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Film Review: Spy x Family Code: White

By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation The delightfully silly antics of the Forger family, anime’s newest pop culture icons, is difficult to describe to non-fans or those unfamiliar with the series. The unassumingly complex premise – which involves two characters who don’t know a thing about each other, one who knows everything, and a dog who…
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Film Review: Kung Fu Panda 4

By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation It’s been 16 years since the original Kung Fu Panda dropped in 2008. The surprise box office smash and critical darling was almost as important as the moving parts behind the scenes during it’s production. DreamWorks, hiding high off of the success of the Shrek franchise and several other high…
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Film Review: Dune: Part Two

By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Dune: Part Two‘s mere existence is something of a miracle. And I’m not talking it’s about it’s quality or how the hell Denis Villeneuve managed to make some of it – though that’s definitely also part of it – but the fact it was even made to begin with is…
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Film Review: Godzilla Minus One

By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation 70 years ago, Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla (or Gojira as it’s sometimes called to differ it from some later entries with the same title) changed everything. While monster movies had been around for awhile, Godzilla‘s revolutionary “suitmation” practical effects combined with it’s genuine thematic depth surrounding post-war anxieties suddenly made the…
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Film Review: The Boy and the Heron

By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Opening with a hospital fire, The Boy and the Heron (also known as How Do You Live? in it’s admittedly much better Japanese title) starts with a literal bang, which is interesting considering how much of The Boy and the Heron is also Hayao Miyazaki’s quietest film in a very…
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Film Review: Killers of the Flower Moon

By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation A near 10 year in the making picture, Killers of the Flower Moon represents the third in a trilogy of late period Martin Scorsese projects that are mainly passion affairs. It started with his faith based masterpiece Silence and continued with his long awaited return to the gangster genre in…
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Film Review: The Zone of Interest

By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation When discussing historical tragedies in film, there is an inevitable urge to frame the action as some sort of humanitarian service; a documentation for future generations to perceive maybe not the full horror but just enough so they can understand the paths that have led humanity to this point. The…
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Film Review: The Night of the 12th

By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation From it’s opening title card, you know how The Night of the 12th is going to end. It doesn’t try to hide it at any point either, making it clear that what you are witnessing isn’t going to be resolved in any traditional manner. The film gives you just enough…
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Film Review: The Beast

By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation The Beast is confounding. Not even in just the traditional sense of being difficult to decipher – any film that opens up with a green screen recreation of a scene from it’s own third act is going to be – but in the sense of I’m not entirely sure all…
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Film Review: Robot Dreams

By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation A story of friendship is, on paper, the surface level idea on display in Robot Dreams, the animation debut of Spanish director Pablo Berger. Told with nary a single line of dialogue, Robot Dreams is immediately charming through simplicity in a way not a whole lot of films are. A…