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FIVE STARS
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The Piano Teacher
(2001)
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Cole Smithey
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Although he is retired, Michael Haneke's films remain a beacon of hope in Cinema. Here is a true filmic poet with wisdom and insights that become crystal clear through his provocative and controversial films.
Posted Jul 05, 2025
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THREE STARS
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Beyond the Gaze: Jule Campbell's Swimsuit Issue
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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Jule Campbell's female gaze had a humanitarian purity about it. This doc has more than a few lessons of editorial wisdom to impart to its audience.
Establishing trust is always the first step toward any form of fruitful communication.
Posted Jun 29, 2025
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TWO STARS
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Friendship
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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The movie's overriding theme could well be that spectrum narcissists are the new real-life villains making the world hell for the rest of us.
Don't go mushroom hunting with them, or anyone else for that matter really.
Posted Jun 08, 2025
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FOUR STARS
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The Surfer
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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"The Surfer" is a gnarly social satire that gives food for thought about any man's quest for peace and civility.
Posted May 15, 2025
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FIVE STARS
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The Penguin Lessons
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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Director Peter Cattaneo ("The Full Monty") captures every microscopic nuance of comedy, tragedy, satire, romance, and mystery in this wonderful movie.
Impressive.
Posted Mar 30, 2025
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ONE STAR
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Black Bag
(2025)
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Cole Smithey
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If ever there was a movie seemingly written by A.I. "Black Bag" is it.
Posted Mar 09, 2025
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TWO STARS
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Nosferatu
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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I suppose this film's tag line, "Succumb to the Darkness" is an apt sentiment in the age of global warming and yet another Trump era.
This vampire movie is perfectly watchable; you may feel inclined to nap during it. Don't worry, you won't miss much.
Posted Jan 19, 2025
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FIVE STARS
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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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Director/co-writer Nick Park and his brilliant team of animators deliver the most delightful children's comedy you could ever imagine.
What joy springs from this delightful movie.
I'd watch it again right now!
Love it to pieces.
Posted Jan 13, 2025
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ZERO STARS
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The Brutalist
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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"The Brutalist" is an exploitation movie in love with its own misery.
No amount of editing or color-correcting can save this film from itself.
Victim-hood is its own reward.
Save the back-slapping for Sean Baker's "Anora."
Posted Jan 11, 2025
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FIVE STARS
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The Substance
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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Here is a whole lot of movie with some very poignant ideas about culture.
"The Substance" explodes with wit, heart, soul, and a whole lot of blood and guts.
What fun!
Posted Jan 06, 2025
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TWO STARS
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Juror #2
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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Clint Eastwood's promising courtroom drama loses to a last scene misstep that costs the picture everything.
Posted Jan 04, 2025
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FIVE STARS
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Hard Truths
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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Audience tears flow freely during this cathartic reflection on mental illness and the effects it has on others.
I dare say "Hard Truths" carries the potential power to alter the relationship behavior of its audience.
You will feel the feeling.
Posted Dec 15, 2024
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ZERO STARS
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Queer
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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"Queer" searches for a story, but never finds one.
Posted Dec 15, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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The Magician
(1958)
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Cole Smithey
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This lush film is a stone-cold classic by any measure.
"The Magician" is a really fun movie to return to time and time again. There's just so much cinematic magic to savor.
Posted Oct 24, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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Anora
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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You can easily tell in its first 15 minutes why "Anora" won the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes.
"Anora" is a winner, and an instant classic of American Independent Cinema.
Posted Oct 14, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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I Married a Witch
(1942)
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Cole Smithey
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"I Married A Witch" is a high concept movie, especially for 1942. The picture carries a Frenchness in its lighthearted attitudes regarding relations between men and the women who enchant them.
Posted Oct 12, 2024
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TWO STARS
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Malevolent
(2018)
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Cole Smithey
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"Malevolent" is based on the novel "Hush" by Konstantopoulos, although you'd never guess that this lightweight ghost story/slasher pic was based on novelistic source material.
Posted Oct 05, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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Apartment 7A
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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Co-writer/director Natalie Erika James ("Relic") delivers a fierce pro-abortion horror prequel to "Rosemary's Baby" that twists a cinematic knife into the MAGA conspirators that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Posted Oct 03, 2024
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FOUR STARS
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House on Haunted Hill
(1959)
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Cole Smithey
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William Castle's 1959 B-Movie horror classic retains its goofy charm with a litany of gimmicky sight gags that, however tame by today's standards, keep their childish appeal.
