There's an old saying in writing techniques: "Show, don't tell." Don't rely on an overabundance of exposition to relay the story and its details to your audience, but rather allow them to experience the story for themselves through its unfolding. Leigh Whannell's excellent modernized adaptation of H.G. Wells' timeless classic forgoes both of these elements to a literal extent, rather allowing wide open spaces and the absence of characters to convey a sense of dread and an unseen menace, the…
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Muse: Simulation Theory 2020
(I'm gonna make you)
(I'm gonna break you)
(I'm gonna make you)
Realize that Simulation Theory is a great album and its concert movie-doc hybrid is equally entertaining. -
Memento 2000
Memento succeeds where Tenet failed in using its reverse time gimmick as a narrative style rather than a plot device. It incorporates seamlessly into Nolan's breakthrough film, mirroring the protagonist's mental state for the audience, and therefore indirectly involving us with the unfolding and interpretation of said story. If Nolan could go back to unique storytelling formats rather than plot themes, then he might have another modern classic on his hands.
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The Martian 2015
It's like Home Alone in Space but instead of traps it's inventions for survival and instead of the Wet Bandits it's the hostility of Mars' climate.
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Cuties 2020
Great film. AWFUL marketing campaign.
Seriously, what was Netflix thinking? Sexualizing children has been a seedy issue in Hollywood for as long as the industry has existed (Shirley Temple was notoriously groomed in her younger years), but the marketing campaign Netflix originally launched behind Mignonnes is so baffling in a post-#MeToo and Harvey Weinstein era that is so fraught with forthcoming controversies and accusations. You'd think that someone behind the desk over there would have thought twice about how they…
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I'm Thinking of Ending Things 2020
You aren't ready for I'm Thinking of Ending Things. No one is. It's Kaufman unhinged, starting quiet and reserved- yet with a strange sense that nothing is as it seems. At first glance, it seems just like an ordinary relationship drama, just before morphing into an unholy amalgam of something indescribable- and, at first, indecipherable. Perceptions change at the slightest turn of the camera, completely transforming key aspects of its focal characters without so much as a warning.
I'm Thinking…
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Bill & Ted Face the Music 2020
The spirit of the 80's lives on in a most excellent and unprecedented sequel that does exactly what it sets out to do, respecting its past while looking forward to its future. Not perfect by any stretch, but it's a really good time.
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Toy Story 2 1999
It's been more than a decade since the last time I saw Toy Story 2, and I think I can say without hesitation that it's my favorite entry in an ever-expanding franchise that (hopefully) has ended on the highest note possible. After the original Toy Story's runaway success in 1995 (my mother still recalls the time she struggled to find a Woody doll for me for Christmas that year), its followup sequel expanded upon some of the key characters' backstories-…
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Roger Waters: Us + Them 2019
And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon....