Just a few of the male teenage athletes that get tickled in the debut documentary by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve
Review by Andrew Swafford
There’s plenty of substance in the first hour of Tickled that can be extrapolated upon and mulled over by viewers, but the ending seems to show the filmmakers cramming huge ideas into a tiny box.
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Colin Farrell and Gong Li set sail in director Michael Mann's Miami Vice
Retro Review by Nadine Smith
As with so many of the greatest movies, Miami Vice only exists while you’re watching it, like a trick of the light.
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Bryan Cranston and John Leguizamo in The Infiltrator
Review by Zach Dennis
The technical craft and engaging writing of some of the better works of Scorsese are lacking from The Infiltrator, but the film makes up for that with a strong performance by Cranston and an exploration into the work of an actor and the two-faced mentality that has to be taken to succeed.
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Vithaya Pansringarm and Ryan Gosling star in director Nicholas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives
Retro Review by Andrew Swafford
Refn’s follow up to 2011’s surprise smash hit Drive indulges the filmmaker’s most exploitation-driven power fantasies while challenging them with a sense of justice that makes each violent act truly mean something.
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Blake Lively stars in The Shallows
Review by Zach Dennis
The Shallows lacks the characters and craft that made Jaws such an iconic film, but that’s also because it never wants to be categorized in the same field. In its own rights, it is a highly successful summer pop entertainment thriller that contains all the elements you would want out of a summer day at the movies — beautiful woman, majestic scenery, and a giant shark getting in the way of both.
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Ruby Barnhill and Mark Rylance star in The BFG
Review by Zach Dennis
The BFG is not near the upper echelon of Spielberg’s work, but it is yet another recent reminder of how talented he is as a director. It has echoes of the past and allows for more playful moments near the end — creating both one of the more enjoyable family films of the year and one that will surely be re-evaluated in later years as a hidden gem of the director’s canon.
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Shefali Shetty, Vasundhara Das, and Tillotama Shome star in director Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding
Retro Review by Andrew Swafford
Mira Nair’s film about a traditional Hindu arranged marriage in contemporary India is not so much about the event’s potential stressors, despite their constant presence. Rather, the film is a celebration of all the ways that people come together: as couples, as families, and as cultures.
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Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe star in Swiss Army Man
Review by Jessica Carr
Swiss Army Man has the ability to make the viewer laugh and cry simultaneously. Underneath the absolutely ridiculous plot, lies a heartfelt message about accepting the truths of life while also learning to accept your own truths.
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Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart star in Central Intelligence
Review by Lydia Creech
Central Intelligence may not display the same level of craft or acerbic verbal wit that The Nice Guys does, but it is the perfect light summer fun.
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Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor star in director Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds
Retro Review by Andrew Swafford
While it may not be his absolute masterpiece, Hitchcock manipulates his audience’s expectations to maximum effect in this sometimes-maligned movie, which demonstrates that the master of suspense was also the master of genre-hopping within a single film.
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Directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow center their documentary, De Palma, around a single-shot interview with the esteemed filmmaker.
Review by Nadine Smith
Though Baumbach and Paltrow seem hesitant to encourage De Palma to dig deep into his art, I commend their choice to let De Palma speak for himself instead of leaning on the opinions of others.
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Elle Fanning stars in director Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon
Review by Lydia Creech
It’s not the what or how of The Neon Demon that bothers me, it’s the why. I’m not sure what insight Refn has to say with this film, nor that Refn needed to be the one to say it.
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Travis Fimmel and Paula Patton star in director Duncan Jones' Warcraft
Review by Zach Dennis
The film has its holes, and the plot seeps with cliche, but there is something admirable about Warcraft and the work by Duncan Jones. The film is weird and wild, but it comes from a place of pure adventure and creativity and that isn’t something we should dispel — video game or not.
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Wu Jing and Tony Jaa star in director Cheang Pou-soi's film SPL 2: A Time for Consequences
Review by Nadine Smith
Like the best action movies, SPL 2: A Time for Consequences is a surficial melodrama in visual communion with its subtext. It isn’t about the disruptive power of violence, but about bodies jointed in impact and contact, united in their movement through space.
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Ellen DeGeneres voices Dory and Ed O'Neill voices Hank in Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane's Finding Dory
Review by Zach Dennis
Finding Dory does a lot of things in a lazy manner, but it succeeds in its small attempt to reckon with mental health and stigma around it. It also helps that Dory’s parents build off the rich tradition of these films coming to terms with what a parent means, and may be one of the best cinematic examples of parents with a child with disabilities.
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Ellen DeGeneres voices Dory and Albert Brooks voices Marlin in Andrew Stanton's Finding Nemo
Retro Review by Zach Dennis
Finding Nemo may not sit in the annals of Pixar as one of their top tier works, but the reason it resonated with so many people is this central message of parenthood and responsibility. It is something we all struggle with — whether we have kids or not — and Nemo accentuated that better than a lot of other films.
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Sterling Jerins (as well as Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) stars in director James Wan's The Conjuring 2
Review by Andrew Swafford
There’s very little consistency or logic to how the monsters in this world operate, and that’s because they don’t have a greater motivation or reason for existence outside of giving the characters (and therefore the audience) a big scare.
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Colin Farrell stars in director Yorgos Lanthimos's film The Lobster
Review by Andrew Swafford
The Lobster’s universe never feels like a riff on something else. While sitting in the theater and figuring out how all the pieces fit together in this monogamy-obsessed society, the thought that crossed my mind most often was: This is unique. There is nothing like this.
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Andy Samberg stars in Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone's Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Review by Zach Dennis
For the most part, Popstar succeeds as both a comedy and satire, but it also leaves a hollow and disappointed feeling because it never seemed to hit the high aspirations it had for itself.
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Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult star in X-Men: Apocalypse
Review by Nadine Smith
Unlike Batman v. Superman and its blundering nihilism or Civil War and its cynical sense of social consciousness, Apocalypse seems more interested in mysticism. It sheds politicking for emotion; its mythology is rooted in spirituality, not history.
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