Reviews Articles

Blanchett at the Top of Her Game in Tár

Cate Blanchett is at the top of her game in this drama where orchestral politics and sexual intrigue come together to bring a brilliant conductor down from the heights of Mahler’s Symphony No 5 to incognito status providing sci-fi music for a cosplay enacted in Manila...
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Casting is Everything: A review of Banshees of Inisherin

The Oscar-nominated "Banshees of Inisherin" is a beautifully acted unconventional tale of pre-Facebook "unfriending" that is not without its share of, well, grisly scenes. Casting is really everything, and one is simply taken by the magical weaving together of the...
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Not a Hatchet Job: Review of Ronald Suny’s “Stalin: Passage to Revolution”

Stalin by Ronald Grigor Suny is not a hatchet-job on Stalin like many other works by liberal scholars. Based on documents in Soviet archives made available after the Soviet collapse, this is a surprisingly even-handed account of the Soviet leader's pre-Russian...
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Cornering a Predator, Bringing them Back Alive: Review of She Said and Thirteen Lives

If you ask me, two films that should definitely be in contention for best film at the Oscars this year are “She Said” and “Thirteen Lives.” That is, if being totally gripping is the main criterion. You get totally engrossed in Maria Schrader’s retelling of how a New...
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