A
Phantom Thread
This may be a bit of a spoiler alert, but there’s a moment in Phantom Thread where Reynolds Woodcock sees a ghost. It’s not particularly frightening, though you could be…
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Novitiate / Hostiles / Call Me by Your Name
Welcome to another edition of Mini-Review Roundup where we present smaller reviews of several movies at once. Up this month: Novitiate, Hostiles, and Call Me by Your Name. Novitiate…
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A-
Mudbound
As a child, like many others, I loved to play in the mud. We had a “sandpile” next to our barn that was about 25% sand with the rest dirt,…
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The Post
Is there any director with a more impressive filmography than Steven Spielberg? He defined our childhood, explored every genre, invented the blockbuster, and delivered masterpieces worthy of any top ten…
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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+
A Christmas Carol (1951)
“We spirits of Christmas do not live only 1 day of our year, we live the whole 365. So is it true of the child born in Bethlehem: He does…
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B+
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
Holiday movies are often based around the importance of family and the simple truth that family is often more dysfunctional than we’d like. Consider A Christmas Story or It’s a…
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Black Girl
“Some boomerang, this story,” an inspector observes, in the novella Black Girl by Ousmane Sembéne, which he adapted for film. I won’t reveal the scene of the crime, but the…
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The Shape of Water
You’d be forgiven for writing off Guillermo del Toro as just another genre director. Entries like Hellboy, Blade Runner II, Pacific Rim, and Crimson Peak fit neatly in that vein….
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A
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
As the title states, there are 3 billboards outside the fictional town of Ebbing, Missouri. They work in concert with each other, the blood red background and white lettering impossible…
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