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Fearlessly Silly Nazi Satire ‘JOJO RABBIT’ is Soul-Cleansing and Good-Spirited 

As seemingly improbable as Schindler‘s List with an added laugh track or Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom subbing in Hitler Youth for Boy Scouts, Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit’s very premise is a bold thought experiment: how do you make modern audiences (notoriously sensitive modern audiences, that is) comfortable laughing at WWII-era Nazism? How do you get them to sympathize with literal Nazi characters? And, maybe most importantly, how do you do all this without getting the endorsement of literal modern-day Nazis?  Read More

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Out in Theaters: PITCH PERFECT 2

Your enjoyment of Pitch Perfect 2 will be directly correlated to your willingness to endure acapella puns. That is, it’s only acappealing to some. Still with me? Let’s continue. In so much as this Pitch Perfect silliness could be confused with the cloying high school sugar rush that is Glee, the two share poppy musical stylings but are dished up with distinctly different flavors: irritating and irreverent. I’ll let you suss out which is which. Read More