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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
Light Sleeper – a good little sleeper from the 90’s
Light Sleeper is a kind of hybrid of several decades of film stylism. It has something of that 1970’s, Sidney Lumet grittiness about it – indeed, I thought it captured early 90’s New York City in a very vivid and … Continue reading
Posted in Films of the 1990s
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Hugo – truly awful, in every way
Eleven Academy Award nominations? Best Picture? Best Director? David Demby’s best film from 2011? Are you kidding me?! This is the film that all our friends said was so great? All I can say is my wife and I had a … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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21 Jump Street – idiocy, delivered on-time and in sufficient quantity
Sometimes you just want to watch something idiotic, get a few laughs, and have the experience not be deeply offensive or insulting. Such is the mood my wife and I were in yesterday, leading to our attendance at 21 Jump Street in … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Tiny Furniture – a charming, old-school indie comedy
Tiny Furniture really surprised my wife and me. We never went to see it when it was at IFC last year, because we were listening to the New York critics, who panned it. As usual, paying them any heed was … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Another Earth – one of the best films of 2011
Mainstream movie artistry is really in the toilet right now, and I think that for the most part the Euro and Indie scenes are wildly overrated. But one of the few positive things that is happening is the small but impressive … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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The Woman in Black – ripping off great horror films, and doing it badly
The Woman in Black can be described (charitably) as The Changeling meets The Shining meets Ringu, but it somehow manages to avoid every single last attribute that made each of those films great. All the disaggregated components of those films are here … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Wanderlust – it’s pretty damn funny
Wanderlust was much better than I thought it would be – the preview definitely does not do it justice. I found the film consistently funny from start to finish, something pretty unusual in modern comedies. It does feature some fairly … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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The Secret World of Arrietty – a refreshingly different animated film
Animation nearly always leaves me cold, because it is so damn predictable: the same raucous cacophony of cheesy crap over and over and over. Arrietty is different. It is slow, quiet, detailed, almost meditative. It drags a bit here and … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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The 2012 Oscars – who will win?
So far my three year record is 13 out of 15. Let’s see how I do this year! Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer – Rule #1 of Best Supporting Actress is that if there is a “hot young thing” nominated, it … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Safe House – another insufferable piece of trash
It occurs to me that nobody wants to make the effort to tell a good story in this genera of film anymore. This film is just like Salt (except not as fun as Salt was,) in that they start with … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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