Houston*, We Have a ‘Problemista’ (*Pronounced “HOW-stuhn”)

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A Problemistamatic Man (CREDIT: A24)

Starring: Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton, RZA, Isabella Rossellini, Catalina Saavedra, James Scully, Laith Nakli, Spike Einbinder, Greta Lee, Larry Owens, Kelly McCormack, Greta Titelman, Megan Stalter

Director: Julio Torres

Running Time: 98 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: March 1, 2024 (Theaters)

There’s a problem out there, and it’s not Problemista.

So I just wanted to pop in and say that the American visa and immigration system is kind of crazytown bananapants. (Who among us hasn’t had the odd green card in his or her pants, right?) But at least it inspired Julio Torres to make a pretty good film. It’s about seeing a plan through and finding a kindred spirit through all the cacophony and rancor. Now, let’s go be assertive!

Grade: The Promise of Cryogenics is Alive in Brooklyn

Is This One ‘The Killer’?

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Ooh, ahh (CREDIT: Netflix)

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell, Kerry O’Malley, Sala Baker, Sophie Charlotte, Tilda Swinton

Director: David Fincher

Running Time: 118 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: October 27, 2023 (Theaters)/November 10, 2023 (Netflix)

Sometimes an earworm gets stuck in my head for eternity, and a certain word will henceforth always trigger it without fail. So whenever I hear about a professional life-taker, I can’t help but be transported back to a high school dance routine that included a section set to the Ying Yang Twins’ “Shake,” specifically, its repeated lyric of “This one’s a killa.”

This is all just a windup to asking: could David Fincer directing Michael Fassbender in The Killer live up to my persistent memories of the Ying Yang Twins? Only about 18 years or so will tell for sure, but in the meantime it didn’t quite hit me square in the chest. It moved along nicely enough and got to where it needed to go, but I didn’t really feel like I was getting unforgettably poked memorably until Tilda showed up.

Grade: A Fitting Lack of Empathy

Wes Anderson Invites Us to Look to the Skies in ‘Asteroid City’

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3 Men, 1 Asteroid (CREDIT: Courtesy of Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features)

Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Jake Ryan, Scarlett Johansson, Grace Edwards, Tom Hanks, Ella Faris, Gracie Faris, Willan Faris, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jeff Goldblum, Sophia Lillis, Fisher Stevens, Ethan Josh Lee, Aristou Meehan, Rita Wilson, Jarvis Cocker, Bob Balaban, Seu Jorge

Director: Wes Anderson

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Mild Adult Themes and A Shot of Nudity at a Distorted Angle

Release Date: June 16, 2023 (Limited Theaters)/June 23, 2023 (Expands Wide)

What’s It About?: A motley crew of various characters converge in the titular town of Asteroid City in Wes Anderson’s latest ode to symmetry and midcentury vibes. They’re there for the Junior Stargazer convention, and some surprise visitors might just stop by as well. Front and center in the cavalcade are Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), a war photographer whose father-in-law (Tom Hanks) keeps reminding him that he needs to tell his son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and triplet daughters (Ella, Gracie, and Willan Faris) that their mother has recently died. And he’ll have plenty of time to do that now that their car has comically broken down!

In the meantime, he also strikes up a medium-hot rapport with movie star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), while her brainiac teenage daughter Dinah (newcomer Grace Edwards) and Woodrow form a smarty-pants committee with the other young budding astronomers in town. And it’s also worth noting that Asteroid City doesn’t actually exist, as the movie is presented as a play-within-a-movie, with occasional peeks behind the walls and curtains.

Don’t make an Asteroid out of yourself (CREDIT: Courtesy of Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features)

What Made an Impression?: To B a Movie: Essentially, Asteroid City seems to be the end result of Wes Anderson watching a whole bunch of 50s and 60s sci-fi B movies and then going, “Okay, what if we made another one of those, but did it a little like this?” This is something that would’ve been called “The Terror in the Skies” back in the day, although in Wes’ version, the real terror comes from all the heavy emotions in our hearts that we haven’t fully confronted yet. But thanks to his signature gentle approach, we feel safe that we’ll get there. It’s the inverse of Nope: instead of freaking out at a potential extraterrestrial, we lean in and start thinking, “Hey there, stranger.”
The Persistence of Memory: Perhaps the most striking scene in Asteroid City (at least from my vantage point) is a memory game played by Woodrow, Dinah, and a few other junior stargazers. They take turns naming a famous person, and these brainiacs all choose some of the most difficult-to-pronounce monikers in the world. Invariably, though, they have no trouble keeping any of them straight. That scene isn’t representative of the entire movie from a plot standpoint, but it does capture the vibe in full.
The Gang’s All There: Asteroid City‘s major movie star cast is as much a bounty of riches as any other Wes Anderson flick, perhaps more than ever. A few of the players just pop in for little more than cameos, and the whole adventure can feel a little overwhelming. There’s a lot packed into just an hour and 45 minutes! On top of that, the play-within-a-movie structure presents more to keep track of than I was expecting. For full digestion, you might want a second viewing, for both intellectual and emotional fulfillment.

