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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
Higher Ground – lovely and understated
I’m not sure how many people realize it, but Vera Farmiga is a cinematic treasure. I would say everything she touches turns to gold, the counter-example of Safe House notwithstanding (film making incompetence on that scale would confound anyone!) She has … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Melancholia – Lars von Trier strikes again
Melancholia is stupendously pretentious crap that also happens to be frightfully boring. I found it far from beautiful or interesting or thought-provoking. As a metaphor for depression it strikes me as absurdly heavy-handed (“Depression: you think you’ve beaten it, and then WHAMO!”) … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Like Crazy – No more Sundance winners for us
Like Crazy has finished off Sundance for my wife and I. This film is really just boring junk, if we’re calling a spade a spade. There’s no dialog, so it’s damn near impossible to form an emotional bond with either … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Damsels in Distress – Whit Stillman loses it
It’s been 14 years since Whit Stillman made Last Days of Disco, that wretched piece of trash that made a mockery of his two masterpieces: Barcelona and Metropolitan. Damsels in Distress is better than Last Days of Disco, largely because it takes itself less seriously, and does … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Young Adult – A beautiful portrait of being different in a small town
My wife and I loved Young Adult. I highly recommend it, even though I am aware it will probably be deeply offensive to large swaths of the American population. Young Adult was panned, basically for being a depressing portrait of … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Dragon Tattoo (USA) vs. Dragon Tattoo (Swedish) – which is better?
So now we have two film versions of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo made within a couple years of each other: a Swedish-language version (Män som hatar kvinnor) and an American version made by David Fincher. The Swedish version is … Continue reading
My Week With Marilyn – boring and unmoving
In the middle of My Week With Marilyn, my wife leans over to me and says “you know what the problem with this movie is? The kid! He’s like some kind of weird eunuch! He has no chemistry with either … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Triple Agent (2004) – Eric Rohmer does a “normal” film
I had never seen one of Eric Rohmer’s “normal” films before watching Triple Agent. The films of his that I love, and there are many, are all from the thematic collections that built his cult fame: the Moral Tales, Comedies … Continue reading
Posted in Films of the 2000s
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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – sugar-coated storytelling of the good variety!
I finally liked Ewan Mcgregor in a movie! He is such a weirdo in all his roles, but here he gets to do his strange, flat-affect thing and also be kind of sexy and smile a bit. He and Emily … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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The Hunger Games – How to take a great book and turn it into “Twilight.”
The Hunger Games: They managed to take a book that is written so beautifully I’m sure I will want to re-read it over and over in the coming years, and make from it a movie that I never need to … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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