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‘Hundreds of Beavers’ review: A little bit Mr. Bean, a little bit Looney Toons, somehow Moonraker at the end

I would characterize the catalogue of modern live-action remakes of animated classics as largely ill-considered. The medium itself adds so much artistic expression that, in general, I’ve found is not replaced by something equally charming in the adaptation. So much so that they often feel like a step back from the original. I’m thrilled to…

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‘Robot Dreams’ review: The 500 Days of Summer of platonic friendships

It’s the 80s and they’ve taken the ‘man’ out of ‘Manhattan’. But with no man, where does that leave man’s best friend? It’s here that we find Dog. Home, lonely, and looking for a friend that he finds one fateful night on a late-night infomercial. Robot is everything he could ever want or need, but…

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‘The Iron Claw’ review: Taking the heavyweight belt for tearjerker this year

Early into the movie Zac Efron as Kevin von Erich professes to his date Pam (Lily James) that he loves his brothers so much that he doesn’t care what he does, as long as he does it with them. It’s a line delivered with so much love that even if you don’t know about the…

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‘Past Lives’ review: 8 000 lifetimes are not enough to appreciate this film

Up front Past Lives presents as a rom com. Two people separated as children weave in and out of each other’s lives until a fateful trip to New York brings them together once again. What reads as a very fantastic and romantic adventure unfolds as a very grounded, human exploration of the inner war of…

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‘The Holdovers’ review: we’re all alone, together

Alexander Payne is a particularly interesting director. I’m generally of the belief that art is inherently iterative, and there literally isn’t a way to ‘make movies like they used to’ because you can’t uninform yourself of all of the progression in filmmaking in the intervening years. And yet there Payne is, making movies as if…

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‘Anatomy of a Fall’ review: If a man falls in the French Alps and no one is around to see him, did his wife do it?

A man is dead and his wife is the prime suspect. We’re brought in to a case that could have just as easily shown up on a Twitter post or reddit thread. As the case unfolds we get a small window into a broken relationship and are left to piece together the rest. And there’s…