An Incorrect Image Of Ourselves: Mike Flanagan on Oculus’ Tenth Anniversary
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A ten-year anniversary might not sound like a great milestone; it can feel a lot longer when you consider how much has happened since then. Last week, prolific showrunner and filmmaker Mike Flanagan attended a screening of “Oculus,” his ten-year-old...
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Ned Benson, Lucy Boynton, and Justin H. Min Want to Play The Greatest Hits for You
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The power of music to transport a listener back to a particular time and place is explored to its literal extreme (garnished with a sci-fi twist) in Ned Benson’s “The Greatest Hits.” The film tells the story of Harriet (Lucy...
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Sweet Dreams
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A strange and memorable but not entirely successful film, "Sweet Dreams" turns colonialism into a source of pitch-black slapstick comedy.  Written and directed by Ena Sendijarević, the film is set in 1900 on a small and obscure Indonesian island, where a sugar plantation baron...
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Challengers
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Luca Guadagino directs “Challengers,” a time-shifting drama about a love triangle between tennis pros, as if he’s a top-seeded player so ruthlessly focused on winning Wimbledon that he’d run over his grandmother if she got between him and the stadium....
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Until It’s Too Late: Bertrand Bonello on The Beast
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Not adapted so much as vertiginously extrapolated from a Henry James novella, Bertrand Bonello’s audacious “The Beast” is a hypnotic and destabilizing vision of a past, present, and future in which two star-crossed lovers struggle to connect in the face...
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LaRoy, Texas
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“LaRoy, Texas” immediately tests your expectations. Driving down a dark dirt country road, Harry (Dylan Baker), whose car headlights are the only beacons of life amid the barren clime, passes a broken-down truck parked off-road. A few yards later, Harry...
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Disappear Completely
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The truly impressive slice of nightmare fuel, “Disappear Completely,” premiering on Netflix today after a successful fest circuit run that included Fantastic Fest, almost feels like John Carpenter or Wes Craven’s “Nightcrawler.” Yeah, horror fans out there have probably already stopped...
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The Long Game
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A movie about a high school golf team made up of Mexican-American teenagers in the 1950s creates expectations in the viewer. There will be sunlit greens (writer/director Julio Quintana has worked with Terrence Malick), condescension and blatant bigotry, setbacks, supportive...
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Sasquatch Sunset
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Four tall, scruffy creatures amble through a storybook forest. They walk, they eat, they build shelter, and repeat. The group exchanges a wordless cacophony of grunts, screams, and whoops to communicate, but we are not privy to their conversations. Like...
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Sting
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Ninety-one minutes, including seven for closing credits, isn’t enough for “Sting,” a modestly scaled horror caper that pits a flesh-eating spider against a handful of Brooklynites. A little more would likely have gone a long way, given how rushed and...
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