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The Screening Room: A Simple Favor

In All, Movies by Kyu

A Simple Favor is a more TV than TV, in this era of modern prestige shows: shot conventionally, with a crackerjack plot, and focused on women and their self-images and aspirations. Funny, suspenseful, edited with a ruthless efficiency and performed very well by Anna Kendrick and …

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Killtoberfest 4 – #20: Wait Until Dark

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Mike: “Damn it, you act as if you’re in kindergarten! This is the big bad world, full of mean people, where nasty things happen!” Susy: “Now you tell me.” Wait Until Dark is essentially a perfect thriller. It presents us with an extremely sympathetic protagonist, …

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Killtoberfest 4 – #2: Green Room

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“Time to start the clean-up. We’re gonna need a push broom.” When the band moves onto the second song of their set, the crowd really starts to get into it. All shaved heads and tattoos and leather jackets, they abandon themselves to the mosh, shoving …

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The Screening Room: Phoenix (2014)

In All, Movies by Kyu

Just after the war, a woman sits in a plastic surgeon’s office while he offers her faces. Speaking German, he suggests a few popular choices for a woman to model herself on, both celebrities under the Nazi regime. “I guess they’re both out of fashion …

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The Screening Room: The Lookout

In All, Movies by Kyu

This is very annoying. I could have sworn I first saw 2007’s The Lookout after reading a very favorable Roger Ebert review, but I can’t find the review online or in his archives. Maybe I’m just imagining things, because this is precisely the kind of …