Posted Oct 02, 2024
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ZERO STARS
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Caligula: The Ultimate Cut
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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Thomas Neogovan makes a punk move by attempting to usurp the original version for his own stupid ego. Foolio.
Here is sexploitation in reverse.
Don't waste your time on this wrongheaded exercise in entropy.
Posted Sep 29, 2024
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FOUR STARS
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Midsommar
(2019)
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Cole Smithey
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All you need to know going into this transgressive (if surrealistic) film is that it covers: animal abuse, cannibalism, incest, suicide, matricide, homicide, and some serious fucking.
My work here is done.
Get thee thinking cap on.
Posted Sep 28, 2024
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FOUR STARS
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Rated X
(2000)
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Cole Smithey
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Tasteful, dramatic, and fascinating, "Rated X" is a damned good movie that is sorely overlooked.
This is one wild ride of a biopic.
Posted Sep 26, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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The Bikeriders
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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Primary to Jeff Nichols's brilliant five-act film is the female perspective of its protagonist Kathy. Jodie Comer gives an Oscar-worthy performance that defies all expectation.
Posted Sep 21, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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In Praise of Love
(2001)
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Cole Smithey
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Jean-Luc Godard takes a steely knife to Stephen Spielberg, who he detests with an obvious fury.
Love isn't all that Godard is praising.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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The Fall Guy
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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Fast, sexy, hilarious, and endlessly entertaining, "The Fall Guy" is a true masterpiece regardless of whether its the short or long version that you see.
Posted Sep 09, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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Blaze
(2018)
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Cole Smithey
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Director Ethan Hawke does the memory of Blues singer/songwriter Blaze Foley justice in this transfixing biopic.
The life of a troubadour is always a difficult one. Blaze Foley was up to the challenge.
Posted Sep 02, 2024
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FOUR STARS
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The Legend of Hell House
(1973)
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Cole Smithey
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Many of the plot and design elements used in this influential genre film went on to be quoted, if not expanded on, by budding young horror directors in love with its artfulness.
"The Legend of Hell House" is a minor masterpiece.
Posted Aug 20, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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The Machinist
(2004)
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Cole Smithey
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"The Machinist" is a well-crafted psychological thriller about self-deception and tragedy, told against an eerie landscape of terrifying dislocation and isolation.
This is one effed up horror movie.
Posted Aug 04, 2024
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THREE STARS
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The Trout
(1982)
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Cole Smithey
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While "La Truite" seems on its surface to be a shallow character study of a judgemental young woman playing power games on an international chess board, the movie gets at unwritten agreements between men and women.
Peut-etre. Jamais.
Posted Aug 03, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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Hit Man
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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"Hitman" comes at right time.
Posted Jul 28, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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The Old Oak
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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Socialism is everywhere you look.
Paved streets, street lights, bridges, plumbing and running water, are all socialist constructs.
Getting your head out of your ass is just the first step toward a better world.
"The Old Oak" is a fine place to start.
Posted Jul 01, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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In the Mood for Love
(2000)
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Cole Smithey
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The film's indisputable beauty radiates with a burning glow that emanates from its charismatic lead actors.
"In The Mood For Love" was an instant classic when it premiered at Cannes in 2000. It remains Wong Kar Wai's finest cinematic achievement.
Posted Jul 01, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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Brats
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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There are many life lessons to be learned from this very polished documentary about a generation of actors who didn't have the proper tools at the time to deal with a cloaked attack from the media.
Generation X lives on!
Posted Jun 23, 2024
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ZERO STARS
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Kinds of Kindness
(2024)
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Cole Smithey
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If you are going to punish your audience, there ought to be a good reason for it. You will find no such purpose in "Kinds of Kindness" unless you are willing to put yourself through days of mental gymnastics.
Posted Jun 21, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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Working Girls
(1986)
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Cole Smithey
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"Working Girls" could easily be adapted to be a modernday Broadway play.
It would be a sensation for its timeless qualities of social, sexual, and economic truth.
