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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
Mother & Child – good, but rather joyless
Mother and Child is one of a certain kind of movie that I always find difficult to watch. I think this is because it deals seriously with the emotions of our own mortality, which is a good thing, but its … Continue reading
Posted in 2009
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A Prophet – It’s LONG!
A Prophet feels about 5 hours long, and as the running time is under 3 hours this is decidedly not a good thing. I suppose that for what the film is, it is, technically speaking, “pretty good”. The story just … Continue reading
Posted in 2009
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The Damned United – these filmmakers aimed too low
The Damned United relies almost exclusively on the acting flair of Michael Sheen, and as he possesses incredible electricity on screen this strategy is not a complete failure and makes for a fairly enjoyable movie. But the film suffers from … Continue reading
Posted in 2009
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The Ghost Writer – an okay story marred by weirdly indifferent filmmaking
The Ghost Writer is not a bad film. I think it kind of wants to be a David Lynch film, maybe with a little Coen Brothers stirred in, but it’s very halfhearted about it. The story is rather serious: murder, … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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The Wolfman – A very silly movie with lots of entrails
It’s worth it to see a super-hairy Anthony Hopkins rip his white shirt off with a roar and a flourish, and then chest bump with the other werewolf before they start their death-match! I laughed pretty hard at that one … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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The Next Three Days – should have been better, but it’s still good
The Next Three Days is a complicated movie to review. When I first walked out of the theater, my impression of it was that it was a mediocre American version of what would have been a great French film (it … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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The King’s Speech – A good film!
The King’s Speech is a good, enjoyable film. Performances are solid across the board, it’s pretty well written, decently paced, and it’s content is historically interesting. It does make use of some camera techniques that I don’t really care for … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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Robin Hood (2010) – Not nearly as bad, or as boring, as the critics say
Robin Hood is a fun film. No, it’s not great, and it’s a pretty outrageous re-imagining of history, but frankly it all hangs together surprisingly well. The music is pretty forgettable, there is some ill-advised cheese in the relationship between … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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Just Wright – another classy film from director Sanaa Hamri
Sanaa Hamri directed Something New (2006) which was a really wonderful little movie exploring race relations in Los Angeles. Something New was the primary reason that my wife and I wanted to see Hamri’s latest effort, Just Wright. Well, Just … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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Whatever Works – Woody Allen at his worst
It ironic that the main character of this film is driven crazy by the utterance of cliches, because this entire film is nothing but a stream of cliches from Allen’s past work. He’s got all his tired old pet ideas … Continue reading
Posted in 2009
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