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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
What Maisie Knew – a lovely little film about crap parenting
What Maisie Knew might not be a great film, but in its own way it’s a lovely piece of craftsmanship. Through its structuring and camerawork it manages to capture exactly what it is like to be a child in turbulent, scary circumstances … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – So God-awful it boggles the mind
I watched Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies when they came out- I thought they were pretty mediocre, both in comparison to the novels and judged strictly as fantasy-adventure movies. But they did occasionally have their moments, and even though … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Jack Reacher – A very nice surprise
Jack Reacher is a really fun movie! The story, while certainly not deep, is well-conceived and well-written. It has a surprisingly good and extended set-up, decent pacing, and makes old-school use of dialog in telling its story. Tom Cruise is … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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To The Wonder – It’s quite moving, for a film with no dialog
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am not exactly one for “image” films with no dialog. Eric Rohmer is my idea of film artistry – To The Wonder is the exact opposite of Eric Rohmer. Nevertheless, I have … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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Game Over: Kasparov and The Machine (2003) – Quaint, but in hindsight rather silly.
I recently caught up with the old documentary Game Over: Kasparov and The Machine, about the famous match where the IBM chess super-computer Deep Blue defeated the world champion Gary Kasparov. I mainly watched this because I enjoyed following the World … Continue reading
Posted in Films of the 2000s
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In The House (Dans la maison) – They squandered a brilliant idea.
In The House was wonderful for the first 20-30 minutes or so. By the end of the film I was pissed off and grumpy. The film’s story idea has so much potential: A semi-jaded literature teacher (and his semi-neurotic wife) … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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42 – For this kind of sports movie, it’s not too bad.
42 is your typical, semi-schmaltzy, biographical sports movie, but it avoids many of the worst pitfalls that tend to plague this kind of film, and in the end it is quite enjoyable. It struck me as a fairly cursory but … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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The Company You Keep – entertaining, with good actors, but held down by mediocre writing
The Company You Keep is a enjoyable movie – it has a fun story idea, they wrote some basically decent dialog, and it features a lot of really good, old actors who give nice performances and are fun to watch. … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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Irreviews Awards 2012, and the new ratings system.
In the aftermath of the awards season, I’ve been giving a good amount of thought to how awards should be approached here on Irreviews. Yearly movie awards are without a doubt a questionable thing. It is obviously quite artificial to give … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Queen To Play – Inoffensive but dull offering from the new French Hollywood
French Hollywood is at it again, following old, discarded formulae and selling it back to Americans. Queen to Play is a blended rehash of The Karate Kid, Educating Rita, and Searching For Bobby Fischer, with a few key rip-offs of the … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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