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I Love Boosters is a Messy though Thrillingly Offbeat Socialist Polemic

Boots Riley is someone with a very distinct sense of style. This is evident just from looking at the man -with his often colourful, zoot suit-inspired clothing aesthetic, his intense sideburns, and signature large hat, he’s the kind of person who stands out in a particular way -and none of these choices are accidental. He has stated openly that much of this look has come about through his relationship with boosters, i.e: people who shoplift exclusive or expensive clothing from high-end retailers to resell at a discount to those of low-income status. He has a considerable degree of respect for boosters, whom he characterizes as latter-day Robin Hoods. It inspired a song by his hip-hop group The Coup twenty years ago, that he has now translated into a movie. I Love Boosters is partly a love letter to the people who do this, but it is mostly a diatribe against the politics of the fashion industry, its bizarre excesses, and its exploitation of workers and the public. The movie argues for a...
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A Twisted Curse of Selfish Obsession

It’s a bit amusing that Curry Barker, a director in his mid-twenties who has just made one of the relatively few good Monkey’s Paw movies in recent years came to the idea not from the classic horror story of that name by W.W. Jacobs but from the Simpsons segment in “Treehouse of Horror II”. At this stage most people of my generation and younger probably do know the reference more from The Simpsons than literature, but he might be the only one open about it. But honestly it’s fitting that the impetus for Barker’s Obsession would come from a comedy show given his movie is very aware of the twisted humour inherent to the premise. It is after all perhaps the quintessential variant of horror irony -you wish for something you think will be good, but because you haven’t considered all the angles and implications it winds up turning out horrifying. Every fantasy has a terrible dark side it posits, and there is something creepily funny to that. And Barker also has fun with the other absurdit...
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On a Mission from God

In the long history of revenge movies, not often has the prospect of taking revenge felt genuinely frightening. And not in the sense of the protagonists being caught and facing tangible consequence for what they consider a righteous goal but society at large will not; no, in a moral sense of doing harm and the horror of that, no matter what harmful act beget the whole idea entirely. It’s a very interesting theme that sets Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is apart from other movies of its type, and gives it a tension so many revenge thrillers don’t bother to address. I’m especially curious about how it comes across on stage, Harris’s filmmaking debut being an adaptation of her own off-Broadway play that won a handful of Obie Awards in 2018. Certainly through stretches of this movie you wouldn’t be able to tell it was crafted for a more visually limited medium -although other aspects certainly bear the hallmarks (a series of ESP exchanges that likely originate as asides). But the themes are clea...
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Fans vs. Critics

From the moment that critic Robert Daniels’s one-star review of the movie Michael was shared on Twitter, he was harangued by a tidal wave of backlash from both intense fans of Michael Jackson and ordinary users who merely liked the film he panned. His critiques were broadly comparable to other critics: aimed at the conflict-of-interest oversight of the Jackson family on the movie’s production, the bland characterization of the singer’s life and family, and the hagiographic attitude sapping away any dimension from Jackson along with his flaws. “A filmed playlist in search of a story” he characterizes it sharply. Against the furor, he stood his ground and engaged with some comments, most of which were in bad faith. It was blatantly obvious that a lot of them hadn’t actually read the review, assuming Daniels took issue with the movie’s omission of Jackson’s later controversies, legal issues, and pedophilia allegations -things he barely alludes to. Daniels was not alone in this -critics ...
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A Look at the Cannes Film Festival 2026

It's mid-May, the heart of the summer, and the weather is beautiful on the French Riviera for the 79th Cannes Film Festival. And once again I can only admire it from afar. One of these days I will see it in person, but for now I can only fawn on what is likely to be a critical preview of the movies to gradually come through the rest of the year. The big headline out of Cannes this year so far seems to be on the lack of Hollywood present. No major American studio films are in competition or premiering there, when typically there are at least a few. In past years, Furiosa and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny as well as the last several Mission: Impossible movies have featured in the festival a few weeks ahead of their broad domestic release. But this year and by its own choice, mainstream Hollywood has no presence at all, despite the official poster referencing Hollywood classic Thelma and Louise . But this isn't a bad thing. Cannes is an international festival with inte...
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In an Octopus’s Garden

I wonder if Remarkably Bright Creatures would exist without My Octopus Teacher ,  the Oscar-winning documentary that came out two years before Shelby Van Pelt published her bestseller novel. The interest both take in the octopus and specifically anthropomorphizing it as some wise creature benignly interacting with the affairs of everyday people is a link that doesn’t feel entirely incidental. And now with a movie adaptation out directed by Olivia Newman, who was also behind another movie translation of a book club favourite , it’s even easier to see those linking tentacles. In spare moments at least. Because though he is an omniscient figure, narrating the story through cool, dispassionate ruminations provided by Alfred Molina, the octopus Marcellus isn’t so significant a part of the movie here. Yet I suspect Remarkably Bright Creatures would have been much better if he had been. Distributed directly to Netflix, the film stars Sally Field as Tova, an elderly cleaning lady at a sm...
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Fascinating if Disorienting Visions at the Place of Ghosts

There is a sequence in At the Place of Ghosts that feels notably disconnected from the personal trauma that is driving the journey of two siblings through the dense woods of Nova Scotia. They run into what appear to be British redcoats from somewhere in the eighteenth century who assault them and debate how best to kill them -only to be rescued by a couple Mikmaq women, who kill the soldiers, and direct them further along their path. Time means nothing in these deep parts of the woods -the pair had earlier seen denizens of an ancient Mikmaq settlement on the shores of a river- but this was a much more concerted, physical interaction. Perhaps it symbolizes the link that colonialism has to even the struggle they face independent of a tangible white presence -it is something rooted in their heritage and thus has a realness and relevance to their current  situation in this territory of spirits. These are real ghosts that they encounter, but the important ghosts represented in this mov...
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