REVIEW: Ksiaze i dybuk [The Prince and the Dybbuk] [2018]

He never spoke about his past. The title says it all: Ksiaze i dybuk [The Prince and the Dybbuk]. Rather than describe two separate entities, however, Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski‘s documentary portrays director Michal Waszynski as both and neither. Their investigations lead them to multiple countries as close friends and basic strangers attempt to piece together who he really was on-set and off. This means interviews with his “second family” in Italy (the Dickmanns), World War II veterans who served in the Polish/Russian unit he documented, an extra from…

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REVIEW: The Wedding Guest [2019]

That’ll be a lot more work. There’s actually a lot to like about Michael Winterbottom‘s The Wedding Guest from its performances to its locale and onwards towards its characters always proving to be more than our preconceptions initially allow. We’re talking about a serious criminal in Jay (Dev Patel) who has the ability and mindset to hurt people, but genuinely prides himself on not doing so because he values human life. There’s the seemingly pampered victim of his kidnapping plot (Radhika Apte‘s Samira) who is quickly revealed as more modern…

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