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Eyes, Eyes Baby

  You would be forgiven for thinking Heart Eyes is a simple holiday themed slasher movie riding the coattails of 2023's Thanksgiving. While it takes place on Valentine's Day and features a killer dispatching people with a cupid themed arsenal of weapons, that is only half the story. What Heart Eyes really is, is a full on rom com with a slasher slapped over the top of it. How does that work? Thanks to a heightened comic tone and some sharp writing, pretty bloody well. Olivia Holt plays Ally, a love cynic who stalks her ex online and whose bitterness has seeped into her work, endangering her job as a marketing agent for a jewellery company. She has a meet cute in a coffee shop with Mason Gooding's Jay, only to later find out he has been hired by her company to fix her campaign and may be a threat to her position. True love sceptic forced to work with a hot new guy (who happens to be a hopeless romantic) under tense circumstances is a classic rom com set up and there is even...
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September 5

  September 5 is based around the harrowing events of that date in 1972, when Black September took members of the Israeli olympic team hostage in the Munich Olympic village. "Around" is the operative word though as the film focuses solely on the actions and decisions of the ABC sports broadcasters who ended up covering the events live. With this approach director Tim Fehlbaum sacrifices in your face tension in favour of a love letter to classic reporting and changing of the guard in terms of journalistic priorities.  The film begins in the early hours of the morning, with the team preparing for a regular day of olympic coverage (not that there really is such a thing as a regular day of coverage yet, with this being the first games to be covered live via satellite). There is already some tension in the air around Germany hosting the games and ethics questions of live TV are surfacing, "you want to ask a Jewish man about the holocaust on live television?". Distant gu...
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It Sure Does

 Love Hurts is Ke Huy Quan's first ever lead role. After decades out the game and struggling to keep his insurance prior to his Oscar winning turn in "Everything Everywhere, All At Once", you can hardly blame him for taking the chance to front a movie. Unfortunately, in Jonathan Eusabio's directorial debut, he has landed in a misfire. Quan plays Marvin Gable, a cheery real estate agent living his best life as he crushes the sales game and keeps everyone in the office (except for his depressed assistant) happy with his home baking. Unbeknownst to his colleagues he used to be a gangland hitman for his mob boss brother "Knuckles" and when the mysterious Rose, who Marvin was supposed to have killed, remerges, big brother dispatches the goons to get some answers from him. Cue high jinks as Marvin battles henchmen kung fu style while trying to keep his current and past lives from colliding. It's a fun idea but nothing quite comes together in the execution. Th...
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Room With a Viewer

  Few directors can release films with same consistency as Steven Soderbergh (he averages over one a year this century), never mind in so many different genres. With Presence, he steps into the world of the supernatural. Don't be fooled by the "presence" of a spirit however, this is not a horror film, more a family drama infused with a sense of doom. The film begins with a family, consisting of domineering mother Rebecca (Lucy Liu), unhappy father Chris (Chris Sullivan), swimming star son Tyler (Eddy Maday) and troubled daughter Chloe (Colina Laing) moving into a new home. Things are far from rosy in the Sullivan household, Rebecca is involved in some unspecified shady work business and dotes on her athlete son (the whole reason for the move is to get him into a premium school) while showing little interest in her daughter, who's best friend recently died. Chris is fed up with his detached wife's favouritism and considering divorce while both the offspring are in ...
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My Girl 2025

  Companion opens with Iris (Sophie Thatcher) reminiscing on her meet cute with Jack Quaid's Josh before accompanying him to a secluded house for a weekend of partying with his friends. Everything is normal on the surface but there are hints that something else is going on as Iris appears insanely dedicated to her boyfriend's happiness and at least one of his friends are a little off with her. Sure enough, a reveal around a third of the way in switches things up and the film becomes a bungled heist movie leading to a chase through the woods with freedom and lives on the line. If you have seen the final trailer for Companion you already know what the reveal is. I won't spoil it here for those who want to go in blind but it is fair to say this is, partially at least, a sci fi film. You may well spot the twist (especially with the Stepford Wives nod kicking things off) but something so morally abhorrent and potentially dangerous being completely commonplace and having so littl...
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Econ Air

  Single location thriller Flight Risk is the latest film to suffer from an "over eager" trailer. That is to say, the trailer covers pretty much everything that happens in the movie, more or less in the exact order it occurs. On the plus side, it isn't a film that was ever going to keep any secrets so it doesn't suffer as much as some others have. FBI agent Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) takes a flight with informant Winston (Topher Grace) but a short way into their journey they discover the pilot, played by Mark Wahlberg, is actually a mob hitman there to end them both before Winston can squeal. There is a brief opening at an Alaskan cabin and the finale is on a runway, but for the most part it's just the three of them in the cabin of a small plain. Events unfold almost like a theatrical play as the three talk and argue with intermittent attempts at murder.  The main thing to know about Flight Risk is that it is ridiculous. The decisions the characters make a...
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Working Girl

  Babygirl opens with Nicole Kidman and husband Antonio Banderas having the kind of passionate, intimate sex you see in Hollywood movies. When they are done, Kidman quickly scampers off to another room to enjoy some pornography. Hollywood sex you see, often doesn't cut it in the real world. And that's really the crux of writer/director Halina Reijn's latest film, even ideal isn't good enough if you aren't being honest with yourself. Kidman plays Romy Mathis, a tech company CEO with a charming and handsome theatre director husband (Banderas), a seemingly good relationship with her two children and at least two palatial homes. She has accomplished the "have it all" life women are told to aspire to and works hard to keep it, striving to be the best at her job, undertaking a painstaking (and painful looking) beauty routine including such delights as numbing free botox and ice baths and attempts to be the ideal loving and supportive wife. The problem is, she is...
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