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Channel: The Dissolve: Essential Reviews
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The Babadook

An Australian horror movie summons a terrifying monster out of parental fears.

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L’Avventura

The shock has worn off Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 breakthrough, but that hasn’t made it any less powerful.

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Les Blank: Always For Pleasure

Criterion collects nearly 10 hours of Blank’s docs about food, music, and life in this set, showcasing films Werner Herzog say teach more about America than 500 books.

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Safe

Plagued by a mysterious allergy to everything, a woman seeks a cure in Todd Haynes’ 1995 masterpiece.

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Inherent Vice

Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterful adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 mystery novel sends pot-smoking P.I. Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) on a case that signals the changing Southern California culture...

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The Long Goodbye

Before Inherent Vice, there was Robert Altman’s definitive SoCal noir, which adapts a Raymond Chandler novel into a shaggy private-eye picture that’s full of hazy atmosphere and irreverent attitude. 

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Tales Of The Grim Sleeper

For two decades, a serial killer nicknamed the “Grim Sleeper” was able to slaughter prostitutes and crack addicts at will in his South Central neighborhood. Nick Broomfield’s damning documentary...

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Mr. Turner

In this sumptuous yet earthy biopic about early-19th-century painter J.M.W. Turner, Mike Leigh profiles an artist whose personal failings are neither forgiven nor allowed to overwhelm his...

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Winter Sleep

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Palme d’Or-winning follow up to Once Upon A Time In Anatolia takes the form of a study in delusion and arrogance.

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Two Days, One Night

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne offer yet another masterwork with this wrenching story about solar-panel-factory employee who asks her co-workers to give up their annual bonus so she can keep her job. 

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Selma

Immediacy, in all its senses, defines Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic.

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Something, Anything

Writer-director Paul Harrill stakes out new ground in the well-trodden territory of movie protagonists who check out of their lives. In this case, it’s a woman who re-evaluates her career and marriage...

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The Duke Of Burgundy

All is not what it seems, in more ways than one, in a Peter Strickland-directed homage to European softcore, which has more than titillation on its mind.

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My Winnipeg

Truth and tall tales collide in Guy Maddin’s whimsical reminiscence about his hometown, which mythologizes a place and a people who chose not to make a big deal about themselves. 

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Timbuktu

Bamako’s Abderrahmane Sissako returns with a film about the Islamist takeover of Timbuktu that’s both tragic and effortlessly humane.

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The Palm Beach Story

One of Preston Sturges’ best, funniest films tries to find out what happens to marriages after “happily every after.”

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Don’t Look Now

Nicolas Roeg’s chilly examination of grief and memory still looks ahead of its time.

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What We Do In The Shadows

Flight Of The Conchords’ Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement bring the show’s whimsy to a hilarious mockumentary about centuries-old vampires dealing with the mundanity of the real world.

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A Day In The Country

Jean Renoir’s 40-minute masterpiece, based on the Guy de Maupassant short story “A Country Excursion,” still impresses with its lush imagery, sexual candor, and exquisite proportionality. 

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Approaching The Elephant

A documentary observes the chaotic first year at an experimental New Jersey school.

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Buzzard

A dark comedy considers life on the fringes of the American economy through the eyes of a character with the will, but not the wits, to scam his way to stability.

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The Soft Skin

François Truffaut’s follow-up to a three-masterpiece run looks like a movie made by someone exploring tone, characterization, and his own skills.

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It Follows

The fright runs deep in a symbolically rich new horror film from the director of The Myth Of The American Sleepover.

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Spring

A thoughtful second feature from the team behind Resolution uses the supernatural to explore intimate themes.

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Gates Of HeavenVernon, FloridaThe Thin Blue Line

Now available on two Criterion Blu-rays—his first two films in one, the third in the other—Errol Morris’ verité portraits of eccentrics in Gates Of Heaven and Vernon, Florida look different than the...

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Manos Sucias

Two estranged brothers venture from Buenaventura, Colombia up the Pacific coast with a cocaine-packed torpedo shell in tow in Josef Kubota Wladyka’s tense, beautifully shot, and socially attuned...