Posted Jun 16, 2024
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TWO STARS
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Oppenheimer
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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What promises to be Christopher Nolan's first cinematic masterpiece, evaporates before our eyes.
Posted Mar 24, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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Anatomy of a Fall
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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Ice is the only thing in the world that is what it's cracked up to be, until blood melts it, that is.
Such is the set up for this brilliantly written and directed courtroom drama.
Sandra Hüller gives a riveting performance.
Posted Mar 22, 2024
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ONE STAR
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Killers of the Flower Moon
(2023)
|
Cole Smithey
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Lily Gladston's performance is the only reason to see this movie.
"Killers of the Flower Moon" is a grueling, punishing experience to sit through.
Anyone with a half a brain could edit an hour out of this movie, blindfolded.
Posted Mar 18, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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Poor Things
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
|
"Poor Things" coincides with Emerld Fennell's "Saltburn" in confronting Hollywood's gun-happy format with something considerably more grounded, namely the sex urge that drives people, and the social curiosity that comes along with it.
Posted Mar 18, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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American Fiction
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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2023 stands as perhaps the best year for satire.
"American Fiction" puts a fine point on that fact with a laugh-out-loud movie that covers a lot of satirical ground.
Perfection.
Posted Mar 17, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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The Holdovers
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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"The Holdovers" should become a holiday movie classic for audiences to return to every Thanksgiving to keep some perspective on human nature, hypocrisy, and the importance of having a warm heart and a calm mind.
Posted Mar 17, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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Saltburn
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
|
Writer/director Emerald Fennell helps usher in 2023 as the year that Cinema vaulted back to life, with a transgressive black comedy that splashes cum-soaked mud on corporate cinema with tireless glee.
Comic book movies be damned.
Posted Mar 11, 2024
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ONE STAR
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Maestro
(2023)
|
Cole Smithey
|
Perhaps there's room for a gay #MeToo movement.
Here is a film that needed a serious rewrite, much tighter editing, and direction by a filmmaker other than Bradley Cooper.
At least "Maestro" is an easy movie to forget.
Posted Feb 16, 2024
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ZERO STARS
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Asteroid City
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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How far the mediocre have fallen.
Here is a movie you'll feel better about walking out on before it begins, than you will wasting the fifteen minutes it takes you to realize what a disastrous piece of inert garbage it truly is.
Still, walk out you will.
Posted Jan 13, 2024
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FIVE STARS
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American Boy: A Profile of: Steven Prince
(1978)
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Cole Smithey
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I won't spoil any of the shock of hearing these tales for the first time, but suffice it to say any of Steven's stories would make great audition monologues for any actor willing to do his or her homework.
I love this movie! You just might love it too!
Posted Dec 27, 2023
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LESS THAN ZERO STARS
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Barbie
(2023)
|
Cole Smithey
|
"Barbie" is to feminism as a wrench is to a cat.
Extermination of rational thought is this commercial's goal.
Toxic.
"Barbie" is a chunky diarrhea stain on humanity.
Greta Gerwig is a hack screenwriter, and a remedial filmmaker at best.
Posted Dec 22, 2023
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FIVE STARS
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May December
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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Todd Haynes has crafted the best movie of 2023.
Mind-blowing.
If ever there was, or is, a filmic antidote to the corporate gaslighting garbage that a movie such as "Barbie" represents, "May December" is it.
Prepare to be transformed.
Posted Dec 09, 2023
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FIVE STARS
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Gaslight
(1944)
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Cole Smithey
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If you haven't yet seen "Gaslight," you are in for a rare treat. You'll certainly be keenly aware of other's attempts at leading you down a path of self-doubt.
Posted Dec 05, 2023
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FIVE STARS
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Sam Now
(2022)
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Cole Smithey
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What begins as a deeply personal coming-of-age adventure, evolves into a macro-micro study of the generational effects of abandonment.
It may be a bitter pill, but this brilliant movie conveys things that only documentary Cinema can capture and express.
Posted Nov 14, 2023
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FIVE STARS
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Rustin
(2023)
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Cole Smithey
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Magnificent.
Director George Wolfe hits another one out of the park on the heels of his perfect "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom."
Coleman Domingo gives a tour de force performance.
This is Coleman Domingo's moment!
Posted Nov 12, 2023
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