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4/5
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An Education
(2009)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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It is important to me in valuing the film that Jenny learn something from her education and not simply be brought low by it. I think she has.
Posted Feb 02, 2026
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5/5
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The Godfather
(1972)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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'That’s my family, Kay; that’s not me' remains for me one of the most tragic lines in all film.
Posted Feb 01, 2026
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2/4
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The Bad Patriots
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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When Fraga steps back from trying to situate the film as a smaller part of his "manipulation trilogy" and allows the focus to stay on Loach and Corbyn, Bad Patriots is informative as well as interesting.
Posted Jan 26, 2026
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4/5
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Young Mothers
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Any Dardenne film is a cause for rejoicing, and there are moments in this one that got me to see these young women as people in a difficult situation rather than merely as stock figures.
Posted Jan 07, 2026
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4/4
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Secret Mall Apartment
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Gradually develops into an all-time great art documentary.
Posted Dec 09, 2025
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1.5/4
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Now You See Me: Now You Don't
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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If you replaced Jesse Eisenberg with an animated wolf I am not sure I could distinguish any random fifteen seconds of the film from The Bad Guys 2.
Posted Nov 13, 2025
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1.5/4
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The Running Man
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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We can’t ever be more than five minutes of screen time removed from a chase or a fight or an explosion.
Posted Nov 11, 2025
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3/4
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When Fall Is Coming
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Rarely does this writing out and out falsify some assumption or inference about a character, but it often leads to doubts and second-guessing.
Posted Nov 01, 2025
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1/4
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The Lovely Bones
(2009)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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As feel-good child murder movies go, The Lovely Bones hits all its marks.
Posted Oct 28, 2025
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3/4
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Stitch Head
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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If the middle dilutes the film’s overall impact, it does not entirely blunt the effectiveness of the end or hurt the film too much beyond my downgrading it from “great” to “very good.”
Posted Oct 23, 2025
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3.5/4
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Last Days
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Like some spiritual cousin of Chris McCandless from Into the Wild, John longs for authenticity while being surrounded at every turn by people more ready to tell him how to live his life than to practice what they preach.
Posted Oct 22, 2025
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2/4
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Divia
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The film fails to move the viewer beyond the broad claim, which most probably already assented to, that war is bad for the earth.
Posted Oct 20, 2025
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1.5/4
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Blue Moon
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Within ten minutes, we understand exactly why Rodgers moved on.
Posted Oct 19, 2025
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3/4
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Good Fortune
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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A more generic film would make Jeff into a monster here, but Ansari is less interested in critiquing Jeff than he is in interrogating the systems that create those like him.
Posted Oct 15, 2025
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1.5/4
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300letters
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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In the romance genre, one needs to be rooting for the couple. In the break up genre, it helps if you don’t think the characters are better off without each other.
Posted Oct 12, 2025
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1.5/4
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Roofman
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Roofman is either a morally confused movie or a morally confusing one.
Posted Oct 10, 2025
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2/4
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One Big Happy Family
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The film feels a little too afraid to let Rachel be angry or to show anyone being unlikable.
Posted Oct 10, 2025
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3/4
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Nuremberg
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The ending doesn’t negate the good that preceded it, but a slightly more polished and tighter script could have landed the film in Best Picture discussions.
Posted Oct 10, 2025
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2/4
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The War Between
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The film could be construed as saying that because representatives of both sides are flawed, the sides themselves are morally equivalent.
Posted Sep 25, 2025
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3/4
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Naked Ambition
(2023)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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I was engaged by almost all of the segments, but I also was frustrated that many were not developed beyond the articulation of the main point.
Posted Sep 11, 2025
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2/5
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Just the Two of Us
(2023)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Poupad does what he can with such a one-dimensional character, but truth is you know where this is going from the moment Grégoire tells his girlfriend that he doesn’t like her new haircut.
Posted Sep 02, 2025
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3.5/4
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Suspended Time
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Not knowing how our lives will evolve, change, and adapt is scary.
Posted Aug 12, 2025
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3/5
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Hola Frida
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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I am not saying it should be for adults, but adults may find it harder to look past or dismiss the necessarily simplified presentation of its subject matter.
Posted Aug 09, 2025
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1/4
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The Trouble with Jessica
(2023)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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More sour than dark and never particularly funny.
Posted Aug 04, 2025
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2/5
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The Naked Gun
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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I suspect if this had been the first four episodes of a rebooted television series, parceled out in 22 minute episodes, I probably would have felt differently.
Posted Aug 01, 2025
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2/4
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Jurassic World Rebirth
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Jurassic Park movies have always been a bit too cavalier for my taste about using children as dinosaur bait to up the ante.
