading man? He’s…
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Ghost in the Shell (1995)
In post-war Japan, rebuilding quickly meant embracing new technologies. Every decade brought more advancements and a deeper integration of burgeoning computer power. The high-tech future, always a part of Japanese popular imagination, became…
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Arrival
There’s been some debate about how the studio cut the trailers for Arrival: more Independence Day than The Fountain. For such a minimalist, quiet film it seems the editors managed…
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Kubo and the Two Strings
A one-eyed boy, a giant beetle, a samurai snow monkey and a magical shamisen with the power to manipulate paper. Now mix it together with some of the most beautiful…
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B
The Boy and the Beast
American animated films tend to be formulaic slapstick. Of course this is Disney’s fault, but it’s also because we consider cartoons to be “for children,” therefore they must be easy…
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The Jungle Book
“Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky…” begins Kipling’s poem in the original Jungle Book. The Law of the Jungle…
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B-
Batman v Superman
I swear there was a period in the middle of the movie where no one talked for like 30 minutes. There was just a series of barely-cohesive shots of people…
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10 Cloverfield Lane
Is Cloverfield 2: The Clovering a true sequel? Is it part of a broader, under-the-radar, Twilight Zone-style anthology from the mind of J.J. Abrams? Is it a character-driven thriller with…
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A
Creed
There’s a Simpsons gag* where Bart has to solve a puzzle using Roman numerals and he uses the only modern-day frame of reference he has: Rocky movie titles. The punchline,…
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