Asteroid City is Recommended If You Like: B flicks, Dusty summer camps, Burial ceremonies

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Stargazers

‘Pinocchio, Pistachio, Toro! Toro! Toro!’

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What’s up, Pinocchio? (CREDIT: Netflix © 2022)

Starring: Gregory Mann, David Bradley, Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Burn Gorman, Tim Blake Nelson, John Turturro, Tom Kenny

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Running Time: 117 Minutes

Rating: PG

Release Date: November 9, 2022 (Theaters)/December 9, 2022 (Netflix)

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio – or as I refer to it, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pistachio” (because of that Rugrats episode where the babies call Pinocchio “Pistachio”) – is pretty dang lovely. It hasn’t quite inspired some baby-speak-style quoting from me to follow in the footsteps of the Rugrats version, but that’s okay. Furthermore, I thought that it was Cate Blanchett who was voicing the Fairy and her sister Death, but that was actually Tilda Swinton, while Cate was the voice of the monkey. That realization pretty much sums up my reaction in general to this whole movie, as Pinocchio’s stop-motion wooden walking was similarly mind-altering.

Grade: Cate Blanchett Voiced the Monkey?!

There’s ‘Three Thousand of Years Longing’ in George Miller’s Latest Movie, and You Feel All Three Thousand of Them

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Look at all that longing! (CREDIT: Elise Lockwood/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures)

Starring: Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba

Director: George Miller

Running Time: 108 Minutes

Rating: R for Getting It On With a Magical Creature

Release Date: August 26, 2022 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: What if Aladdin starred Idris Elba instead of Robin Williams and Tilda Swinton instead of Steve from Full House. And also, what if it took place almost entirely in a hotel room? That’s pretty much Three Thousand Years of Longing in a nutshell. Alithea Binnie (Swinton) is a professor attending a conference in Istanbul, where she’s treated to the discovery of a djinn who had previously been trapped for millennia. And so, he is obliged to grant her – you guessed it! – that classic trio of wishes. But here’s the catch: Alithea’s not exactly the kind of person who would like to suddenly change her life by conjuring what’s in her heart of hearts. So it looks like we’re going to be her for a while. In the meantime, the djinn takes it upon himself to tell Alithea his life story.

What Made an Impression?: Three Thousand Years of Longing is basically just Pure Intoxication, thoroughly distilled. Who could possibly resist being an audience of one to a magical creature played by Idris Elba? As it turns out, Alithea Binnie almost can resist that. Almost. She’s always been a little different than everyone else, and she’s perfectly happy being her own independent self who doesn’t have to rely on anybody. (Which is to say, Tilda Swinton is the perfect person to play her.) But there’s something about somebody opening up to you so full and nakedly by revealing their life story. Let’s call it intimacy. And the power of that intimacy is multiplied about a thousandfold when that story spans millennia.

I’m not going to get too much into the details of the events of the Djinn’s life, mainly because they didn’t make much of an impression on me one way or the other. But that’s not a problem, because with the Djinn telling it, I’m enraptured even if the details mean nothing to me. This movie is a testament to the power of storytelling, specifically its ability to make you fall in love. That’s how Alithea falls in love with the Djinn, it’s how I fell in love with Three Thousand Years of Longing, and it’s how I imagine its spell will be cast on many more viewers to come.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is Recommended If You Like: Cracking open a good book, Gathering around the fire, Waking up only to fall back into a deep slumber

Grade: 4 out of 5 Stories

‘Memoria’ is a Gentle Boom

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Memoria (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Tilda Swinton, Jeanne Balibar, Elkin Díaz, Juan Pablo Urrego, Daniel Giménez Cacho

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Running Time: 136 Minutes

Rating: Unrated

Release Date: December 26, 2021 (Never-Ending Theatrical Release, One Theater at a Time)

Tilda Swinton is woken up by a loud bang, and then she just doesn’t know what to do. That is the premise (or the beginning, as “premise” might be a bit of a stretch) of the new film Memoria. It’s directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who’s probably best known to American audiences for his meditative, Palme d’Or-winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. That earlier film was a challenge to anyone expecting a straightforward, fast-moving plot, but it was a balm to anyone else looking for something soothing and reflective. I imagine that Memoria will be a challenge even among those who loved Uncle Boonmee (myself included), but if you prize ambiguity and existential mystery in your cinema, then it might just be right up your alley.

