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Sinners | Review by: Benjamin Garrett

Sinners is a sensational, stylish and soulful fusion of genres. This is exactly the kind of ambition and originality we need more of from major studios. Ryan Coogler hasn’t just delivered one of the best films of the year, but arguably the best of his impressive career.  There are a lot of different elements here, working in harmony to achieve something wholly unique and memorable. It’s a viciously entertaining vampire flick, but there’s so much more to it, which is what makes it truly special. This is a thematically rich story that celebrates black culture as well as an examination of oppressive hardships and cultural assimilation. It’s also a beautiful tribute to the roots of blues music, in which the music itself becomes just as alive as any of the film’s characters. There’s a scene where music transcends time that’ll be talked about for years. You can’t ignore the ambition, and although on paper it may sound like a messy mashup of genres and ideas, the end result is undeniably ...
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Andor Season 2 | Review by: Benjamin Garrett

  A great prequel isn’t so much about the what, but about the how and why that lead to the events we already know. Rogue One took a small plot hole from A New Hope and not only fixed it, but gave it meaning. Over two seasons, Andor has delivered a truly spectacular lead up to Rogue One, filled with purpose and emotional resonance, further elevating the entire original trilogy in the process.  Season one played like a series of connected arcs - four smaller stories woven into a larger narrative. Season two, by contrast, is more singular in its focus. It has the urgency of a story heading toward a known endpoint, with a clearer sense of direction and finality. While there are still some detours and character-specific side plots, everything here feels more tightly connected to the series’ inevitable conclusion. These twelve episodes work overtime to bridge the gap between Andor and   Rogue One, while never feeling forcibly tied to canon. It delivers more brilliantly detailed...

Sinners | Review by: Gal Balaban

  Ryan Coogler, one of the most impactful filmmakers to come out of the last decade, creates his most original, commanding, and dazzling film, a kind many have been waiting to see for a long time. Coogler gets free reign to blend genres with unique storytelling on a larger scale than we’ve seen before. The characters leap off the page and screen with their wonderful portrayals from Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, and Delroy Lindo, as well as a more menacing turn from Jack O’Connell. As both Smoke and Stack, Jordan plays characters who aren’t free of moral question marks but still worth rooting for, and have excellent romances with Mosaku and Steinfeld, while Lindo has brilliant moments of reflection, strength, and humor. The film portrays America in the 1930s as a place of difficulty and strive, with a system built to oppress black Americans, but in the main characters’ blues club, a dazzling, one-of-a-kind portrayal of black culture and music in a safe space of ...

The Amateur | Review by: Gal Balaban

  The Amateur  is well-directed, with an engaging enough visual look to keep the runtime going, as well as a strong score by Oscar winner Volker Bertelmann. However, it settles for mediocre as often as it becomes thrilling. Rami Malek is excellently cast in the role, but in earlier moments in the film, his performance still feels distant, and gets to shine more later, or sometimes the editing is to blame for not letting us sit with Charlie’s grief and pain for longer in certain scenes. Holt McCallany is especially memorable as the tough CIA Deputy Director, as is Laurence Fishburne a resourceful yet more empathetic CIA operative.  Despite the packed cast, the story itself sometimes feels muted, including a lack of true exploration of the idea that this hardly trained man is committing elaborately planned out killings that would be viewed as sadistic if the men he was killing weren’t murderous terrorists. The dialogue also sometimes falters, but the elements of the formula...

Warfare | Review by: Benjamin Garrett

  War is hell, and every once in a while, a film comes along that drags you through that hell in a way that’ll leave you utterly shell shocked. Warfare is among the most harrowing, visceral and realistic war movies of all time. Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza have crafted a brutal recount of true events that needs to be experienced in theatres.  Set in 2006, we follow a young group of U.S. Navy Seals stationed in Iraq during a surveillance mission gone wrong. The opening scene (featuring Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me” thumping on full blast) is extremely effective in giving us one of the few moments of levity throughout the entire film. The slow mounting tension leading up to the main conflict had my heart racing and palms firmly gripping the armrest. With a bare bones narrative stripped of any excess, this movie gets right to the point by throwing us directly into these soldiers’ boots. The specifics of the mission aren’t stated. You won’t find any exposition. Warfare sets out to rea...

Warfare | Review by: Gal Balaban

  The film is raw and immersive, the camera knowing when to immerse you into the “action” while at other times when to simply stay put and observe from afar. Similar to Alex Garland’s last film  Civil War , the film is devoid of the romanticization of violence we see in many films about war and combat, rather a film about what happens when conflict and death become a daily reality for young men, including the bond and language it creates for them out of necessity for survival.  The excellent ensemble cast shines, particularly D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, along with Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, and Cosmo Jarvis. The sound design in particular is stunning and adds to the immersion of what unfolds in this film, trying its very best to bring its audience into a battlefield where certain doom is only meters or seconds away. It doesn’t relent when it comes to the intensity and terror of battle, including the gore and stakes which are upped, while using every minute of its 90-minute run...

All Is Fine In 89 | Review by: Stefano Bove

  Do you remember where you were when the Berlin Wall fell? Maybe you were not born yet but it’s the equivalent of asking where you were on 9/11. Everyone has a traumatic memory of that moment they found out the towers fell. All is fine in 89 tells the story of the last field party of the year for the class of  Romano high school, set with the backdrop of the Berlin Wall collapse.  The story follows an ensemble cast of many different students and teachers, each of which is in a different Social circle. From jocks to nerds, each character is going through their own personal issues and trauma. High school is hard enough as it is when you are being bullied and peer pressured but in some cases, some students are going through much worse. The added pressure of  leaving the comfort of highschool and growing up in an uncertain world after the Collapse of the Berlin Wall holds a level of uneasiness throughout the film and keeps tension high constantly. All of the i...