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Continue reading →: 2023: Personal Awards2023 was the year of Barbenheimer in the minds of most, but beyond that, this year felt totemic delivering a new late-career masterpiece by our greatest living filmmaker on top of many of our great prestige names dropping bold new works. From melancholy Christmases to sexually-tormented protagonists to gigantic egos…
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Continue reading →: Review: Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” finds subtle sweetness under densely plotted caperThose expecting Wes Anderson to return to the straight-forward, warmly-stylized heart-on-their-sleeves dramedies featuring upbeat soundtracks that he established his name on may have to wait a bit longer (or perhaps an eternity). In the meantime, he seems fixated on cracking complicated human traumas through experimental and austere methods of storytelling.…
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Continue reading →: Review: “Friendship”, a truly inviting comedy for the criminally insaneThis review may contain spoilers. No, wait! No spoilers! He said “NO SPOILERS!” If you aren’t familiar with Tim Robinson’s brand of short-fuse cringe comedy, for which he gained huge success in the mainstream with Netflix’s sketch series I Think You Should Leave, walking into the new film by first-time…
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Continue reading →: Review: ‘Mission: Impossible- The Final Reckoning’ is as big a finale as Cruise can deliver, for better (and slightly for worse)Tom Cruise, a man who more likely is made of steel and adrenaline than bones and blood, has made it his mission for the last 30 years to be the king of movies, putting his body through endurance tests that could destroy the strongest and fastest creatures on earth. It’s…
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Continue reading →: Review: ‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ Knows Exactly What It Is and Doubles DownThe Final Destination franchise, originally the spawn of an X-Files spec script, has historically been both ridiculed in the critic community and beloved in the horror community. As independent online journalism and film criticism have collided more and more in the last decade, as well as once-young teens howling at…
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Continue reading →: 2024: Personal AwardsYes, yes, yes. It’s May of 2025 and we’ve moved on from last year. I’ve even shared these nominations on social media, but I would like to start this and work my way backwards as just a fun feature on this blog. I’ve been pretty adamant about catching up with…
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Continue reading →: Review: ‘Thunderbolts*’ is Not to be Underestimated as Typical MCU Fair36 movies into a franchise seems a bit much, right? For about 2/3 of its run, the Marvel Studios machine has been coasting on success after success, mildly switching tones and genres, but rarely straying from the same gloss and shine storytelling it began with. The last few years post-Avengers:…
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Continue reading →: Review: ‘Sinners’ allows Coogler pure, bloody creative freedomIt’s impossible to discuss the plot of Ryan Coogler’s new original thriller Sinners without digging into, at least, the specific entity that causes the conflict: vampires. Yes, this was made clear in the original announcement of the film’s production, it was made clear in the advertising (and not even remotely…
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Continue reading →: Review: ‘Warfare’ is unrelentingly bleak, tense horror“The horror…” We can only imagine what Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now had experienced through his unforgettable monologue. Directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza want to give you a front row seat to it. Based on Mendoza’s own memories, and the memories of his Navy Seal squad in 2006, of…
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Continue reading →: Review: ‘Drop’ is pure, fun nonsenseAs we continue to approach the impending future where technology takes over our everyday lives, in the moment, tech-based horror stories are all the rage, intending on warning us of the dangerous side effects to technology dependency. There’s even a new season of Black Mirror that just dropped at the…
FILM AND TELEVISION REVIEWS, AWARDS DISCUSSION, & OTHER GENERAL MUSINGS
EDITOR, SITE WRITER
Jakob Kolness
Minnesota Film Critics Association Member. Graduate of Film Studies, writer, novelist, filmmaker.
CURRENT 2026 OSCAR PREDICTIONS
“Bugonia”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“It Was Just An Accident”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“The Secret Agent”
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”
“Train Dreams”
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