It’s difficult to get into the specifics of Memoria, because, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what the specifics are. I can say that Swinton’s character is named Jessica and that she’s currently in Colombia and that she spends the film walking around various locales in the country. But beyond that, I’m at a loss. There are at least two scenes that had a significant effect on me, so I’ll mention those. The first involves Jessica and a few others watching an impromptu jazz performance at a university. If Memoria had suddenly decided to turn into a concert film at that moment, I wouldn’t have complained!

Then about halfway through comes the scene that I suspect many viewers will consider the crux of it all. Jessica is walking through the jungle when she encounters a man who appears to live there. He offers wisdom that somehow immediately strikes a chord with the journey that she’s on. Is this where the key to unlocking the answers about Memoria resides? Perhaps, but if those answers do exist, I have my doubts that they’ll fit with any traditional definition of what it means to be an answer.

Ultimately, my singular, subjective experience of this film is appreciation more than adoration, but that might gradually change over time. It certainly did with Uncle Boonmee, and I’m glad that Weerasethakul has been given the space to follow his own muse.

Memoria is Recommended If You Like: Gentle confusion

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Bangs

‘The French Dispatch’ Presents a Journalistic Panorama

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The French Dispatch (CREDIT: Searchlight Pictures. © 2020 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved)

Starring: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Elisabeth Moss, Jason Schwartzman, Fisher Stevens, Griffin Dunne, Wally Wolodarsky, Anjelica Bette Fellini, Anjelica Huston, Jarvis Cocker, Tilda Swinton, Benicio del Toro, Tony Revolori, Adrien Brody, Léa Seydoux, Lois Smith, Henry Winkler, Bob Balaban, Denis Menochet, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Alex Lawther, Mohamed Belhadjine, Nicolas Avinée, Lily Taleb, Toheeb Jimoh, Rupert Friend, Cécile de France, Guillaume Gallienne, Christoph Waltz, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Winston Ait Hellal, Liev Schreiber, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Hippolyte Girardot

Director: Wes Anderson

Running Time: 103 Minutes

Rating: R for Art Model Nudity, Surprising Sexual Partners, and Some Language Here and There

Release Date: October 22, 2021 (Theaters)

The French Dispatch is about the staff and subjects of an American magazine that covers a small but colorful fictional French town. It’s published as an insert in the Liberty, Kansas Evening Star newspaper, so it’s basically like a midwestern Parade, but with the vibe of The New Yorker. Which all begs the question: who is the intended audience of The French Dispatch*? (*The fictional newspaper, that is, not the movie of the same name. [Although by extension, you could ask the same thing about the movie, though that conversation would be a little different.]) It feels like somebody dared Wes Anderson to create an anthology film of the most esoteric stories ever and he then declared, “Challenge accepted.” As I watched I wondered what made these stories worth telling, and I believe that the answer is: they’re worth telling because they’re worth telling. So in that way, The French Dispatch is very much like Little Women.

The fictional French town in this movie is called Ennui-sur-Blasé, which literally translates as “Boredom-on-Blasé,” but there’s no way you’ll be bored while watching a film that’s as overstuffed as this one. Overwhelmed, perhaps, but not bored. (But if somehow you are bored, please let me know about your experience. It’s interesting when someone’s reaction is so different than mine!) The anthology structure is composed into five sections, two to set the context and three to dive deep. First up is an introduction of the staff, particularly editor-in-chief Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), a my-way-or-the-highway type, except when he readily makes concessions to his writers’ peculiarities. Then travel writer Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) takes us on a bicycle tour to provide color for the town. The fleshed-out stories include the journalist-subject pairings of Tilda Swinton covering incarcerated artist Benicio Del Toro; Frances McDormand covering student revolutionaries led by Timothée Chalamet and Lyna Khoudri; and Jeffrey Wright as a food journalist covering the story of a police officer’s kidnapped son that also features a very talented chef.