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About Elly

Finally making its U.S. theatrical debut, Asghar Farhadi’s devastating 2009 ensemble piece about a woman’s disappearance on vacation anticipates the riveting, prismatic drama of A Separation and The...

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Clouds Of Sils Maria

Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart anchor a two-hander about intimacy and performance that cannily reflects the maturation of both its director and star.

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Odd Man Out

Two years before making The Third Man, director Carol Reed ventured into noir-like territory with this thriller starring a great James Mason as a wounded Irish nationalist seeking shelter in Northern...

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The River

Director Jean Renoir worked in black-and-white his entire career—and then traveled to India for a sumptuous production that Martin Scorsese ranks as one of the most beautiful films ever made in color. 

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Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck

Enhanced by access to the artist’s archives, Brett Morgen’s look at the life of Kurt Cobain avoids rehashing familiar facts in favor of finding the man beneath them.

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Miami Blues

Adapted from Charles Willeford’s crime novel, George Armitage’s colorful 1990 Florida noir is by turns fizzy and menacing, and a brilliant showcase for Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Fred Ward. 

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Cooley High

A benchmark for black filmmaking in the 1970s, Michael Schultz’s  film could be called an inner-city answer to American Graffiti if its memories of growing up in Chicago’s Near North Side weren’t so...

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Avengers: Age Of Ultron

Writer-director Joss Whedon improves on the first Avengers movie with an exciting, fast-paced superhero adventure that serves its many characters while weighing the difficulties of doing the right...

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The Train

 John Frankenheimer’s 1964 WWII film sends the black-and-white action film out in style.

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Goodfellas

Martin Scorsese’s gangster classic returns in a Blu-ray edition that just confirms its timelessness.

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Mad Max: Fury Road

Director George Miller returns to his post-apocalyptic series for the first time since 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, setting a new standard for action while addressing tough philosophical...

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When Marnie Was There

The last movie currently on the Studio Ghibli docket, Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s gorgeous feature about an asthmatic girl who meets a strange friend in the country shows the animation house continuing to...

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Heaven Knows What

The directors of Lenny Cooke take on a feature drama, but their New York addiction story sticks close to real life, using largely non-professional actors and working from a memoir by their lead actor.

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Tu Dors Nicole

 It’s hard to build a movie entirely on grace notes, but Stéphane Lafleur’s gorgeous black-and-white reverie about youths in summer comes awfully close.

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Spy

After collaborating on Bridesmaids and The Heat, Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy come together for their funniest comedy to date, a sneakily progressive spy-movie parody about a meek, disrespected CIA...

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The Wolfpack

While isolated and home-schooled in their Lower East Side apartment, six teenage brothers processed American culture through movies and moviemaking. Crystal Moselle’s raw but intimate documentary...

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Dziga Vertov: The Man With The Movie Camera And Other Restored Works

Named one of the top 10 movies of all time in the most recent Sight And Sound poll, a restored version of The Man With The Movie Camera joins three lesser-known Dziga Vertov efforts on Blu-ray. 

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The Tribe

Set at a school for the deaf, a Ukrainian film eschews any sort of verbal language as it tells a rough story about non-conformity and its consequences in an isolated community.

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Inside Out

The latest from Pixar takes an energetic but ultimately tender and sympathetic trip through the mind of a young girl experiencing traumatic life transitions.

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Gabriel

Rory Culkin’s mesmerizing but not showy performance as a mentally ill young man anchors this stunning debut from writer-director Lou Howe.

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Five Easy Pieces

Bob Rafelson’s New Hollywood classic is remembered for its famous diner scene, but there’s much more to cherish about this character study, which explores the surprising roots of Jack Nicholson’s...

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Cartel Land

A thrilling documentary explores the borderland where those on both sides of the drug war end up with dirty hands.

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Amy

Senna director Asif Kapadia unpacks the mysteries of Amy Winehouse’s tragic life with a heartbreaking documentary that exposes the toxic influences around her, and the mysteries at the core of her...

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Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders

Jaromil Jires’ 1970 Czech New Wave classic delves into the subconscious of a 13-year-old girl, which takes her through a fantasy realm, but reflects the adolescent experience as well as any...

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