SALTBURN ends up feeling like an aristocratic British estate. Superficially, it looks wonderful, but the deeper you get, the more you see the cracks and how much this symbolic edifice is crumbling away with nothing meaningful to hold it up.
We’ve all been at a party when the beer runs out, but you’re not ready to call it a night, so rather than swiping whatever disgusting liquor is sitting in your parents’ kitchen, why not summon some actual spirits?
The joy of watching motorsports is seeing the fiery passion that burns in the soul of everyone taking part, and racing fans know when they see that exact triumphant feeling. Sadly, FERRARI fails to capture that passion.
FAIR PLAY may not be as smart and original as it initially seems, but the momentum, central performances, and cranked-up drama deliver an engrossing takedown of fragile male entitlement and the roles many inhabit to advance despite it.
STAY AWAKE’s interest in a microcosm of the US opioid crisis rather than the grand picture limits the film’s scope, and its emotional strength is limited by an insistence on diverting attention away from the addict.
The character of Tomas, whose emotional and sexual openness reflects commitment to art and new experiences, embodies Ira Sachs’s PASSAGES – uncomfortable and challenging but exhilarating and captivating.
The events of LIE WITH ME would seem trivial to anyone other than the two concerned parties, and it is the everyday details and bucolic setting that allow character moments to organically emerge.
There are no more significant potential ramifications than the end of the world, and that awful looming mushroom cloud haunts every frame of OPPENHEIMER’s tense and emotionally violent portrait.
From the bright pink Warner Brothers logo to Helen Mirren’s irony-soaked opening voiceover, BARBIE sets itself up as a wildly vibes-based moment of silliness. But the film is so much more than that, and in many ways not even that at all.
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