The French Dispatch is a love letter to a time and a place when you could throw whatever budget you felt like at whatever story you felt like covering. Based on the accounts of people who were involved in that era, that characterization actually isn’t that far off from how 20th century American journalism really was run. But it’s so different from journalism’s current state of affairs that it might as well be from another universe. Appropriately enough then, The French Dispatch felt to me like it was beaming in from an alternate dimension. I don’t know how these stories could have ever possibly been conceived, but I’m glad that I’ve now experienced them.

The French Dispatch is Recommended If You Like: The New Yorker, Symmetrical geometric arrangements, French pop music, Skinny mustaches

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Bylines

Movie Review: ‘The Dead Don’t Die,’ And Neither Does the Droll Energy in Jim Jarmusch’s Zombie Goof-Off

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CREDIT: Abbot Genser/Focus Features

Starring: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, Sara Driver, RZA, Carol Kane, Selena Gomez, Tom Waits, Austin Butler, Eszter Balint, Luka Sabbat, Larry Fessenden

Director: Jim Jarmusch

Running Time: 103 Minutes

Rating: R for Ironic, But Visceral Zombie Violence

Release Date: June 14, 2019 (Limited)

Sometime around 2010, it was determined that it was every filmmaker’s God-given right to make their very own zombie movie. In the case of Jim Jarmusch, he was divinely matched with The Dead Don’t Die, a droll, occasionally fourth wall-breaking portrait of ravaged-by-the-undead small town life patrolled by Police Officers Bill Murray and Adam Driver. In a post-Shaun of the Dead world, The Dead Don’t Die is far from necessary, but it is sufficiently diverting. It adds an environmental wrinkle to the zombie mythos, as fracking is implied to be the culprit behind the upending of nature. If Jarmusch is crying out for us to protect the Earth, that warning is perhaps a little too late, considering how disastrous climate change has already become. But that’s no big deal (for the movie, that is – the planet is screwed), as he seems to have more goofball ideas on his mind anyway.

The zombie blood and guts are sufficiently hardcore, with the bodily fluids as wet and unleashed as the dialogue is dry and bottled-up. But the main attraction are not the ghouls so much as the characters and their unique ways of being human and/or inhuman. That is to say, while Tilda Swinton has badass sword skills as the town’s new undertaker, it’s more amusing that she gets to lean into a hardcore Scottish persona. This is the type of movie in which Selena Gomez tells Caleb Landry Jones, “Your film knowledge is impressive,” after he mentions some pretty basic info about George Romero, and then Larry Fessenden refers to Gomez and her friends who are passing through town as “hipsters from the city” and “hipsters with their irony” (the odds seem to be that they’re from Cleveland). If that sounds hilarious to you, you know who you are, and you can expect to mostly be satisfied, though you may (or may not) have issues with the shaggy, shambling plot structure.

The Dead Don’t Die is Recommended If You Like: Remaining at an ironic remove, but not being too-cool-for-school about it

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Diner Coffee Pots

This Is a Movie Review: Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Suspiria’ is So Baroque, Don’t Fix It

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CREDIT: Alessio Bolzoni; Courtesy of Amazon Studios

This review was originally published on News Cult in October 2018.

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Chloë Grace Moretz

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Running Time: 152 Minutes

Rating: R for Imaginatively Bloody Violence and Witchcraft-Based Nudity

Release Date: October 26, 2018 (Limited)

I’ve seen the 1977 original Dario Argento-directed Suspiria, but I don’t remember much about it, other than the colors and the music. I also recall that the premise is that a young American ballet student arrives at a prestigious dance academy in Germany, where she discovers that the place is run by a coven of witches. That is the same setup for Luca Guadagnino’s remake, but in just about every other way, this is not a film that should feel compelled to call itself a remake. Let me jump in with my theory on proper remake strategy: a good remake can be based on a good or bad movie, but it must necessarily be significantly different enough from the original. Because if the original was bad, why would you want to do it over again? But if the original was good, it would be pointless to do it all over again, since the original still exists. The new Suspiria is certainly different enough, more inspired by than redoing the original. Although it is possible that it is recreating scenes that I forgot about, but if that is the case, that’s clearly not a problem.

