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Mass (dir. Fran Kranz), 2021
There are great acting performances in Mass, but at what cost? A two hour slog about the parents of a school shooting victim and those of...

Samuel Haines
Nov 16, 20213 min read


Spencer (dir. Pablo Larrain), 2021
I have come to terms that Pablo Larrain is just not for me. While all my film mutuals swooned over the moody shots of Natalie Portman...

Samuel Haines
Nov 13, 20212 min read


Manco Cápac (dir. Henry Vallejo), 2021
At first I thought the sound editing was off-balanced. Vague conversations from background characters, often faceless and without any...

Samuel Haines
Nov 1, 20214 min read


Halloween Kills (dir. David Gordon Green), 2021
Evil dies tonight. Gays renovate murder houses. Kyle Richards tries to act her way out of a paper bag. Halloween Kills simultaneously...

Samuel Haines
Oct 31, 20212 min read


Throwback: Raw (dir. Julia Ducournau), 2016
The remoteness is palpable at the elite veterinary school. Rural, tree-lined roads provide entrance to and from the campus, composed of...

Samuel Haines
Oct 18, 20213 min read


The Mad Women's Ball (dir. Melanie Laurent), 2021
Andre Brouillet was a French genre painter, choosing to depict events through realism in his portraiture during a time and place where...

Samuel Haines
Sep 24, 20215 min read


Throwback: The Heartbreak Kid (dir. Elaine May), 1972
Lila Kolodny has a lousy singing voice. She also has an affinity for egg salad sandwiches and double-chocolate milkshakes. “You’ll have...

Samuel Haines
Sep 16, 20214 min read


The Lodge (dirs. Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala), 2020
Religious iconography is abundant at the lodge and it unsettles Grace Marshall (Riley Keough). Grace has weaseled her way into a family...

Samuel Haines
May 20, 20203 min read


Sergio (dir. Greg Barker), 2020
Type the letters SER into your Netflix search bar. You know what won’t show up? Their new original film Sergio, a biopic starring...

Samuel Haines
Apr 30, 20203 min read


The Hunt (dir. Craig Zobel), 2020
There are few things that unite America. One of them appears to be The Hunt, a film which had taken advantage of controversy and setbacks...

Samuel Haines
Mar 29, 20202 min read


Throwback: Wild Tales (dir. Damián Szifron), 2014
Pasternak is flying the plane. Who is Pasternak? His grade school teacher calls him a psycho, according to a music critic his work was...

Samuel Haines
Mar 13, 20202 min read


The Invisible Man (dir. Leigh Whannell), 2020
He mustn’t wake up. The coastal mansion, primarily constructed of glass and poured concrete, is impossible to sneak off from. The...

Samuel Haines
Mar 4, 20202 min read


Throwback: El ángel exterminador (dir. Luis Buñuel), 1962
As two servants attempt to sneak out of the grand house on Providence Street, they rush back behind a door for the second arrival of the...

Samuel Haines
Feb 21, 20206 min read


Under the Silver Lake (dir. David Robert Mitchell), 2019
Andrew Garfield : Under the Silver Lake :: Naomi Watts : Mulholland Drive. Let that analogy marinate for a moment. Hopefully, in a decade...

Samuel Haines
Feb 12, 20202 min read


The Edge of Democracy (dir. Petra Costa), 2019
The last 30 years of Brazilian politics is more than just a solid foundation for a film, it is an entire beginning, middle, and end....

Samuel Haines
Feb 5, 20203 min read


Throwback: Savages (dir. Oliver Stone), 2012
“I had orgasms…he had wargasms.” When Blake Lively narrates that line three minutes into Savages, the audience will experience a “red...

Samuel Haines
Jan 30, 20202 min read


Jojo Rabbit (dir. Taika Waititi), 2019
A pair of shoes has the power to ignite emotion and signal a pivotal moment in Jojo Rabbit, testifying to the craft in the storytelling...

Samuel Haines
Jan 20, 20202 min read


Honeyland (dirs. Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov), 2019
Honeyland has such heart, grit, pain, and resilience centered at its core, which seamlessly is intertwined and packaged into an 87 minute...

Samuel Haines
Jan 17, 20203 min read


Bombshell (dir. Jay Roach), 2019
The disappointment I felt after a first viewing of Bombshell was high. I had gone in hearing mixed reviews: some panned the narrative and...

Samuel Haines
Jan 16, 20203 min read


A Hidden Life (dir. Terrence Malick), 2019
Perhaps all films should be three hours. I had gone into this one mostly blind, but well aware of the controversial reputation of...

Samuel Haines
Jan 9, 20202 min read
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