Posted Jul 21, 2025
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2.5/4
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If You Should Leave Before Me
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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A screenplay that assumes the audience is two steps behind better be two steps ahead...
Posted Jul 04, 2025
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2.5/4
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Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The missions have gotten longer, louder, and more preposterous over thirty years...
Posted Jun 01, 2025
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3/4
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Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Once it became clear that the film wasn’t retelling any particular Jane Austen novel, it became more interesting in its own right.
Posted Jun 01, 2025
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2/5
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Doubt
(2008)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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He is either innocent or guilty. I can respect a film that says we don’t always get to know the answer. But I can't respect a film, however well shot and acted, that says the answer hardly matters.
Posted Apr 27, 2025
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1.5/4
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Hello Beautiful
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Given that Hello Beautiful‘s sole reason for being seems to be to induce sympathy for a woman with breast cancer, saying that it attempts to do absolutely nothing else feels like a criticism both too harsh and too gentle.
Posted Apr 21, 2025
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2/4
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Relative Control
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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While I enjoyed seeing Polo in a dramatic role, I can’t recommend Relative Control to anyone except for her staunchest fans.
Posted Apr 13, 2025
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3/4
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The Librarians
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The Librarians sizzles with righteous indignation and is steeped in unimaginable pain.
Posted Apr 06, 2025
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3/4
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Speak.
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Comes with all the feels one wants and needs from a festival crowd-pleaser.
Posted Apr 05, 2025
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3.5/5
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Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The juxtaposition of a young woman’s diaries with an old woman’s recollections provides the narrative with emotional and tonal variance.
Posted Apr 05, 2025
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2/4
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William Tell
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Unlike in Braveheart or The Patriot, it is the hero’s success rather than his defiance that ultimately rallies his kinsmen.
Posted Apr 04, 2025
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3/4
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The King of Kings
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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For those who want Easter to be a special occasion that warrants an infrequent trip to the cinema, I am happy they have something that is not cringe-worthy to throw their Passion Dollars at.
Posted Apr 04, 2025
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3/4
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WTO/99
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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We rarely distance ourselves from current events long enough to really contemplate how quickly the ideological lines we think are eternal and intractable shift.
Posted Apr 03, 2025
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2/4
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Helen and the Bear
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Her inability to verbalize why she stayed with him even though she hates the institution of marriage provides the film with some poignancy, but it can also cause exasperation.
Posted Mar 31, 2025
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2/4
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Birdsong
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The press materials also name-drop Keats quite a bit, which was what got me to watch.
Posted Mar 30, 2025
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3.5/5
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Disney's Snow White
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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It is not exactly a hot take or a new take to suggest that early “buzz” surrounding a film may be based on something other than neutral aesthetic and artistic judgments.
Posted Mar 20, 2025
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2/4
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Captain America: Brave New World
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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You get a good forty minutes of “Smash!…Boom!…Pow!” sprinkled around two hours of allusions to a geopolitical landscape that the film is ultimately uninterested in or unwilling to explore.
Posted Feb 13, 2025
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2.5/4
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Cash for Gold
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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Nearly all of the plot points and story beats are predictable, but Cash for Gold demonstrates that execution matters.
Posted Feb 02, 2025
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2/4
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The Night Is Dark and Colder Than the Day
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The obvious point of comparison here is Michael Apted’s Seven Up series, and I spent a good portion of the film wondering why I have revisited Apted’s kids several times but lost interest pretty quickly in Friedrich’s.
Posted Feb 02, 2025
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2.5/4
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You're Cordially Invited
(2025)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The weaker script needs [Farrell and Witherspoon] to lean heavily on their personal charisma and damn if they don't deliver.
Posted Jan 30, 2025
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2/4
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Celebration
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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At eighty-six minutes it feels too slight for its themes and yet too long for its style.
Posted Jan 13, 2025
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2.5/4
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The Waiting Game
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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The film gives us enough of the former players that we can't help but be glad they were compensated for their contributions.
Posted Dec 01, 2024
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2.5/4
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Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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It’s better than most movies aimed at and marketed to Christians in that it at least allows for some nuance when thinking about its ideas.
Posted Nov 27, 2024
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2/4
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Gladiator II
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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My complaint isn't so much that this one doesn't reach the same heights as the first but that the drop-off is so steep, it signals a lack of ambition that comes across as almost cynical.
Posted Nov 22, 2024
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1.5/4
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Wicked
(2024)
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Kenneth R. Morefield
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A bright, loud paintball splatter of a movie — one that seems to me to be as uncertain of what it wants to be as it is how to be it.
Posted Nov 19, 2024
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