Guadagnino is a master of baroque delights. From Dakota Johnson’s slithery dancing to an onslaught of bodily contortions and explosions, this is a mass feast of sensory awesomeness. I’m pretty sure that Thom Yorke’s score is also excellent, but I’ll have to listen again to make sure. As for any deeper themes – whether regarding feminism, power dynamics, or the like – there may be plenty to jump into there. Perhaps I will dig into it a month or a year from now. But it’s also possible there may not be any subtext at all. And that is just dandy in this case. Also, pay special attention to “Lutz Ebersdorf.” He’s going places.

Suspiria is Recommended If You Like: Suspiria (1977), Hausu, Hereditary

Grade: 4 out of 5 Leotards

 

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Isle of Dogs’ is an Adorable Allegorical Adventure About the Dangers of Fascism

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CREDIT: Fox Searchlight Pictures

This review was originally published on News Cult in March 2018.

Starring: Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Kunichi Nomura, Akira Takayama, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Akira Ito, Scarlett Johansson, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Yoko Ono, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe, Mari Natsuki, Fisher Stevens, Nijiro Murakami, Liev Schreiber, Courtney B. Vance

Director: Wes Anderson

Running Time: 101 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Dog-on-Dog Violence and Dictatorial Tendencies

Release Date: March 23, 2018 (Limited)

“Whatever happened to man’s best friend?” Nothing, right? We human beings still love dogs, and that cannot possibly ever change! But what if something so terrible happened that it could make us turn on them? One of the functions of fiction is training ourselves to handle horrible hypotheticals. Thus, with the stop-motion animated Isle of Dogs, Wes Anderson has delivered an invaluable how-to guide for if the world should ever turn so severely on our furry companions.

Twenty years in the future, Japan has banished its entire canine population to the bluntly literally named Trash Island, due to a widespread outbreak of snout fever and dog flu. The two conditions appear to be connected as how HIV can lead to AIDS. In this dystopia, the fear from those in charge that the disease could spread to humans is enough to override any bounty of puppy love, despite promising progress for a cure. So intrepid folks must step up on their own to save the dogs, like the young boy Atari (Koyu Rankin), an orphaned ward of the state adopted by his distant uncle, Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura). Atari ventures to Trash Island to save his canine protector Spots (Liev Schreiber), who also happens to be the outbreak’s Dog Zero. Joining up with him in his quest are a group of other cast-off dogs with variations on the same sort of name – Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Boss (Bill Murray), and Duke (Jeff Goldblum) – as well as Chief (Bryan Cranston), the fiercely independent stray who has always lived on his own.

An island entirely populated by dogs might sound like the pinnacle of Wes Anderson giving into his most indulgent instincts, but the darkness of the premise is enough to assuage any of those concerns. Plus, the animation does not hold back from the more aesthetically displeasing elements. These pups are mangy, with fur falling off and distorted pupils. They are also fairly irritable; one early standoff results in an ear getting bit off. Isle of Dogs works as an adventure film as well as it does because it does not back away from the danger, while still bringing plenty of fun to that peril. Fight scenes are portrayed in cartoon chaos clouds, while an accidental trip through a trash incinerator is met with droll acceptance. The set pieces are whimsical, but the stakes are life-or-death.

Isle of Dogs could easily be appreciated just for its surface level sensations, but like so many talking animal flicks, there is an allegory lurking not too far below. And considering current worldwide political trends, Wes Anderson’s anti-fascist storytelling is profoundly welcome. Quarantining a contagious population is an understandable disease control tactic, but what happens to these dogs is more banishment than quarantine. And when a solution appears to be possible, Mayor Kobayashi hides that development for the sake of retaining power, trotting out clearly fraudulent election results in the process. BoJack Horseman-style anthropomorphic dogspeak (“my brother from another litter”) helps it go down easy, but these are heavy ideas that deserve and are granted careful consideration.

A few more items worth noting: even though the setting is Japan, the dogs just about exclusively speak English, even when communicating with humans speaking Japanese. In fact, there is a good deal of American and Japanese cultural mixing. All the political machinations are translated by an interpreter (Frances McDormand), apparently for American and other English-speaking audiences, and an American exchange student (Greta Gerwig) leads a revolt against Kobayashi. The bilingual setup feels woven together mostly seamlessly, though I do wonder if Asian audiences might have a different take on the matter than I do. And I would be terribly remiss if I did not mention Alexandre Desplat’s excellent score, pounded along by unrelenting taiko drums, keeping the tension both constantly uneasy and delicious.

Isle of Dogs is Recommended If You Like: Wes Anderson Symmetry, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Animal Farm, Zootopia, The Goonies, BoJack Horseman

Grade: 4.5 out of 5 Puppy Snaps

 

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