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Club Zero

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Mia Wasikowska stars in this Cannes selection from Jessica Hausner, as a conscious eating teacher who wants to introduce her students to the mysterious Club Zero. The Australian actress, who broke through internationally with the titular role in Alice in Wonderland (2010), plays Ms. Novak, who comes to work at an elite boarding school, led by Ms. Dorset (Sidse Babett Knudsen, Borgen).  Having a conscious eating teacher on board, is seen as an added value element to the curriculum. The children can only benefit, as individuals, but also as members of a rapidly changing world, heading into a future in which sustainability is key. Little do the parents know, however, that Ms. Novak, who has no children of her own, brings her own highly peculiar agenda to the (dinner) table. She seems to form a special relationship with her pupils, including Ragna (Florence Baker), Elsa (Ksenia Devriendt), Fred (Luke Barker), Ben (Samuel D. Anderson) and Helen (Gwen Currant), whose individual personality t
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Civil War

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Alex Garland’s ‘near fiction’ action epic Civil War  ventures deep into the heart of American darkness. It tells the story of a group of semi-embedded journalists from New York to Washington D.C. to capture one last interview with the President of the United States before he himself may be captured by the Western Forces of Texas and California whose revolution is gaining momentum. That’s basically all you need to know about the plot. And besides, Garland doesn’t tell us much more. Civil War takes place in a future America where words like ‘Democrats’ or ‘Republicans’ seem to have lost all meaning. Or as one soldier puts it halfway through the movie: ‘There are some guys out there trying to kill us. And we are trying to kill them.’ Even though the movie is full of violent war scenes, Garland mainly focuses on our little group of four protagonists: Kirsten Dunst plays Lee Smith, a very experienced war photographer, who has seen it all and is nearing the end of her tether. She works for t
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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is the mostly fine fifth entry in the long running franchise, that is slowly but surely running out of commercial steam. Directed by Gil Kenan, from a script by Kenan and legacy curator Jason Reitman, it sees the main characters moving back to NYC, after their previous adventures in Summerville, Oklahoma in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021).  That movie was a perfectly fine way of reigniting a frozen franchise, after the blowout success of the first two movies, from 1984 and 1989, and the false re-start that was Answer The Call (2016). Even though that movie was pretty enjoyable, it showed that the hardcore fans were not ready for an all female Ghostbusters quartet and the studio subsequently caved.  The more readily embraced Afterlife was basically ‘Ghostbusters meets a more lighthearted version of Stranger Things’, with Mckenna Grace (as Phoebe Spengler) in the Millie Bobby Brown role and Finn Wolfhard (as Phoebe’s older brother Trevor) as ‘that guy you alrea
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Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

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Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, now available on (HBO) Max, isn’t the perfect ending of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) that we all wished for.  But as a relatively straight forward  Superhero Movie of the Week I think it’s still mostly fine.  Jason Momoa is still immensely appealing as Arthur Curry aka Aquaman, but in this sequel to the (frankly superior) first movie he’s gotten bored with his role as King of Atlantis and the ruler of all he seas. Arthur spends his days playing house with his wife Mera (Amber Heard) and his infant son, but it’s a far cry from the action-filled life he was once used to. Fortunately, for him and also the viewer, he’s called back into action by the return  of presumed dead bad guy David Kane  (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) aka Black Manta, who is now in possession of demonic powers that (among other things) accelerate climate change. Oh, and he also blames Aquaman for killing his father in the first movie. However, to defeat Black Manta and his allies, Aquaman fi
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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

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Godzilla x Kong - The New Empire is a colorful spectacle, but it is so ape-centric that they might as well have called it ‘Kong Plus One, Or Two, Or Frankly Loads Of Other Apes’ and be done with it. That’s not a criticism per se. Before Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) the Monsterverse was made up of two Godzilla movies - Godzilla (2014) and King Of The Monsters (2019) - while Kong had only Kong: Skull Island (2017) to show for. So a kind of reciprocity was definitely in order. So if it’s apes you want, it’s apes you get. There’s Kong of course, who gets a new tooth early and a new arm later on.  There is a fabulous looking mini-Kong and I kept waiting for the moment that Kong would say ‘Mini-Kong, you complete me.’ But alack and alas… There is the fearsome Skar King, who is the villain of this particular story. And there are lots of other apes to make up the numbers. So kudos to Warner Bros for getting this movie out to the public before Disney’s Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes in early may
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Ronja, The Robber’s Daughter

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Ronja, The Robber’s Daughter is a new fantasy series based on Astrid Lindgren’s classic children’s book about the beautiful friendship between the daughter and son of two rivaling bands of Swedish robbers. I grew up with Lindgren’s work. One of my earliest cinematic memories is seeing the Pippi Longstocking movies with my family in one of our local theaters.  Pippi was, of course, the original free spirited feminist pirate girl, living an independent life filled with weird and wonderful adventures, together with her sometimes a little more reluctant friends Tommy and Annika. Ronja The Robber’s Daughter was a somewhat more grown up teenage version of that same girl, but set in a medieval, fantasy world. Lindgren herself adapted the book into a screenplay, which turned into an award winning movie, released in 1984, and generally regarded as a classic children’s movie. I watched a bit on YouTube and the story still holds up, even if it is clear as day that with today’s resources you could
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Poor Things

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  Yorghos Lanthimos is one of the most interesting directors working today. His latest movie, the widely acclaimed Poor Things, is a steampunk science fiction fantasy, spearheaded by a fearless performance by Emma Stone. Nominated for eleven Oscars, Poor Things is a critical darling that by the end of its theatrical run will probably have a worldwide gross of over 100 million dollars, showing sceptics that its possible for artistic risk takers to have it all. The movie, adapted by Tim McNamara, from the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray, starts out in an alternative version of Victorian London. Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, a suicidal young woman, who is brought back to life by her own Dr. Frankenstein. He is called Godwin Baxter (the great Willem Dafoe), so Bella appropriately refers to him as God.  As Bella grows up from a mental infant to a somewhat more mature young woman, she is befriended first by Godwin’s assistant Max ( Ramy Youssef), who wants to marry her, then by Godwin’s lawyer,
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