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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
Mona Lisa Smile (2003): a reconsideration
My wife and I saw Mona Lisa Smile when it was out in theaters back in 2003 and at the time dismissed it as insipid feel-good fluff. But this past weekend after we got “slimed” by Easy A, we started … Continue reading
Easy A – Generation-Y teenybopper movies, Exhibit A
Many people summarily dismiss teenybopper movies as a genera, but there are great teenybopper movies, okay teenybopper movies, and bad teenybopper movies. Great teenybopper movies recreate the unique horror of the 1980s Generation-X high school experience, in all of it’s … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
Tagged Aly Michalka, Bandslam, Easy A, Emma Stone, Generation-X, Generation-Y, Movie Review, Patricia Clarkson, Penn BadGlay, Stanley Tucci
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The Town – It’s actually very good
I don’t know if Ben Affleck is a great director, but I’ll tell you one thing: In my mind he makes a lot of directors who are considered good by critics look pretty bad (Clint Eastwood and Ridley Scott to … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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Going the Distance / The Switch – summer romantic comedies
My wife and I took in a double feature of this summer’s romantic comedies while on vacation last week. I thought I would review them together here. Going the Distance is a minimally entertaining comedy. It’s better than 500 Days … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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The September Issue – the Devil is a boring corporate drone
I enjoyed The September Issue, but not in the way I was expecting. I figured the film would be a chance to see the real Devil Wears Prada. Well it definitely is that, but it turns out that the real … Continue reading
Posted in 2009
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Animal Kingdom – a brilliantly animalistic crime drama
It’s not very often that I’m moved to see a film by one single line in the film’s trailer. I mean, everyone likes a good line, but this line is delivered so brilliantly that my wife and I dragged ourselves … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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Cairo Time – unfortunately, it’s kind of a snooze
I was so psyched to see Cairo Time this past weekend at IFC in Manhattan. The thought of the marvelous Patricia Clarkson actually getting a romantic lead opposite a warm, charismatic actor, in a promising movie, was just too much. … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
Tagged A.O. Scott, Alexander Siddig, Cairo Time, IFC, Patricia Clarkson
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The International – better than I thought it would be
The International is a strange movie. It survives completely on its terrific story idea, which is the idea that international banking controls the world, deals arms, assassinates people, manipulates countries through the debt they accrue fighting ridiculous wars, and basically … Continue reading
South of the Border – not a great documentary, but an important one
It’s very sad that Americans know nothing about the amazing political transformation that is currently taking place in South America. Our media simply won’t allow it, and for good reason – the last thing the elite oligarchy that runs this … Continue reading
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