Christopher Nolan is like “a timber wolf,” said Robert Downey Jr., Nolan’s star in “Oppenheimer.” And in a funny yet sincere speech in which Downey teased and feted Nolan at Sundance’s opening night awards gala, he hailed Nolan “as independent a voice as ever existed in cinema while telling stories that remind us of the interdependency of the human experience.” …
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There’s nothing so freaky about “Freaky Tales,” Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s sci-fi omnibus ode to ‘80s cinema nostalgia that takes the definition of “derivative,” packages a bunch of retro cinematic references smugly into winky “you get it, right?” pastiche, and stretches it to its furthest possible event horizon. The problem with structuring your film around four interlocking chapters, each …
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A dryly succinct but thoroughly convincing Netflix documentary about the corruptive history of American policing, Yance Ford’s “Power” articulates in the clearest possible terms how 18th century slave patrols and the frontier militias that followed paved the way for a modern police state so violent and unregulated that no democracy would consciously think to invent it. It begins with a …
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“We’re not what we were.” “There is no good death.” “You want to see what’s going to happen to the ones you love.” Writer/director Josh Margolin squeezes surprisingly funny freshness from the musty themes of aging, death, and lost autonomy in his poignantly written “Thelma,” a seriocomic “Mission Impossible” remix that casts June Squibb as the titular action hero in …
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Winner of the U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2020, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ “Boys State” embodied the best and worst of the eponymous tradition that it captured on camera: An annual leadership program, funded by the American Legion and held in almost all 50 states since the 1930s, in which 1,000 or so hyper-ambitious teenage …
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The summer of 2020 shouldn’t project beautiful memories onto the brain maps of those who endured it, but Theda Hammel’s anxiety-addled screwball feature debut “Stress Positions,” set around that COVID Fourth of July in New York, asks you to relive the scary days of sheltering in place, banging pots and pans in solidarity with health care workers, and social distancing …
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In 2023, it’s up to young queer filmmakers to turn their cameras away from the trauma narratives that have so far mostly defined LGBTQ filmmaking and instead toward its potential for joyful expression and celebration. For cynics with a wary brow toward being uplifted, your mileage may vary for 1990-born drag performer turned filmmaker Amrou Al-Kadhi’s “Layla,” an exuberant appreciation …
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Oscar-winning “My Octopus Teacher” documentarian Pippa Ehrlich is one of the voices behind a surprise A24 doc, streaming quietly on Prime Video since Friday, January 12. Titled “My Mercury,” the film follows then-28-year-old conservationist Yves Chesselet, who sheds the comforts of modern living to relocate to the remote Mercury Island off the coast of Namibia. Chesselet is determined to bring …
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In some movies, the quest for immortality is about escaping death. But the new Sundance documentary “Love Machina” is a different take. For Dr. Martine and Bina Rothblatt, the couple at the heart of the film, it’s about prolonging love. “There’s an energy when Martine and Bina walk in a room. You feel it… and it’s kind of electric,” says …
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Amy Schumer is back and this time, expecting, in “Life & Beth” Season 2. The next season of the Hulu series picks up with Schumer’s title character Beth tying the knot with unexpected love John (Michael Cera), and soon finding out they are pregnant. In addition to the returning stars, Emmy winner Jennifer Coolidge, Beanie Feldstein, Margaret Cho, Jemima Kirke, Tim Meadows, and Amy …
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