The Departed is simultaneously ridiculous and exciting — a potent combination for a watchable movie, but not necessarily a great one.
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The Departed (2006)
Valerie Taylor is an Australian marine conservationist, and her story is a pretty compelling one. First a competitive spearfisher, then a Hollywood consultant (including on Jaws!), then a public advocate for shark protection, she is the subject of TONS of archival footage of swimming and interacting with sharks, and now’s our chance to enjoy it all.
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Bye Bye Africa (1999)
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s debut film is a peculiar hybrid of drama and documentary. Haroun, playing a semi-fictionalized version of himself, returns from France to his homeland Chad upon hearing of his mother’s passing. While there, he bemoans a crumbling local cinema and ponders creating a film to capture the spirit of his home nation.
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Encanto (2021)
Chalk at least some of my affection to low expectations and hater spite.
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Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Scene 1: Three scoundrels wait at a train station at the end of the world.
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Jean-Pierre’s Mouth (1996)
Mercifully short and non-exploitative, Lucile Hadžihalilović‘s debut is claustrophobic and tense and well-crafted. The film’s sense of dread never boils over into outright terror, but it’s nonetheless a fairly haunting little piece.
Chris Columbus’s approach to adapting the generationally important book series is certainly a bit broken as a film qua film.
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Below Dreams (2014)
A slice of life drama about poverty in New Orleans, Below Dreams balances naturalist storytelling and audacious visuals to a nearly impressionistic effect.
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Lemon (2017)
Lemon starts as an investigation of how actors use performance to filter out their horrible lives before pivoting to a satire about how pitiful it is to live in LA, I guess?
Note: I wrote a new La La Land review as part of my Damien Chazelle retrospective. You can read it here.
I’m seriously bummed I didn’t see this one on the big screen.