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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
Ruby Sparks – a cute film, but a little flat and unfocused
Zoe Kazan has a brilliant solution to the complete lack of dignified, quality roles for women in films: write your own movie with a quality female role for yourself to star in. And while you’re at it, line up awesome … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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The Way (2010) – a light, soothing, somewhat meditative film
The Way is a nice little movie about a father whose son dies on the El camino de Santiago, and who spontaneously decides to walk it himself when he goes over to pick up his son’s body. I would not call this … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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Red Tails – it didn’t work for me
I feel bad ripping this thing, because it is a good idea for a movie and they clearly had the best of intentions. But my wife and I only lasted 15 minutes into this abomination, and we were cringing the … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Your Sister’s Sister – Illustrating the problem with modern indie crap
I walked into Your Sister’s Sister in the 6th Avenue IFC theater knowing full well that its preview basically contained the entire movie, which is usually indicative of impending disappointment. But it was Emily Blunt and Mark Duplass, and the … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Safety Not Guaranteed – A modern indie film with a difference!
My wife and I both really liked Safety Not Guaranteed. It is a delightful and understated little indie film, one which departs from standard indie fare in important and surprising ways. In its first third, this film feels a bit … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Brave – a nice little kids film, marred by a weak story
I thought Brave would be about a young girl that has to go to battle and display extreme bravery. My wife thought she would fight a dragon to protect her people. Boy were we wrong. Brave is a re-heated version … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Contraband
The moral of this story: If your wife has a good-for-nothing little brother who is running drugs for a lunatic gangster, fucks it up, and as a result is about to get his head cut off and stuck up his … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Anonymous – Ignore the critics, it’s super fun!
Ever since reading, about ten years ago, the case for Edward De Vere as the true identity of Shakespeare, I have had no trouble believing that this privileged, well-traveled, and highly educated nobleman with time on his hands might have produced the … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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To Rome with Love (or rather, with Fame)
This movie is a bizarre hodgepodge of classic Allen topics and the ancient slapstick comedies of Allen’s youth, all refracted through the lens of Allen’s old-age dementia. He’s got the absurdist story of the average guy who is suddenly famous for no reason; he … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Eric Rohmer’s Autumn Tale (1998) – a meditation on entering the autumn of our lives
Autumn Tale is, in my opinion, Rohmer’s most commercial and accessible film. It’s strange therefore that it is one of the only films of his that never made it to Region 1 DVD, which means that my readers in the United … Continue reading
Posted in Films of the 1990s
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