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God’s Not Dead (2014)
God’s Not Dead tells a familiar story (the lone hero delivers salvation to the community by defeating the forces of evil) filtered through a modern Evangelical mindset that seeks victory in its war...
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Song of the Sea (2014)
Song of the Sea, Tomm Moore’s follow-up to the beautifully animated Secret of Kells, begins with a memory. A mother, her belly swollen with baby, tucks her son, Ben, into bed just after giving him a...
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Siddharth (2014)
Siddharth, Richie Mehta’s recent film set in India, follows an impoverished chain-wallah (zipper repairman) named Mahendra as he deals with the aftermath of his 12-year old son’s abduction. Mahendra...
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Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
A few years ago, Quentin Tarantino offered this blunt assessment of Irish-American (not Anglo-Saxon) John Ford: One of my American Western heroes is not John Ford, obviously. To say the least, I hate...
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Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953)
Mr. Hulot’s Holiday introduced Jacques Tati’s droll title character to the world. The film is about nothing more than what the title indicates—a beach vacation taken by one Mr. Hulot (Tati never gives...
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Hail, Caesar! (2016)
The latest film from the Coen brothers was actually the result of an idea brewing way back in 2005, intended to complete what star George Clooney called his “idiot trilogy,” including his previous Coen...
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The Look of Silence (2015)
In 1965, the Indonesian army along with many civilians “cleansed” their country of “communists,” leaving more than 1 million people dead and countless families shattered. Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look...
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Boyhood (2014)
Richard Linklater has been making films for more than 25 years. And while his isn’t exactly a household name—despite his more popular collaborations with Jack Black (School of Rock and Bernie)—he has...
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The Last of the Unjust (2014)
I had a provocative moment during my viewing of Claude Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust, his portrait of Benjamin Murmelstein, former elder of the Jews at the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1944-45. Early...
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Top Ten of 2016
The Oscars serve as something of an official end point to the annual film year, so I have made a habit of compiling a top ten list in the week leading up to the show each year. This has the benefit of...
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