The directorial debut of Australian actress Mirrah Foulkes, Judy & Punch is one of those bizarre, quirky indie films that will leave you scratching your head and wondering whether or not you like it, even as you admire the heady, avant-garde filmmaking at its core. I’m pretty sure I liked it, but this one’s […]
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Spelling the Dream
Netflix’s new documentary Spelling the Dream couches itself as an exploration of the spate of Indian-American winners at the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee—which is indeed a remarkable, noteworthy run. South Asian kids have won the event for the past twelve years straight (and 26 of the past 31 years), including the […]
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The Vast of Night
In the history of baseball, only 29 hitters have ever cracked a home run off the very first pitch they saw in the Major Leagues. With his debut feature The Vast of Night (now streaming free on Amazon Prime), director Andrew Patterson has accomplished an equivalent feat in the film world—walking confidently […]
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Military Wives
Twenty-two years after The Full Monty (and eleven since his last film, the ill-fated The Rocker), director Peter Cattaneo is back with Military Wives. Getting its wide debut on Hulu after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, the film dramatizes the creation of the first military wives choir of the British […]
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The Lovebirds
Early on in The Lovebirds, the latest throw-away comedy from Netflix, on-the-rocks couple Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) and Leilani (Issa Rae) sit in a diner and discuss how weird it is that milkshakes are the only food served with its own leftovers (that stainless steel cup with the extra last bit). A […]
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Buffaloed
Shooting a gold-plated pistol into the air after screaming a naughty word and pell-melling down the street in a smart pantsuit—that’s how we meet the fictional Peg Dahl, the firecracker at the heart of director Tanya Wexler’s indie-tastic looney-tune adventure Buffaloed. Call it a low-rent knock-off of 2015 Oscar-winner The Big Short, […]
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The Wrong Missy
If an Adam Sandler movie drops on Netflix, and his face never appears, is it still an Adam Sandler movie? You may find yourself pondering that (along with many other things) as you watch The Wrong Missy, the latest uninspired Happy Madison production to stream for the masses. Indeed, everything in […]
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Valley Girl (2020)
37 years after Nicolas Cage grabbed Deborah Foreman’s hand and, like, ran out of the Valley High gym to the sounds of Josie Cotton’s “He Could Be The One”, MGM takes us back to the world of Randy and Julie with a spit-polished, musical remake of the cult favorite Valley Girl. […]
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Arkansas
Like a slow mosey through an Alabama backwater, Clark Duke’s directorial debut is a just-fine film with some colorful characters and some pretty views but not much else. (And, yes, it may be called Arkansas and be based on John Brandon’s 2009 novel of the same name, but the bulk of it […]
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The Half of It
Sure, teenagers’ proms and graduations have been canceled, and it certainly is difficult to get with their high school sweeties during quarantine lockdown, but at least they can take some comfort in the fact that there’s a slew of above-average teen-friendly fare to occupy their minds these days, right? Following […]
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