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"The best video essay source on the web." (Roger Ebert) This is a web site built around original video essays and critical, personal writing about movies, TV, music, comics and whatever else interests its contributors. Co-founded by Matt Zoller Seitz, TV critic for New York Magazine, and Ken Cancelosi, it is published by Seitz and Cancelosi and overseen by editor-in-chief Kevin B. Lee and managing editor Max Winter.

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CANNES 2012: Michael Haneke's AMOUR (Simon Abrams' Take)

Festivals

Indifference kills quietly in Amour, the new psychodrama from Austrian provocateur Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon, Cache). In this devastating character study about the hell that is caring for an ailing loved one, writer and director Haneke explores grief as a slow, gnawing process. Coping with loss does not, however, begin with a catalyst as mundane as physical illness. Instead, it starts and ends with a debilitating kind of depression that’s facilitated by solitude. For Haneke, grief is just as frightening as death because it’s also a draining progression that we necessarily go through alone.

By Simon Abrams
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May 20, 2012 11:34 AM
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0 Comments

Festivals

This is the American outback in all its bloody glory.

By Glenn Heath Jr.
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May 19, 2012 1:58 PM
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1 Comment

Festivals

If nothing else, the new 4K restoration of the late "Once Upon a Time in America" proves the necessity of film preservation. This essential new cut of Sergio Leone’s last film was re-assembled from newly rediscovered footage long thought lost.

By Simon Abrams
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May 19, 2012 10:43 AM
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5 Comments

Festivals

The classic fairy tale is an artificial creation in Matteo Garrone’s "Reality," something wedding planners and television producers manipulate to create the best possible pomp and circumstance product for their Pavlovian audiences.

By Glenn Heath Jr.
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May 18, 2012 7:37 PM
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0 Comments

Festivals

Gondry's latest movie buzzes with hormones and posturing and All That Angst.

By Simon Abrams
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May 18, 2012 10:20 AM
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0 Comments

Festivals

"Mekong Hotel" is another quiet but deeply impressive drama set in Weerasethakul-Land, where time and narrative logic as we know them don't apply.

By Simon Abrams
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May 17, 2012 12:08 PM
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0 Comments

Festivals

Jacques Audiard only knows how to pummel us. The French director of "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" and "A Prophet" wouldn’t know a subtle musical cue or composition if it were staring him in the face.

By Glenn Heath Jr.
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May 17, 2012 9:37 AM
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0 Comments

Festivals

Governments are inherently evil. Commoners are redeemable imbeciles. Academics are clueless do-gooders. These cookie-cutter generalizations about character motivation and social institutions define Yousry Nasrallah’s "After the Battle."

By Glenn Heath Jr.
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May 16, 2012 5:39 PM
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0 Comments

Festivals

"Moonrise Kingdom" is a great success, both within the context of Wes Anderson's body of work and as a work unto itself. Initially, however, its Wes- Anderson-y-ness is almost off-putting.

By Simon Abrams
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May 16, 2012 9:18 AM
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0 Comments

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RT @MatchCuts: ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (B+/A-): Final stand for individuality and artistic expression. Growing more major by the moment. #Cannes2013
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