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Recent Reviews
- Good Kill – An artistic exploration of drone assassinations
- Citizenfour – a fascinating and important topic, but a disappointing documentary
- Interstellar – Probably the best film of the year, certainly the most enjoyable!
- Laggies – a delightful little film about late-blooming misfits
- Two Days, One Night – it’s (almost) exactly what you expect it to be
- Whiplash – a disgusting, stupidly manipulative piece of absurdity.
- Still Alice – big stars, big production, but still just a Hallmark movie of the week
- Wild – it’s surprisingly well-made and fun to watch
- Black Sea – diverting, but sadly predictable
- Birdman (Or the Expected Emptiness of Pretension)
- Mr. Turner – Planet of the Ape
- The Imitation Game – It’s an abomination
- A Brief Word on the 2014 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts
- Kill The Messenger – The important and tragic story of Gary Webb, the mainstream media, and the CIA
- This is Where I Leave You – the latest in a long line of “family reunion” movies
- A review of summer cinema – it was pretty grim!
- The Trip to Italy – It never should have been made
- A Most Wanted Man – Superficially entertaining, but poorly-made and overrated
- Magic in the Moonlight – It’s pissing me off!
- The Purge: Anarchy – Surprisingly, it’s rather good
- I Origins – ambitious and entertaining
- Boyhood – a bit one dimensional, but its one dimension is lovely, impressive and fun to experience
- Obvious Child – cute, dignified and gutsy
- Snowpiercer – a fantastic, riveting science fiction action allegory
- Edge of Tomorrow – it’s fairly entertaining
- Begin Again – confronting the future of pop music head-on
- The Fault in Our Stars – not super-moving, but definitely enjoyable
- Hellion – a gritty tale of fucked up parents and children
- Night Moves – a cool, subtle portrayal of hippy-liberal activism turned violent
- Cold In July – an outstandingly fun and unusual film, and a paean for the 1980s
- Austenland – so horrible, I’m speechless
- Elena – 80 minutes of torture
- Lucky Them – Toni Collette takes center stage and lights up the screen!
- Belle – it means well, but God is it slow (and dull)
- Finding Vivian Maier – an okay documentary on a fascinating artist
- The German Doctor (Wakolda) – Diverting, but feels more than a little contrived
- Chef – it’s heart is in the right place
- Jodorowsky’s Dune – a bizarre and amazing documentary
- Hateship, Loveship – it goes down well
- Divergent – entertaining, but there’s a lot wrong with it
Author Archives: roguespirit
A Hijacking (Kapringen) – tense, interesting, and wonderfully human
This terrific Danish movie is a throwback to the unadorned style and masterful techniques of 1970’s thrillers. It is a tense, dialog-driven psychological drama which focuses on the protracted negotiation process between the corporate owners of a large shipping vessel, … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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The To Do List – a raunchy but cute teenage sex film
The To Do List is not great, but it’s better than your typical teenage sex film. Its story is basically realistic and coherent, the humor is raunchy but stays fairly dignified, the characters are pretty well-conceived across the board, the … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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The Other Son (Le fils de l’autre) – Superb!
The Other Son is such a lovely film! Beautifully plotted, great casting, politically bold, and tremendous balancing of crisp pacing with the unrushed capturing of key emotional moments. It was one of the best films of 2012, without a doubt. … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Blue Jasmine – Like nails on a chalkboard, for 98 straight minutes
When Woody Allen goes bad, he really goes bad. Blue Jasmine is not a comedy. I think Woody Allen is trying to make some kind of social statement. But what kind of social statement is he making? The poor people … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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Warm Bodies – it is indeed way better than it looks
Everyone we talked to told us that Warm Bodies was way better than it looked. They were right, it is way better than it looks. It’s a good, entertaining and enjoyable little movie. I’m not a big fan of the … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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Killer Joe – a wretched piece of trash
Killer Joe is based on a play, and its transition to screen is quite clunky, with the exception of one classic William Friedkin chase scene in the middle of the film which is filmed with characteristic skill and effectiveness. The … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Girl Most Likely – yet another pretty good anti-rich-people movie gets panned by the critics
My wife and I have this theory that professional reviewers tend to pan movies that present rich people in an unfavorable light. I’m not talking about movies where rich people are the villains, but they are also presented as sexy … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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Stuck In Love – It’s surprisingly good.
Stuck in Love is a very nicely done film about a family of writers, each struggling with different aspects of falling in love and staying in love. It has a solid and interesting (if not transcendent or super-moving) story, with … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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The Attack – Simply outstanding!
The Attack is one of those films that restores your faith in movies as an art form, answering in the affirmative the question “does anyone know how to really make a movie anymore?” Apparently Ziad Doueiri does. It is a great … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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The Way Way Back – an enjoyable little film about kids and their fucked up parents
The Way Way Back is a film about teenage adolescence and bad parenting. I found it quite enjoyable, but somewhat less than scintillating. It struck me as one of those films that basically “did everything right,” but still fell a … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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