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Sicario: Day of the Soldado Review – Bad hombres

You know, it feels like a pretty rum time to put this flick out. It comes hard to buy the grim premonitions that the most valuable cargo that the cartels are smuggling across the border is refugees. With what how it doesn’t really square with what’s happening in America right now. Describing this film’s opening…
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Ocean’s 8 Review – All jewel, no heist

Here’s the thing about Steven Soderbergh, the director of this decade’s Ocean’s 11-13. He’s not a very cool filmmaker. Sure, his films are cool, and as he’s grown they’ve only become more effortlessly so. But the way he approaches them is like watching a masterclass in restraint. He is interested in the primacy of the…
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Weekly Roundup 24/06/18

I try not to be driven by my shame. Or at least I try not to put it in a place where other people will see. This Friday just gone I dashed straight from work to a running workout session, then got dressed and made up for a night hanging with friends. Food probably should…
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Hereditary Review – Sad times

There’s a lot of grief in Hereditary and none of its characters know where to put it. It opens on the funeral of this family’s matriarchal grandmother. Toni Collette’s Annie struggles through her speech at the alter, trying to reconcile her mother’s abusive personality with the weight of her loss. Like, when the feelings that…
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McQueen Review – Corporate art

It must be hard being extraordinary. It’s like once the world has singled you out as being so, there’s no escaping it. All of a sudden your hours are not yours, your living becomes an act of public service. I guess everyone deals with it in their own way. It seems easier the more populist…
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Weekly Roundup 16/06/18

I interviewed for a promotion at work on Friday. I know I just got one like three months ago but our workplace changed managers and I thought i might as well try my luck with this new guy.
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Weekly roundup 10/06/18

I hadn’t realised that this was E3 week. It’s strange. I definitely watched it last year, and the year before that. The year before that one all my housemates stayed up together until 4am getting blazed and watching the press conferences. I think one of them had just brought an xbox one and we had…
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Ismaël’s Ghosts Review – More haunting than haunted

Now I haven’t seen any of Arnaud Desplechin’s other films. Maybe I should have. Maybe it would have prepared me a little better, the trailer certainly did an inefficient job of that. I thought it would be one of those French flicks that one could comfortably nap through, man on holiday with his partner at…
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My Friend Dahmer Review – More cereal than serial

When the title comes up at the end of My Friend Dahmer saying that the man would go on to murder 17 people over the course of the next 20 years it feels like a punchline. The film ain’t been particularly cagey about the young leads predilections. We see him in his the shed where…
