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Tribeca 2021: Darren Aronofsky-Produced Revenge Thriller ‘CATCH THE FAIR ONE’ A Grim Swing and a Miss 

Native American women go missing, are sexually assaulted, or are murdered at an average of ten times that of the non-native population. These crimes are predominantly carried out by non-native criminals. Reasons for these staggeringly high rates range from a lack of institutional concern, indifferent law enforcement policies regarding missing young women, and the multitude of jurisdictional cracks between Federal and Tribal lands. All point to an overall lack of care and concern for the most marginalized within these communities, with about a third of these victims being under 18 years of age. And yet the statistic persists.  Read More

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Tribeca 2021: Collegiate Athlete Possessed by Competitive Spirit in ‘THE NOVICE’

Ernest Hemingway famously opined, “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” I’ve taken this sentiment to heart in my own life, allowing a competitive spirit with myself to drive my ambitions, both professionally and athletically, rather than trying to compare my skill with others. The Novice, the arresting debut feature from writer-director Lauren Hadaway, explores what happens when an obsession with besting yourself goes too far. As witnessed here, there is no nobility in obsession.  Read More

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Tribeca 2021: India’s Illuminating ‘The LAST FILM SHOW’ a Deeply Personal Love Letter to Film

In Pan Nalin’s The Last Film Show, the death of film has never hit harder. The Samsara director and Indian auteur has established himself over the years as a filmmaker with a distinct flair for visual storytelling, his films a kaleidoscopic whirl of images that speak to the simple power of colors and lights to evoke an emotional response. With an impressive career making documentaries, feature films, shorts, commercials, and television, Nalin looks back on his own journey to becoming a filmmaker in The Last Film Show, his most autobiographical and personal effort to date. 
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Tribeca 2021: A ‘POSER’ Plagiarizes Her Way to Popularity in Devious Stalker-Thriller

Art is similar to pornography in the sense that I know it when I see it. There is a very fine line dividing art – whether that be performance art, music, poetry, or visual arts – from empty vacancy or ugly vandalism. Sometimes those lines can be blurred, much like a nipple on Instagram or the modern differentiation between television and film. This is even more apparent in avant-garde expressions of art, made to challenge traditional norms of what can and cannot be classified as art. A founding tenant of any counterculture movement is rooted in artistic pushback against tradition, and, importantly, the perspective of the artist themselves. In Ori Segev and Noah Dixon’s simmering psychosexual music-thriller Poser, the fine line between artist and con-artist melts and refracts as an obsessive podcaster infiltrates the inner sacrum or the Columbus underground music scene. Read More

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Lively, Diverse ‘IN THE HEIGHTS’ The Best Broadway Musical Adaptation In Years

Generally, I’m not the world’s biggest musical fan. I’ll admit it: I often think them overlong, shallow in terms of character development and depth, and find the musical theater standards tend to be mainly forgettable, with a few catchy showstoppers mixed in for good measure. In The Heights, the best straight Broadway stage adaptation in quite some time, falls pray to these shortcomings while managing to remain a highly-engaging, uber-flashy toe-tapper that celebrates the cultural diversity of one of New York City’s last gentrification holdouts. As far as stage-to-screen musicals go, there’s not all that much to complain about.

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Muddled Mythology and Tepid Romance Combine to Make ‘UNDINE’ Low-Wattage Erotica 

Legend goes that the undine, an elemental race of water nymphs described in ancient European myths, are doomed to the fidelity of their beloved. Emerging from the water to love a man of their choosing and thereby become human, undine are beautiful but fragile creatures, cursed to die if their man isn’t faithful to them. The price of that infidelity? Death. Whereas many relationships end in taters when a beau is unfaithful, it’s literally kill or be killed for the undine and that goes doubly so in acclaimed German director Christian Petzold’s mythologically-rooted romantic drama Undine.  Read More

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Franchise Fatigue Possesses ‘THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT’

The Conjuring extended universe is one of the – if not the most – preeminent examples of a modern horror franchise done correctly. Expansive, with spin-offs shooting off into this direction or that, and an absolute box office powerhouse (with almost two billion dollars in worldwide gross),  The Conjuring’s terrifying rein is vast. And yet with three separate offshoots, including a full-fledged Annabelle trilogy, and more on the way, the haunting force of the series that began in 2013 comes sputtering to a decidedly indifferent halt with The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.  Read More

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Devilishly Fashionable ‘CRUELLA’ Sees Emma Stone Break Bad On the Catwalk 

Turning any iconic Disney villain into a sympathetic (but still devious) protagonist is no easy feat, particularly when that task involves ‘both sides’ of turning 101 Dalmatian puppies into haute couture. Disney’s atrocious Maleficent origin story wholly bungled the task, dropping the bag on transforming that striking villain into a whole-cloth anti-hero, instead defanging and deflating the malevolent fairy, leaving her all but unrecognizable, costume aside. With Cruella, Disney course-corrects on that previous failing, striking the right balance between exploring the roots of its devilish protagonist while still remaining true to her animated rancorous counterpart. Read More

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Australian Whodunit ‘THE DRY’ Will Quench Thirst for Straight-Forward Mystery

Before a global pandemic wrought devastation across the whole of the world, international attention was all on Australia, which went up like a tinderbox in their unusually hot 2019-2020 bushfire season. In a period known as the Black Summer, 18.6 million hectares went up in flame, killing dozens of people, destroying thousands of homes and businesses, and burning nearly three billion animals alive. It was an apocalyptic level of devastation that called to mind imagery of hellfire and damnation. Robert Connolly’s The Dry, a small town Australian murder mystery set in this period of immense drought, is about the devastation wrought by dried up land and dried up people.  Read More

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Formulaic Feel-Good Movie ‘DREAM HORSE’ Expertly Designed for Your Mom

Decidedly light matinee fare that has no qualms sticking to a well-trot winsome formula, Euros Lyn’s Dream Horse nonetheless breeds charm rather than contempt for its stick-to-the-formula approach. Based on the true story of a ragtag group of aspiring racehorse-owners from a Southern Welsh community who come together to breed and train a proper thoroughfare, Lyn’s film is designed for moms that like their movies “nice”. Read More