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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
The Broken Circle Breakdown – A movie to make you hate movies
I saw The Broken Circle Breakdown at the Quad two nights ago. It is so perfectly awful it’s almost enough to turn you off movies altogether. I want to make a few remarks about this, because as you know this film is … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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The Monuments Men – yes, it’s bad, but it’s not completely unwatchable
The Monuments Men is quite bad. The filmmakers take an interesting but very limited story idea (the Nazis stole art during the war, but we found most of it, and pretty easily) and they stretch it out over two hours … Continue reading
Posted in 2014
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A Brief Word on the Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts
My wife and I caught the Oscar-nominated animated shorts at IFC this past weekend. I am not a big fan of animation, nor do I get to see a lot of short features (what person outside the film industry ever … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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The Invisible Woman- interesting, but slow and unremarkable
I enjoyed The Invisible Woman, but I must say the film did not make much of an impression on me; in fact, my memory of it is something of a grey-brown blur. This true story about Charles Dickens’ secret mistress … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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The Square – a well-made, but somewhat limited documentary on the Egyptian social revolution
The Square is a captivating documentary on the fate of the so-called “Arab Spring” within Egypt, focusing on the January 11 demonstrations in Tahrir Square, and their protracted aftermath. It follows events through the eyes and reactions of six main characters … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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Nebraska – occasionally cute, mostly depressing, and not a lot of content
My wife and I finally caught up to Nebraska, the last of the Best Picture Oscar nominations that I had not yet seen. It a simple little story about old age dementia, in which a son humors his age-addled father … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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Lone Survivor – an entertaining action film which manipulates us with distortions of the truth
Lone Survivor is inspired by a true story about four American SEALs who were ambushed during a 2005 reconnaissance mission in Afghanistan that was part of Operation Red Wings. Evaluated strictly as an action film, Lone Survivor is put together pretty effectively. … Continue reading
Posted in 2014
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In a Better World (Hævnen) – a gripping Danish film about the use and misuse of violence
I finally caught up with the 2011 Danish film, In a Better World (Hævnen), a film I was interested in back when it was playing in New York theaters, but wound up avoiding out of fear it was a bleak, … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Free Ride – a enojyable little indie throwback, to kick off 2014
January is a really dull time at the movies, with theaters endlessly hanging on to all the (mostly shitty) Oscar hopefuls in pursuit of easy, guaranteed revenue streams. Even my favorite off-beat theater, Cinema Village, is doing this to a … Continue reading
Posted in 2014
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The Wolf of Wall Street – it’s quite a spectacle, but a deeply irresponsible one
On the surface, The Wolf of Wall Street is your typical outrageous Martin Scorsese picture, a much more extreme rehash of the basic story idea of Scorsese’s Goodfellas – criminals living the wild high life, until it all comes crashing down … Continue reading
Posted in 2010
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