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‘La Pecera’ Review: A Lyrical Exploration of Decay (Sundance 2023)
How do you navigate life when you know you’ll depart it very soon? Do you make amends? Do you atone? Do you make your last memories meaningful and impactful? Do you just wither away? Glorimar Marrero Sánchez ópera prima La Pecera introduces all these questions into the film but never gives you a simple answer.…
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‘Saint Omer’ Review: Nothing Is Ever As It Seems
Motherhood has always been a herculean task that is neither appreciated nor praised as it should be in our society. Motherhood is something that’s taken for granted and only questioned when it’s done incorrectly. With Alice Diop’s first narrative feature, Saint Omer, we get to explore all the facets of motherhood, even the unspeakable aspects…
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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: James Cameron’s Inexcusable Narrative
It’s been 13 years and multiple technological advancements since our introduction to James Cameron’s multi-billion dollar blockbuster Avatar, where we were introduced to the humanoid blue aliens called the Na’vi who inhabit a similar-ish looking planet Earth named Pandora. We followed the paraplegic marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) as he learned via his avatar to live…
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‘Bones and All’ Review: A Young Adult Cannibalistic Love Story (New York Film Festival 2022)
The topic of cannibalism in media has been slowly incrementing in the last few years, from examples such as Steven Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk to Julia Docournau’s Raw and Mimi Cave’s Fresh. However, in each of these examples, we’ve seen the theme of cannibalism treated primarily in the context of a horror film. And while…
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‘TÁR’ Review: A Meticulously Composed Orchestra (New York Film Festival 2022)
It’s fascinating how the current social media landscape has evolved and re-examined our social interactions with other people. The rise of the “Me Too” movement allows society to delve into power structures. However, at the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s also been a keen awareness of what’s deemed as ‘cancel culture’. Todd Field’s newest…
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‘Aftersun’ Review: Heartbreaking Father-Daughter Trip Down Memory Lane (New York Film Festival 2022)
With the more abundant availability of tools such as the video recorder and disposable photo camera for recording and perceiving key family moments, the general consumer has been able to keep these precious moments forever in a capsule to revisit for the rest of their lives, but this came at a potential cost. The cost…
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‘Showing Up’ Review: A Realistic Depicting of the Struggling Artist (New York Film Festival 2022)
Cinema has a rich history of romanticizing the artist, from extravagant biopics to heavy-handed dramas and everything in between. The artist and his struggles have always felt very otherworldly and ethereal. Sometimes though, the artist doesn’t have some existential nightmare of trying to make it as an artist; the actual struggle they face is whether…